Give ’Em Hell Kid: George W Bush, The Iraq War and Mid-Noughties Emo
“Too close to call” echoed around living rooms across the country, just minutes after early exit polls declared Al Gore to be the new President. In Florida, the machinery of political power had sprung to life as George W. Bush had won by a margin of 1,784 votes. The preceding recount on November 10th 2000 ate away at Bush’s margin of victory, right down to a mere 900. A court case — Bush v. Gore — followed, and after several weeks, another recount and a 5–4 Supreme Court vote, Al Gore conceded and stepped aside for another Bush presidency.
This election remains the closest election of all time, and it raised a lot of questions around election ethics. Why were thousands of African American citizens allowed to be disenfranchised as a result of the state’s contract with Database Technologies that wiped 173,000 people off the voter rolls? Did Jeb Bush’s governorship in Florida influence the result? How could the mechanics of ballot recounting and appeal be improved to serve justice instead of partisanship?
Would we have mid-noughties emo, had Al Gore won that recount in Florida?
George W Bush became the 43rd President of the United States, embattled by his controversial victory. The American people had experienced a thriving nineties having Bill Clinton serve for two terms — the first democrat to serve two terms since FDR in 1945. His domestic policies were ambitious, centred on economic growth, inheriting a country from original George Bush with the highest unemployment rate since 1984, and with 14.2% all Americans living in poverty. By the end of his two terms, life was stable for many Americans. Despite his centre-left ideology and popularity across all layers of the US demographics, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” still rings in people’s minds to this day, and the a generation of young people were desensitised to a man abusing his position of power.
For the children growing up under Clinton’s presidency, life was generally fine. Their older siblings were giving up on grunge now MTV had ruined it, and were instead amalgamating rap and metal in a way that only bored white suburban kids could do, experiencing the tail end of Gulf War angst. Turning on a Rock Music Channel in 2000 would bring up a playlist of Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and KoRn. Nu-metal was aggressive, with very little diversity along almost every intersection — shout out to Kittie for holding it down for the non-men. Music videos showed pale goth girls in bondage gear against a backdrop of rap rock vocals and chugging guitars. Any child into alternative culture was experiencing something incredibly masculine.
9/11 happened, and changed everything. The Western world was completely shaken by such a dramatic attack happening to civilians. America’s place in the world was instantly changed, from a stern older brother and arbiter of the world, to vulnerable to attack on home soil. For the patriotic, this was a huge blow to national pride and the strength of the Greatest Country in the World. Some have argued (read some as me in my third year of uni writing about Don Delillo’s ‘Falling Man’ and needing an original interpretation) that 9/11 was a symbolic castration of the US: the phallic nature of these two giant towers being torn down by strangers from the East was a public emasculation seen the world over.
A more descriptive argument can be seen for the geopolitical shift to a Samuel Huntington ‘Clash of Civilisations’ culture war narrative, which posits that after the Cold War, geopolitical conflicts will be fought along cultural lines rather than economic lines. The West after 9/11 saw itself as the Christian, moralising, liberating force that had been threatened by the mystical Islamic East, hating its freedom. Bush and Blair declared war on Hussein on the premise of WMDs, and showed the Iraqi people the full force of a neoliberal military spending budget and a whole army of fresh faced teens recruited in schools and at malls. Back home, Islamophobic attacks were up 400% in 2003 on 2000. The thought-terminating cliche of ‘Support the Troops’ was plastered across car bumpers and mindlessly scattered through political discourse as a way to disarm questions around foreign policy. 24 had just come out, bringing counter-terrorism into the mainstream and justifying unlawful spying and interrogation techniques on Muslim suspects in the name of the greater good behind Kiefer Sutherland’s All-American hero Jack Bauer.
The anti-war alternative culture was played out with aggressive protest music. System of a Down became the 2000s Rage Against the Machine, calling out war in ‘Boom!’ And ‘BYOB’ and criticising the concept of the state with ideologically left wing views in Toxicity. Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ was a direct attack on the Iraq War and Bush’s pro-war propaganda to the American people from the perspective of Billie Joe Armstrong’s working class anti-hero, Jesus of Suburbia. Green Day were cited as wanting to “make the world a little bit more sane” ahead of the 2004 election by influencing kids to vote Bush out. It had its place, but was masculine, macho, full of hubris: responding in a way that was in line with the military machine they were protesting. It was tough white men shouting back in the punk and metal frameworks that the world had seen and heard 100 times before.
