Remember that this song came out in the 80s, in the middle of the cold war. I remember its release well and played it endlessly. There was a ton of music at that time, especially from the UK, that was overtly critical of Reagan and Thacher and the nuclear arms race. We were indeed truly afraid that the arms race would lead to complete nuclear anhilation of the earth. This is one of those -- see the line, about "the far off and mythical place" and "the leader with the famous face"? This the US and Reagan. Taken together with the line about doing it "in his name," which is obviously a comment on destruction in the name of God, I read this song as a commentary on the danger of all forms of human zealotry, but with a particular focus on the Cold War narrative at the time. The USSR was often presented as Godless (which, officially, it was) and the USA as God-fearing, so XTC is challenging the received narratives that as God-fearing people we were somehow better than the Godless USSR. In the end, everybody dies and the world is destroyed -- so who is actually the winner here? No one.
Remember that this song came out in the 80s, in the middle of the cold war. I remember its release well and played it endlessly. There was a ton of music at that time, especially from the UK, that was overtly critical of Reagan and Thacher and the nuclear arms race. We were indeed truly afraid that the arms race would lead to complete nuclear anhilation of the earth. This is one of those -- see the line, about "the far off and mythical place" and "the leader with the famous face"? This the US and Reagan. Taken together with the line about doing it "in his name," which is obviously a comment on destruction in the name of God, I read this song as a commentary on the danger of all forms of human zealotry, but with a particular focus on the Cold War narrative at the time. The USSR was often presented as Godless (which, officially, it was) and the USA as God-fearing, so XTC is challenging the received narratives that as God-fearing people we were somehow better than the Godless USSR. In the end, everybody dies and the world is destroyed -- so who is actually the winner here? No one.