Two Gallants, “Waves of Grain”

By SoDak

Patriotism is nauseating. But it is particularly sickening around the Fourth of July. Homes are adorned in red, white, and blue bunting; Old Glory dangles from flag poles; and the song “American the Beautiful” is played over and over. The image of Mount Rushmore flashes across television screens. The President holds his hand over his heart. This display of romantic glory—this conception that fortune has been bestowed upon the United States—is empty. This settler nation was forged through genocidal practices and chattel slavery, expropriating lands and lives. As an imperialist country, it expanded its reach overseas through the Spanish-American War. The U.S. empire rolled on imposing widespread death and destruction around the world. Lest folks dismiss all this as being in the distant past, despite the ongoing bombing of other nations, it is worthwhile to read David Michael Smith’s Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire, where he uses established sources to document the mass deaths and various forms of social murder that can be attributed to the United States. “Between 1945 and 1980,” Smith writes, 

Major U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia killed twelve million people. Washington also shared responsibility for the 1.7 million people who died during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, and the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan led to the deaths of at least 1.5 million. U.S. support for the Guomindang in the second phase of the Chinese civil war, for the French campaign to reconquer Vietnam, for the anti-communist exterminations in Indonesia, for the Biafran war, and for the Pakistani government during the Bangladesh War implicated Washington in the deaths of almost 11 million people.

Smith indicates that it is also necessary to account for other deaths for which the United States has direct or shared responsibility given its policies and actions. He concludes that during this period, the United States contributed to the deaths of over twenty-nine million people. Of course, the horror and atrocities continued. Smith explains,

Between 1980 and 2020, two U.S. wars and sanctions in Iraq and the U.S. war in Afghanistan killed more than two million people. Washington’s proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Syria resulted in roughly nine million deaths. U.S. military interventions, support for client states and rebels, and related famines in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria cost the lives of another five million people. The U.S. Empire’s role in the collapse of most socialist regimes made it partly responsible for well over seven million deaths.

Given other U.S. military actions abroad, between these years, it is estimated that the United States is associated with causing more than twenty-five million deaths between 1980 to 2020. The death toll is staggering, and it increases each year. Since 1991, the United States has launched over 300 military interventions/actions, solidifying its recognition as the “most warlike nation” in human history.

In 2006, during the protracted American war against Iraq, the Two Gallants closed their record What the Toll Tells with “Waves of Grain,” a nine-and-half minute haunting mediation on how American citizens had become complicit in the devastation that was being waged upon the world. The Two Gallants sing about how the tragedies continued to culminate, yet they were hidden behind jingoism and religious piety. The plaintive voice, filled with cynicism, marks each word, making sure that they linger, as if begging listeners to comprehend what type of world was being created. As the music builds and the voice is more strained, the song seems as if it is trying to lift us up to act, to resist, to fight for the future. The song is unsettling and powerful.

Pray betray the deceased

Such an infamous freedom

Such a militant peace

How dare they distrust

Do they know who we are?

And your progeny’s brave

Their track houses waiting

Pre-plucked and pre-paid

To the ends of the earth

Wife, kids and a car

But oh no no

I see them falling

Let’s all pray for rain

Let’s all pray for rain

And your children are reared

By panic and fear

But what when all your fields are rotten?

Your waves of grain

Amber waves of grain

And your word is yet done

Inbreed us ‘til we’re all the same

And your collection of tongues

Keep framed in your parlor

With your bibles and guns

The fetus of Christ

With a fistful of scars

And your vision is clear

While you blind your own kind

In a curtain of fear

Your words twist skywards

Distracted by stars

But oh no no

The sky is falling

Let’s all pray for rain

Let’s all pray for rain

And you pour out your prayers

And weep ‘cause you care

But what when all your fields are rotten?

Your waves of grain

Amber waves of grain

And you hide the dead

While my friends had to die in your name

And this playground is yours

Spoke God when you met

Behind closed doors

Gesture your hand

And the pond shall subside

And though you play alone

You never get lonely

But oh no no I see them falling

Let’s all pray for rain

Let’s all pray for rain

And even I can’t pretend

We’re not near the end

But what when all your fields are rotting

Your waves of grain

And the waves of grain

When your days are done

I hope you’ve had fun with your game

And you accept it as fact

Behold a white horse with you on its back

A bow in your hand

And a crown through your head

And the oceans shall rise

And slap on the shores of mountainsides

Great waves of progress shall wet the air

But oh no no the sky is falling

Let’s all pray for rain

Let’s all pray for rain

And you fools in the back

With your heads in your hats

What when all your fields are rotting

Your waves of grain

And the waves of grain

And my words won’t be done

They’ll never be done till the end.

This Fourth of July, the 250th anniversary of the United States, I will listen to this song many times, contemplating the sham of the day. In my hometown, Rapid City, South Dakota, unfortunately characterized as the City of Presidents, statues of U.S presidents can be found on the corners of many of the downtown streets. It is a truly despicable display, as if Washington DC took a giant shit in the middle of the country. A proper accounting of history would involve hanging a placard around the neck of each of the statues with a list of the crimes against humanity committed by each president—the lists would be very long. The statues are there waiting for this artistic and truthful presentation, rather than the nationalist claptrap that generally takes place among those who travel to the Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore. In the meantime, strike a match and burn the red, white, and blue, as they are unfortunately plentiful this time of the year.