Relevant Song Lyrics: “World On Fire” by Daughtry
A wildfire burns at Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, Massachusetts. Courtesy of CBS Boston.
Because I’m posting this on a Thursday, it’s time for an episode of Relevant Song Lyrics. Given that it hasn’t rained here in literal weeks and wildfires are burning all over a state that isn’t supposed to get them, and given that we just elected a climate-denying President, I thought “World On Fire” by Daughtry was an appropriate choice. Lots of people don’t like Daughtry, which I don’t understand. But here we go.
Going down like a dead man walking
One step from a body in a coffin
Just one, one of the fallen
This passage perfectly reflects the state of American democracy, if you could even call it a democracy at this point. Even though we just had an election in 2024, and even though we might still have elections in 2026 and 2028, they won’t be free and fair. We’ll be a “zombie democracy” like Turkey or Hungary until our democracy is in the grave for good, just like in Russia.
Waking up to a blood moon, howling
Can't drown it out, even with the medicine
Tearing through me like a bullet of adrenaline
In my case, I’m on anti-anxiety meds, and they don’t help. Not well enough. I just want to lash out at my country for electing such a dangerous man again. Every time I wake up, I’m reminded that Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States, and I feel sick to my stomach. We knew exactly who he was, and we still gave him the popular vote. I may not have voted for him, but I’m still responsible.
Arms heavy, face down on a deathbed
Blame the gods while choking on the violence
In the end, silence is deafening
I take this to mean that the Trump voters are going to blame Democrats for everything that goes wrong in the next four years. When the economy doesn’t improve (or gets worse - Harris lost despite a booming economy!), the red-hats are going to blame the politicians who claimed to resist this orange fascist as opposed to the orange fascist. If bird flu goes south and turns into another pandemic, then they’ll literally be choking.
Marjorie Taylor Greene “boldly” claims that the Democrats created Hurricane Helene and can control the weather. Image taken from Rolling Stone.
Can you hear the crowd like a thousand sirens?
In the night like thunder striking
The sickness is rising, the angels are crying
That's the sound of a world on fire
Admittedly, I don’t expect there to be very many protests this time around. Trump won the popular vote, so he can at least claim some “legitimacy” even if he shouldn’t have been allowed to run in the first place. Besides, most Democrats are too scared to protest. I know I am. In terms of “the sickness rising”, just look at HHS Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has some serious brain worms. Whether or not you take the word “angels” literally (which I don’t, not really), it’s clear that those of us who want to do good in the world are distraught right now. And why shouldn’t we be? That’s exactly what a world on fire looks like, as Chris Daughtry reminds us.
Stressed out, head trauma, took a beating
Takes more than a pill to numb the feeling
It’s been said before, but the United States is almost surgically designed to keep you stressed out. Even though we’re supposedly the richest country in the world, our life expectancy is on the decline, That should be a national scandal, especially when one party continuously pushes policies that make it this way. It’s been said that half the country couldn’t afford a surprise $400 expense, which is pretty damning when four hundred dollars isn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things. And again, my anti-anxiety medication doesn’t do much to make me stress out less. At this point I mostly take it because I feel dizzy if I don’t.
Bang, bang, no mercy for the healing
Oh, twenty dead without a fight, without a reason
Twenty more in a cop car, bleeding
All tryna win a war without a meaning
The first two lines of this passage probably refer to the United States’ gun violence crisis. And yes, it is a crisis of our own making. There’s no mercy for those who are injured but survive mass shootings, as they often have obscene medical bills. That’s the only thing more American than mass shootings.
The children at Sandy Hook or Robb Elementary, the concert-goers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Vegas, or the bowlers in Lewiston, Maine (a shooting that’s pretty much been memory-holed even though it’s the 10th-deadliest to date)...they weren’t fighting anyone at all. In all four of these cases, no concrete motive was determined for the massacre, not that that means anything. They’re just dead without a reason. And don’t even get me started on police brutality. In fact, this song was written in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests.
The George Floyd Protests in 2020. Thanks to the GOP, they accomplished nothing other than banning discussion of racism in schools.
So yes. The world is truly on fire, and what’s more, half the American public are arsonists. If human civilization still exists at the end of Trump’s term (and that’s a big if), and if there is to be any accountability at all for those responsible, I blame the voters just as much as the politicians. Trump would be a deranged old man whining on Truth Social if not for the tens of millions who were frothing at the mouth to put him back in the Oval Office. And they got their wish. The world is burning, and Americans lit the match. And if I believed in hell, we’d all be going there.
