By Ansel Hendrix
Much like today, the 1980s felt on the precipice of a new world, and it didn’t entirely feel for the better. In the latter half of a century spent in a Cold War and in a perpetual state of fear, the boiling point was here. The question was, how much would it boil over? Being able to look back on the 1980s, there’s a permeating aura of nostalgia. The darkness is perhaps lost in the wake of Micheal Jackson and The Breakfast Club. Theoretically, we should be able to look back on such a time, and understand how we got to where we are now, yet it seems difficult. Perhaps the attitude of the time, the “lie of the time”, set history in motion to cloud it even then. Exhuming McCarthy understands this, and it understands a lot more beyond that as well.
Now, to understand Exhuming McCarthy, there is much more that first needs to be established. The massive history lesson for one, but it isn’t just understanding the history as means of simply knowing what has already happened. A much more textured understanding of history, comes from understanding its implications, and the why in its progressions. You cannot simply look at a timeline, or even a history textbook and understand why a song calling back to a Red Scare demagogue would be released nearly 40 years later. Nor, why the events of the Reagan presidency set in motion the current world. Such examples are why music as a historical document is ridiculously important. The arts offer that textured look.
The Death of the American Dream
In 1980, perhaps the most impactful President in modern American history Ronald Reagan, was elected. He was a former actor, and former Governor of California. It was destiny almost for the country to one day elect John Wayne president. Tall, handsome, well spoken, and embodied everything the conservative movement needed in a patriot, coming off a decade of mass dissent and emerging counterculture. He was the president for a new age of slick haired stockbrokers, and technological development. In 1980, Reagan would win over 50% of the popular vote, as well as 44 of 50 states in an absolute landslide over incumbent President Jimmy Carter. This however, would not be even close to the peak of his popularity, where in 1984 he would go on to win an unheard of 49 States with only Minnesota voting blue(an interesting observation given the current state of things) The dominant culture was set. It was to be a decade of patriotism, excess and American exceptionalism.
The contrast of the dominant culture and the reality of the situation couldn’t have been more stark. Particularly the second Reagan administration was littered with scandal. It was highlighted by the Iran Contras Affair(more later), one of the most shocking moments in modern American politics, but it didn’t stop there. The AIDs epidemic, the war on drugs, and the stripping of corporate oversights and regulations, all lead to a lasting negative impact. In a time where you were told of America’s unequivocal goodness, and dominance of the rest of the world, the reality appeared much different. This is where we introduce, “the lie of the time”.
The way these things manifest is often fascinating. Logically, the key moments of the late 80s should be glaringly obvious in their representation of a corrupt government with a drowning populace. The clouds of nostalgia can’t possibly be so strong to blind us entirely. It begs something deeper. It asks, “does knowing history impact its progression, or our tendencies in repeating it?” There is somewhat of a psychosis in the way most Americans look at history. In some ways, it’s a defense mechanism as maybe the sheer guilt in properly understanding history in a more objective way would be too much to handle. So what’s to say the same psychosis doesn’t actively exist as we live through the here and now?
The 1980s continue to be looked back on as profoundly shaping the world right now. In a world full of American oligarchs, and an increasingly drastic wealth disparity, with absolutely no hope in sight, it’s easy to get lost in the now. However, the seeds of history were planted long ago, long before Reagan. Long before a man named Joseph McCarthy, but this is where the story of Exhuming McCarthy chronologically begins.
The Dream Died Earlier
“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?” These words are the lasting impact of when the dream began to die, and it starts with a man named Joseph McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy was a republican senator from Wisconsin, who served from 1947-1957. For his first three years serving in the Senate, McCarthy was relatively business as usual being cited as both a good speaker and moderate republican. He was well liked among his Senate colleagues and would often speak in a variety of committees. All of this would change however on Lincoln Day, 1950, where a speech to a republican women’s club cited “enemies within”, in the State Department. He claimed that the State Department was infiltrated by communists. This rhetoric came at a time when the fear of communism had perhaps peaked in the United States. In the infamous McCarthy hearings, he delivered character assassinations, causing a majority of State Department employees on trial to quit. It manifested in other ways as well, such as the Hollywood blacklist, which saw all manner of people in Hollywood ratted on, and blacklisted due to being communists or communist sympathizers. The gravity of McCarthy’s accusations does not purely lie in the validity of them, but more so the precedent. The ability of one man, to stir up something so large, causing artists and politicians to collapse in on each other frantically purely for beliefs, shows how easily a population can be manipulated by fear. McCarthy would come to be known as a demagogue, meaning a political figure that appeals to prejudices rather than rational argument. Something that throws out the supposed founding principles of America automatically.