‘Holiday’, something that Armstrong claimed was a big ‘fuck you’ to George W Bush, used Nazi lyrics and homophobic slurs to be purposefully provocative, but was a white male singing these offensive and alienating terms to the people they affected much different to a Republican congressmen using them as they decided laws to affect their future?
Society was changing on a grassroots level, and it’s hard to pin point if it were due to 9/11 or the shift from Democrat to Republican policies. Conservatism was back, and those who felt their culture was threatened by the Clinton-era power of globalisation were back feeling secure. There was an enemy to other, the topic of the day was war and patriotism was cool again. In the years that followed 9/11, public support for a ground invasion of Iraq, prior to any kind of UN inspection, hung around 50–60%. In 2004, the Clinton-era Federal Assaults Weapon ban was lifted, and the sales of AR-15 began to soar by millions year on year. In 2005, Bush signed legislation providing the gun industry federal protection against lawsuits. Women’s bodies weren’t safe either, with Bush holding a strong pro-life stance, signing in 2004 the Unborn Victims of Violence act which recognizes an embryo or fetus in utero as a legal victim of 60 different forms of violence, contrary to the dissent of pro-choice and women’s rights groups.
During this time, between 2002–2007, emo was booming. Sunny Day Real Estate and American Football had their day in the ’90s, and a new era found its home in Hot Topic and on Myspace profiles. Hordes of teenagers around the world coloured in their checkered Vans with pink sharpies, dyed their fringes racoon striped and raided their Mum’s make up bag for something red to smear around their eyes. Teen angst was played out online, forging identities through profile pictures and their best HTML. Song names lengthened 200% year on year.
Against a backdrop of conservatism and the re-masculinisation of American culture, kids rebelled. The state-imposed war machine culture valued homogeneous masculinity, and emo fought against that, finding a deeper self image. ‘Myspace emo’ openly discussed emotions and mental health, identities were queered and theatre was back to the heart of music.
Theatricality was none more apparent than in A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic! At the Disco. Brendan Urie & co take you on a journey through harpsichord littered melodies, Chuck Palahniuk references and screen name fodder (I did have a Time to Dance lyric in my MSN, don’t pretend you didn’t either). Urie’s sensual rasping throughout ‘Lying Is the Most Fun…’ soundtracked the first teenage fumblings of awkward kids all over the world coming to terms with their sexuality, while ‘But It’s Better If You Do’ peppered cabaret and burlesque throughout grinding nu-metal and dorky puerile skater punk on music channels. Panic! At the Disco intertwined poetic (verbose) lyrics and baroque imagery to defy masculinity in 2005; the ruffled shirts, feathered hair and eyeliner certainly weren’t the all-American young male being idolised at the time.
This being in the alternative mainstream gave validation to a whole group of young men who didn’t care for cargo pants, football shirts and sneakers.
My Chemical Romance did it differently, queering military themes and what it meant to be male in the early 2000s. On their debut I Brought You Bullets, ’Skylines and Turnstiles’ was explicitly cited as being written in the wake of 9/11 as a way for Gerard Way to explore his emotions around the event, pounding through “You’re not in this alone / Let me break this awkward silence”, as a counter to the traditional idea around masculinity that men are not allowed to define themselves in terms of their feelings and emotions. ‘Headfirst for Halos’ was similar, openly discussing depression and suicide frankly with listeners in “Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts” repeated in the outro to a generation of kids going through puberty newly online against the anxiety of global terrorism, something not experienced by any group of people before.
When Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was released in 2004, it did it differently, maintaining this emotional aspect to their lyrics but with a more radio friendly beats. ‘Helena’ dramatically swells into an anthem of a generation, kicking off the seminal emo album, with “What’s the worst thing I can say / Things are better if I stay” screamed in the bedrooms of thousands of teens. Anxiety was at an all time high during this time, with fear and death beamed into homes across the country. Of the 364 days of news in 2004, 348 contained at least one segment pertaining to Iraq. This was also the year with the biggest insurgent attack to date in the battle of Fallujah, with a huge loss of American life. ‘I’m Not Okay’ was a self help pop song for all the teenagers struggling with anxiety, depression and a sense of outsiderness, making it acceptable to discuss mental health among peers. The video depicted high school kids feeling curious in the locker room, reading and playing croquet; at odds with the teen movie stereotypes of the typical jock/geek High School dynamic at the time in ‘American Pie’ etc. The video was showing a more nuanced path for teens, where you could wear make up as a man and be sexually active and be smart. Aside from the lyrics, drummer Bob Bryer’s tight snare and even tighter rolls run throughout the album like a military band drum line, using traditional war time beats in contrast to the deeply emotional lyrics.
Later on in the discography, Welcome to the Black Parade explicitly uses military themes to provide kids with a community in opposition to the idea of community that the army was selling young people. 2006 was a year of sectarian violence in Iraq, culminating in Saddam Hussein’s public execution. Public opinion was waning, down to around 20–30% in favour of the war, and more and more people were openly accepting that it perhaps Wasn’t A Good Idea. As in Three Cheers…, Bryer’s militaristic drive throughout the album, from the title track to ‘Teenagers’, providing the perfect basis for a Call to Emo Arms. Not only is it musically drawing on traditional military themes, but the band used old style military uniforms in all of their press and imagery, inspiring swathes of teens to ransack army surplus stores for their Myspace pictures. There’s something quite rebellious about a bunch of skinny, pale teens (the look of the day) in military garb for their profile pic photo shoots: a big fuck you to the war happening at the time, especially at a time when public opinion was changing.
Aside from these two case studies, these themes were pervasive across the genre. Underoath’s ‘Young and Inspiring’ opens We’re Only Chasing Safety with a chant of “This is my panic / this is my call to arms’. Fall Out Boy’s ‘This Ain’t A Scene…’ used wartime metaphors to talk about their newfound popularity after the success of From Under the Cork Tree. This kind of language was so ingrained in popular culture that it made sense to discuss issues in these terms.
Aside from music, the Myspace emo aesthetic featured bombs, explosions and guns — remember downloading Ambulance Shotgun from dafont to use GIMP to watermark your profile pictures? All our screen names were something violent like Jessie Murder, Gina Gore or Will Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The ‘look’ for young men was long, well groomed hair, tight fitting clothes (girlfriend jeans were a must) and makeup. Watching any From First To Last, Hawthorne Heights or Silverstein video, you’re met with a bunch of men in tight t-shirts, straightened hair covering half their face, snakebites and their sister’s jeans. You couldn’t imagine any of these guys shipping off to Iraq, which feels like it was subconsciously the point.
Still with me?
Had Al Gore won, we can imagine that the early 2000s would have been a very different time to grow up. That is not to say life under Gore would have been totally rosy — it is likely there would have been a Republican senate to soften uber-liberal policy at every turn. Gore’s reputation as being anti-war, pro climate consciousness, a vegan, pro-choice — all round ‘non-masculine’ policies — are a world away from Bush’s self-proclaimed ‘War President’ reputation. The retaliation to the 9/11 terrorist attack would probably have been more diplomacy than full scale invasion: multilateral disarmament agreements, trade sanctions and targeted bombing. What would kids be rebelling about under a Gore term? Their phones running out of solar energy?
It’s hard to say if we would have had the mid-noughties emo as we know it happen the way that it did if Al Gore won. If America hadn’t gone into a ground attack in Iraq, the concept of war would have been far away from the cultural consciousness of a whole generation growing up. The language of war wouldn’t have been on the airwaves with every news bulletin, and much further from the lyric books of Pete Wentz and Gerard Way. The need for another type of masculinity, too, perhaps would not have taken the form that it did in queering the context that it was in.
Bush v Gore changed the world for a number of ways, most of them bad. If the 5–4 Supreme Court ruling had gone the other way, I can’t imagine our environment would be in such a mess, the machine of animal agriculture would not have continued unchecked for so long and the Middle East would’ve been allowed some level of self-determination. At least now the world is crumbling around us we can sink some beers and crawl into a nostalgia cave, Adam Lazzara’s voice whining through ‘Cut(e) Without The E’ to see us out. Thnks fr th mmrs, George Dubya, we owe it all to you.
