Let's Give "Playing God" Some New Context

The other night I was driving back from getting ice cream and "Playing God" by Boston Manor came on my Spotify. As I was driving I was really paying attention to the lyrics, being reminded once again that lead singer Henry Cox had written the song from the point of view of a mass shooter. It's a haunting song. But with everything happening in the U.S. lately, I want to take a look at how it can also reflect the people who stormed the capitol last week.

I think it's important to remember how music can connect us with the real world, even if it's not in the way the writer/artist originally intended.

So let's give "Playing God" some new context.

I'm sure we've all seen the news, all heard the stories, seen the photos and the videos from last Wednesday, January 6. To summarize, a bunch of pro-Trump "protestors" (let's be honest, they were domestic terrorists and should be called as such) stormed the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. after being encouraged by Trump to do so just hours before, as well as in the months since the election. They strove to delay the vote by Congress to confirm and certify the election results. They were not only encouraged by Trump, but by the over 120 Congressional Republicans who voted to object some states' results, but especially Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Congressmen and women were forced to shelter-in-place and found that it would be hours before any federal force would save them from this group of hundreds or thousands of people who weren't just claiming that the election was stolen from Trump, but also calling for the heads of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence. It was an act of insurrection, an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States -- the country the claim to love so deeply and want to protect, but would be willing to burn it down if that's what it takes to get what they want.

With all of that out of the way, let's look at "Playing God," and see how it intertwines.

Verse 1

I'll smoke them out

I'll send them running

I'll make my name

I'll become something

The intent of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol may not have started as wanting the heads of Pelosi and Pence. But it did start as an attempt to threaten them to not certify the results. When they breached the building, they intended to "smoke them out" and send them running. They broadcasted it live and posted photos and videos, many of them made their name known because of their role in this insurrection.

Pre-Chorus

Because it's up to me

It's up to me to do the dirty work

These Trump supporters were blatantly told that they can't win back their country by being lazy. They were encouraged to storm the Capitol, they were told it was up to them to save their country. They had been told so for months since the election went in Biden's favor, since Trump lost every lawsuit he filed to stop the certification of the votes. They were told and they believed that it was up to them. Hell, Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, hours before had told them they needed a "trial by combat." As far as they're concerned, Trump and Giuliani had been trying to fight it the right way -- in the court system -- and it wasn't working, so now they had to do the dirty work. It makes sense, in some weird twisted way, that these people would truly think it's up to them and that they are doing the right thing, a good thing, something that needs to be done, when that's the kind of shit they've been told and convinced of.

Chorus

Call off the dogs, I can see through the fog

And I'll kill 'cause I want to

Call off the dogs or I'll keep playing God

And I'll kill 'cause I want to

This is where it can start to feel a little off. How were they playing God, you might ask? Well, simple. The results of the election were voted on by millions of people in the United States. Record numbers of people turned up to vote. And the people spoke in favor of Joe Biden. That's who the people have chosen, that's how our democracy works. Now, not everyone voted for him, sure. Trump still had tens of millions of votes. But plain and simple, Biden had more. He had enough to win him both the popular vote and the electoral college. The way our democracy has always worked, was that the people speak and then the electoral college speaks on behalf of the people and that's that. Through the bullshit our Founding Fathers created, you can win the election without having the popular vote. But anyways, back to my point. This is how our democracy has worked for over two hundred years. The insurrectionists claim to want to save our democracy and country, yet they're the ones trying to overthrow it. They're trying to play God with our country, our democracy. They don't care about the votes, let's be honest. They care about installing Trump in office and making him essentially a dictator. They don't care about the established system, they want to become the system. They want what they decide to be the rule, to ignore the millions of Americans who said he should no longer be in office.

And as far as the line "I'll kill 'cause I want to" goes, look at the Capitol Hill officer who was killed in his line of duty. People are saying he's a Trump supporter too, but that doesn't matter. He was beaten to death by those insurrectionists while trying to protect the Capitol from them. If anything it just goes to show that those people were there for blood. If that's what they did to an officer -- a body of people, by the way, they tried to protect with "Blues Lives Matter" throughout the Black Lives Matter movement -- who shared the same beliefs as them, I can't even imagine what they would've done had they gotten their hands on any single politician in Congress, be it Pence, Pelosi, AOC, hell, even McConnell, and Cruz and Hawley weren't safe from them. They weren't there to peacefully use their right to protest. They were there for blood. And what good does killing these people actually do? None. Absolutely none. And you could argue mob mentality, sure, but it doesn't change anything. They killed because they wanted to.

Verse 2

I'll smoke 'em out

I'll make them afraid of me

I won't hold back

'Cause the whole world's gonna see

The insurrectionists' goal was to make the Congressmen and women afraid. They wanted to scare them into not certifying the results of the election. They weren't holding back anything -- if they saw them, if they found them wherever they were hiding, there is no doubt in my mind they would've resulted in physical tactics, if not even going so far as potentially kidnapping (I mean, Trump supporters have previously threatened and planned to kidnap the governor of Michigan because of COVID shutdowns, so I, for one, would not put this past them here). And, as evidenced by the sheer numbers of videos and livestreams and photos and social media posts from people at the invasion, it's clear they wanted the whole world to see. And see we did. What happened Wednesday was a scarring piece of American history that the world watched unfold and that some GOP congressmen and women are wanting to sweep under the rug. But let's be honest -- do we really want our kids reading the history books about this time and asking why nothing came of it? Why we never demonstrated that you cannot encourage an act of insurrection? Because that's a hard one to explain. Without completely condemning it now, it's bound to happen again. America: the world is watching.

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The bridge of "Playing God" is an instrumental break, so the remaining lyrics in the song are the repetitions of the chorus and pre-chorus, which means there's not really anymore for me to go through.

So there you have it. Henry Cox may have originally written these lyrics to depict the mindset of a mass shooter, but it has scary similarities to the mindsets of the insurrectionists who stormed the capitol in attempt to overthrow the government.

This was honestly an interesting thing for me to do, apply these lyrics to another tragic and horrifying event. The song itself is eerie and haunting due to the nature of its content, but the way it fits with the storming of the capitol is honestly even more haunting. It goes to show that the two types of mindsets -- that of a mass shooter and that of these insurrectionists -- may be more similar than we would think.