Times of crisis breed demagogues, and America is in perpetual crisis. A notion that may suggest an American dream was never present(something also to note once Exhuming McCarthy is discussed) but the death more so lies in the belief in one. In the following few years after WW2, a similar nostalgia and exceptionalism populated the air. However, it seemed less manufactured. There was indeed something to celebrate in the defeat of the Nazis and their allies. In the 1980s, it was an almost forced upon concept that a population wanted to believe after they were exposed to the horrible truths of what their country committed in Vietnam. The ramifications of both decades took long to play out, with much in between, before, and after playing key roles, and yet we can understand and pinpoint them as two invaluable points in history that led to this “death”.
R.E.M: Popular Music and Political Responsibility
All while the dominant culture of American exceptionalism was taking hold, the underground in the arts were firming up. The 60’s and 70’s in both the mainstream and underground saw a massive amount of social responsibility in music and film. When we look at the 80s we see no such similarities in the mainstream. The directors based system of the Hollywood New Wave had reverted back to studios and producers. More polished rock and pop had replaced their politically aware predecessors, while said predecessors now sat rich in the upper echelons of society. However, in the communities which ignored the billboard hot 100, a new wave of bands were brewing, where the music and the message mattered more than the money. One such band was R.E.M.
Formed in 1980 while attending college together at the University of Georgia, R.E.M. is one of the most influential American, alternative rock acts of all time. One such reason for their importance is their lack of shying away from the political spotlight. In fact, the band came right out of the gate with their first hit single, Radio Free Europe. The song, named after an American, state backed radio station which broadcasts to Europe and the Middle East, details the dangers of propaganda. The radio station which was said to “spread democracy”, was something that R.E.M. saw could easily turn into, or already be a propaganda machine. This new era would need these voices now more than ever, and R.E.M. would continue to show up in the moments.
In 1987, the band released perhaps their most political work yet, in the form of the album Document. The album kicks off with the aforementioned idea of the death or rather lie of the American dream, in Finest Worksong. It details the idea of working and working to get to the upper echelons of society, when in reality it exists as a pipedream, which in turn disenchants the labor force. Other songs such as Welcome to the Occupation, and Disturbance At the Heron House, depict the increasingly scary political reality that the world was all too keen on ignoring. However it is in Exhuming McCarthy, where the reality of the time is most directly confronted.
History Collides
Exhuming McCarthy, takes on the rather daunting task of understanding history. Again, not in the conventional sense of timelining out events, but in how different times relate, and how this has transpired on a more elevated level. On the surface, the relation between the McCarthy and the Reagan era may stop at the Cold War, and American paranoia, but R.E.M. is attempting to tell something much deeper and perhaps more sinister. No one can say it better than the band themselves. “This is the kind of year Joe McCarthy would come back,” Peter Buck told UPI in 1987. “People would start hailing him. If he was still alive, he’d be a hero.”(DeRiso, N/A) As is stated earlier, times of crisis breed demagogues and America is always in crisis. Specifically in the crisis of the Reagan era, it became an all too possible reality that the spirit of Joseph McCarthy would be brought back from the dead. The fear state already connects the two, and the fragile environment that comes as a result is the perfect resurrection ground. Or maybe the even more terrifying idea, what if it had already happened? The othering of the McCarthy hearings closely resembles the rhetoric of this new right in America that had begun to form during the Reagan administration. There was also a fear of the gay community perpetuated by AIDs misinformation, or a fear of impoverished communities perpetuated by the war on drugs. Don’t forget we can always go back to the fear of communists, if all else fails.
The song was somewhat written in retaliation to one monumental event of the Reagan administration, that being the Iran-Contra affair. After the storming of the US embassy in Tehran, Iran in 1979, where 66 United States hostages were taken, an arms embargo was put into place. However, the embargo also brought the possibility of Iran seeking Soviet arms, and therefore falling into their global influence web, which is something the United States just couldn’t have. Around the same time, an anti-communist death squad and Nicaragua was attempting to overthrow the leftwing Sandinista government. The United States, being a frequent sponsor of satellite conflicts, particularly against left wing governments, was rather keen on helping them out. However, great conflict ensued in Washington, culminating in the Boland Amendment banned United States funding of the group once they ran out of money. In order to solve both of their problems in the United States effort to fight communism globally, the United States headed by Oliver North sold weapons to Iran under the table and in turn funneled that money under the table to the Contras. When the scandal broke it was a major embarrassment for the White House, and yet barely a slap on the wrist. The country watched the most powerful men in the world get away with such a grand crime, and events like this set the precedent for the new world.
