An interesting amount of geopolitical insight, in between the apologism for the Imperialist hegemon and its running dogs. I think that a popular mainstream musician openly talking about how Israel was seeking the bomb "for defense" deserves a modicum of respect.
(Although that fell entirely flat some 5 years later when Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the Ukrainian who held a Palestinian passport and decided that she had divine right to colonize the land of Palestine and beyond, threatened to use nukes in order to coerce the US into interceding on behalf of Israel to shift the tide of the Yom Kippur War. Remarkable that Joe Biden is to the right of Richard Nixon, of all people, on the matter of foreign policy, of all things. What zero countervailing force to the liberal hegemony does to a geopolitical MFer. May Gorby Rot In Piss for all of eternity for what he unleashed upon the world.)
Anyway Tom Lehrer is an interesting figure, being a bit of a renaissance man who was a popular musician in his era, a satirist, and a mathematician. It seems like he actually worked on the bomb himself.
And he is also credited with inventing the jello shot. If I didn't fact-check this myself there's not a chance that I would believe such a claim. Apparently the dude is still alive too.
(Wait, why am I historyposting in the Music comm..?)
Not sure at a glance which lines are apologia; the obvious ones are intended to be sarcasm. Lehrer certainly doesn't actually think it's good that the U.S. developed the bomb, or that it loves peace. The whole song is about how the initial U.S. development of the bomb has led the world down the path to destruction.
"We'll all go together when we go" (cw: then contemporary slur for Khoekhoe people) is my favorite of Tom's "nukes are bad" songs
Ah i think the satire was lost on me because I thought he was doing the whole progressive left posturing where they sorta make jabs at some aspects of America while not actually levelling the same degree of criticism that they do for the "lesser" countries.
Idk like The Daily Show or something where they go "Oops, sundowning Biden made another gaffe at the lectern - here's a little montage of the others he's done...
How's this guy going to run against Trump when he can't even walk up a flight of stairs [cut to another montage of Biden's Protracted President's War on flights of stairs] hahaha, now here's 5 minutes of full-tilt unbridled Western chauvinism while we skirt the line of socially-acceptable racism as we discuss North Korea..." y'know?
But upon a closer look I think you're right and he was actually genuine and principled in his anti-nuclear weapons stance and his opposition to war, I just presumed the worst without good cause to.
The MLF Lullaby is also a fun one.