“We live in a society.”
In 2005, Korn released their seventh studio album, See You on the Other Side. The first without guitarist Brian “Head” Welch, and the last to feature drummer David Silveria. It was a critical and commercial success, with hit singles like “Twisted Transistor” and “Coming Undone” enjoying significant chart success, remaining fan favourites to this day. The third and final single from that album was “Politics.” Released in August of 2006, towards the end of the album’s tour cycle, it was somewhat unique.
It almost wasn’t a single. “Love Song” seemed to be a contender until the band and/or label decided otherwise. From an outside point of view, the track might seem political in nature. Released during the Bush administration, and tied to the 2006 US midterms, you can see how one might think as such. However, frontman Jonathan Davis stressed that the song was not political at all.
“It’s just about how I don’t like to talk about politics,” Davis said in an interview with MTV News. “I mean there’s politics in everything, and it’s not necessarily governmental politics. There’s who’s going to sleep with whom to get ahead, who’s going to do this to get that. … I see it in the church, everyday life, government. That’s what I’m talking about, not about the stupid crap that’s going on with guys in suits and their views and their lobbies and their this and their that.”
“Korn has never been a real political band,” he continued. “I’m political to a point where it affects human life, from global warming to abortion issues to my gun rights, stuff like that. Those are the kind of politics that I care about. The other BS with taxes or who’s going to be ahead [in elections], I don’t really care. Obviously even going out and voting doesn’t really count, it’s all based down to these Electoral College votes. What the hell can I do? It’s a sham. I just wait for this president to get out of the office, and hopefully we can find someone that can do a better job. But what do we really know? Maybe he is doing the right thing, you don’t know. We are all so clouded with what goes on. You understand if we didn’t have oil, the United States of America would cease to exist and we’d all die? If you really think about it, oil is what keeps us all going, gets us our medicine, gets us our food, gets us every single thing.”
For the video, the band did a really cool thing. They were headlining the Family Values Tour 2006 with Deftones, Stone Sour, Flyleaf, Dir En Grey, and 10 Years. On 26 August at the Alpine Valley Amphitheatre in East Troy, Wisconsin, they gave ten fans handheld cameras to film the performance and behind-the-scenes footage. The footage was compiled, edited down to the best, and released exclusively on MP3 dot com that October.
There’s that saying, “not political is political.” Davis’s whole thing was that he didn’t like to talk about politics, so Korn wrote this song and released it as a single in a media environment dominated by… domestic and international politics. With the US election midterms being held later that year, they released an EP containing remixes of the song. Very meta, intentionally or not. What better way to communicate not wanting to talk about politics than an EP released during an election? I think it’s Davis having fun as well. Like releasing “Y’All Want a Single” as an anti-hit, or hiring a plane to fly over a pop festival in Europe with a banner that read, “Pop sux, I love Korn!” Silly? Yes. Hilarious as a form of publicity? Also yes.
And fair enough. Davis and co. have never been a political band in the Rage Against the Machine sense. You won’t open their album’s sleeve notes and find a reading list containing Mumia Abu-Jamal, Henry Miller, Noam Chomsky, M. C. Escher, and other thinkers. I would say what Davis is getting at is manipulation, and given the political climate at the time — the Iraq War and the abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina — you can see how Davis’s words line up. That thing of “guys in suits and their views and their lobbies.” It’s like right now with every rage-baiting partisan hack making it big on YouTube and Rumble. It can wear you down real quick.
Around the time of Korn’s single, I was very much in that “I don’t like to talk about politics” camp. Labor, Liberal, unions, billionaires, it was all different flavours of bullshit to me. But I realise that kind of attitude is one that is afforded in times of luxury and surplus. As I progressed through my twenties and thirties, I slowly but surely started to subscribe to the notion that man is necessarily a political animal, which is vastly different to the first. Part of it was watching the world grow increasingly volatile. Part of it was reading the works of Nassim Taleb. I like order, and it was nice to see someone put into words the asymmetries of daily life, randomness in markets, signal versus noise, and more. Part of it was going into teaching and the responsibilities the job entails. Life itself, really.
Which brings me to the current year.
On social media, I often post about some political outrage or other. Israel, Ukraine, the World Economic Forum, Silicon Valley oligarchs, or whatever person or thing falls afoul of my rather fluid scope. Whenever something happens, I feel compelled to scream about it. Thing is, I’m posting to my friends on Facebook, and I often find myself preaching to the choir. People drop a few likes, which I guess is nice. I have exactly one FB friend who will disagree, or give any sort of pushback. It makes for a decent back-and-forth, but he only does this once in a blue moon. I’m often left talking to myself on my feed. It’s a lonely place, I tell you.
I look at the political climate in the United States, my country’s drunk uncle. Donald Trump and Vance; Trump, Vance, and Peter Thiel. Quasi-left-leaning figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani are gaining massive traction because they’re the only ones who address actual things like the cost of living, climate change, universal healthcare, and so on. They’re labelled socialists, communists, and/or anarchists by conservative talking heads, even though they’re fairly standard coastal Democrats for the most part. And what issues do Republicans prioritise? Trans athletes, feminists ruining Star Wars, conspiracy theories about Israel and the French Foreign Legion orchestrating the murder of Charlie Kirk, or some other such nonsense. “Discourse,” they call it.
Put me on the record: I’ll take an asteroid hitting the earth over a society that prides itself on “discourse.” It’s a slopfest. The average person doesn’t care about conspiracy theories and fear-mongering. They just want their fucking money.
Aristotle had the right idea. He figured man as a political animal, but not just people talking about politics. “The political good is justice, and this is the common advantage,” he says in his Politics. That is, the point of politics is to work towards a collective good. This is how justice emerges. And without politics, there is no institution to focus on benefiting communities at any scale — local, state, or federal.
I get Davis’s fatigue. If I post something on social media, and X amount of people press “Like,” then I’ve created my tiny moment of collective recognition. If two or three people suddenly donate to a party or cause, call their local MP, or help their understanding of a certain topic, then that’s crossing into something completely different. But nobody is doing that on account of my posting, which is the digital equivalent of jotting my thoughts on a piece of paper and lighting it on fire.
If I made a YouTube or TikTok channel talking politics, I might turn some heads for a minute. But propaganda from the top down is what makes the biggest impact, not some dudebro talking into a webcam. Plus I don’t really want to be associated with those types of creators. It’s mostly the gamer-turned-political-pundit that loves talking about “discourse.” If a streamer/influencer is talking about global politics, and he’s got floor-to-ceiling shelves of video games and action figures behind him, then I think I can safely ignore everything he says and not miss a thing.
There’s a nice little parallel between Davis and the Stoics here. Epictetus once said, “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” Cicero talked about four virtues — courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. You can practice these in virtually any task you face. Davis doesn’t think he can control the big political machine, but he still worries about things closer to him. As do we. Climate change, for example. Will future generations have a place to live? Stoic philosophers, rock stars, ordinary people — we all share experience within a political system.
That is the kind of political discussion I would engage in. Everything else just seems like a distraction. And next time you see some conservabro going off about trans athletes or whatever, just comment, “Don’t care. Where’s my fucking money?” Do it every time. Go at them, and go hard. Give them no quarter.
So, here I am, not wanting to talk about politics, but not having the self-discipline to stop myself. I guess that’s on me, but there’s a lot going on in this world. I can’t just turn my brain off and pretend war, genocide and overall injustice isn’t happening. But I also find myself turning to the Stoic idea of worrying only about what’s in my control. I think about friends and family I haven’t checked on in a while. Say what you will about Twitter/X, but I like the “Following” tab, and the ability to mute key words. Did you know that Pallas’s cats use their tails to warm their paws? They honk too! I think that’s unbelievably cool, and infinitely more interesting than what this or that e-celeb is posting about politics. And before I fall asleep, I’ll read some of Montaigne‘s essays. That is time well spent.
Lawrence Deveney 