The song does not tackle the issue of Iran-Contra directly, but the event serves as the marking point in a larger shift that the song talks about. “All you have to do is turn on the TV,” Buck fumed back then, “and you’re inundated with complete lies from people who are supposed to be running the country.”(DeRiso, N/A) There is this understanding of the “lie of the time” that the song talks about. It discusses how the audience bought the myth of America, and now perhaps it doesn’t matter that they lie to you. It ties into the concept of hypernormalisation, where it no longer matters if the population knows the lie. It’s a part of that aforementioned psychosis, where you know everything around you is a lie, and yet you have no power outside of knowing it’s a lie so you continue on with the status quo. Singer Michael Stipe also refers to the concept known as realpolitik, which refers to material/practical agendas driving politics rather than moral/ideological ones. In the song it works as both the excessive landscape of 80’s America functioning as the “realpolotik”, and this being the real politics of the country, and you bought the lie.
Rhetorical and Sonic Devices
The song uses a number of rhetorical and musical devices in order to get its point across, some of which contribute to the heady nature of the song. It is often a criticism of left wing politics, that they delve too deeply into the intellectual, and therefore potentially alienate some of the population they wish to represent. However, I do not believe Exhuming McCarthy functions as a call to action, and rather as means of understanding and interpretation of dangerous times. The identified devices are satire, sardonic language, and sampling. R.E.M. often uses satire as means of making political statements. Sonically up until this point they were a rather jangly pop rock band. The sound of the music often starkly contrasts the lyrical content, in perhaps the closest to musical political cartoon. The satire doesn’t just exist in their sound however, as they use sardonic language, jeering and mocking conventions and beliefs. They also sample in the song the “have you no decency?” line from the McCarthy hearings. It’s the coupling of the rhetorical and the sonic that makes the song’s political appeals so compelling.
Conclusions
When looking at Exhuming McCarthy today, it’s hard to ignore the reality that the song predicted. The rise of the new right has indeed paralleled the path of the demagogue. The otherings have only increased, with practically anyone not in their camp being labeled as enemies within. Whether it was terrorist cells after 9/11, or the “homosexual lobby”, the era of distrust has only grown with every passing year. So that goes back to the original question of “does knowing history impact our tendency to repeat it, or its progression?” It also goes back to the idea of the American historical psychosis.
In that psychosis, the long ago planted seeds of history have continuously gotten clouded. Or perhaps we go back to hypernomalisation, where it doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t clouded, as the train treks onwards regardless. The cynic gravitates towards both, and I struggle to see it another way. In a world where one theoretically has access to the furthest reaches of history, and where you can view it in front of you all at once, understanding its repetitions, and why things go wrong should be easy. Yet, if nothing happened to Reagan, Bush, and Oliver North for something so blatantly wrong that the world saw, what kind of precedent does history set? I believe Exhuming McCarthy understood this as it was happening.
R.E.M. would go on to have an amicable break up in 2011. They ended their career as a band having sold over 90 million albums worldwide, making them multi-platinum artists. Yet, in such immense success, their political responsibility has rarely if ever wavered. Nearly 20 years after the release of Exhuming McCarthy, the band was writing about the invasion of Iraq, in The Final Straw. The same cannot be said for countless artists once they reach the heavens. It becomes a rather hard task to maintain dissent and wealth, where either the wealth itself or record execs and sponsors get to you quickly. Even posthumously, the band maintains their political responsibility. Michael Stipe is a constant voice for Palestinian liberation, and maintains that they are in the midst of a genocide. Bassist Mike Mills stopped President Donald Trump from using their music during political rallies, mirroring the moment where Bruce Springsteen reached a much more politically heightened state after Ronald Reagan used his song Born In the USA for his re-election campaign.
The cross section between music and politics is a fragile one to navigate. Too often is any sort of dissent naturally suppressed by the nature of popular music in fact being an industry. The discussion of political issues automatically alienates a portion of the audience. Not only that, but there are constant agendas at play in that world, and the allure of the immense financial success it can bring one often crushes those ideals upon entry. R.E.M. serves as an example of a band that constantly showed up in those moments. While writing something criticizing the Iraq War may seem like an easy sentiment to hold now, the Bush administration put in a lot of effort to convince the population that what they were doing was in fact right. They have continued to rise to the occasion in the way that non direct action can do through the arts, and Exhuming McCarthy serves as the most impactful example.
Works Cited
Deriso, Nick. “R.E.M. Takes a Bite out of Dogma on ‘Exhuming McCarthy’: The Story behind Every ‘document’ Song.” Diffuser.Fm, 23 Aug. 2017, diffuser.fm/rem-exhuming-mccarthy/.
Lee, Alicia. “It May Be the End of Trump Using R.E.M. Songs at His Rallies (as We Know It) | CNN Politics.” CNN, Cable News Network, 16 Jan. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/01/16/politics/r-e-m-trump-rally-trnd.
Sb. “The Story behind the Song: ‘Radio Free Europe’ by R.E.M.” Rocking In the Norselands, 6 Sept. 2023, norselandsrock.com/radio-free-europe-rem/.
N/A “‘have You No Sense of Decency?’” U.S. Senate: “Have You No Sense of Decency?,” 7 Aug. 2023, www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm.