Swinging wartime songs

Praising Lileks is utterly futile. Even if I were to whip up an attempt at a Lileksian simile, the things he writes are an infinitely more impressive testament to his writing skills. At some point in the future, the English language will have the expression "you might as well praise lileks" as a way of expressing the blatantly superfluous. Entire immersive tactile 3D hypernetsites will be dedicated to finding the etymology of "lileks." It was a kitchen implement! It was an AI computer! It was a hoax! Bush had him murdered!

Enough of that. The Daily Bleat has long been a staple and those of you not reading it should start doing so right now. Immediately. The reason I'm bringing Lileks up is his recent Bleat about wartime songs. As a big Sinatra fan, I was reminded of the songs on the "Rarest Sinatra" CD, where there are four World War II vintage performances. (I'm not going to delve into the huge stack of Glenn Miller songs; that would take forever to blog.) The lyrics are marvelously unsubtle and would face the Inquisition of the PC touchy-feely brigade in a blink.

There's the "War Bond Man:"

The Jap as you should know
will be the toughest foe.
We've got to win, but that takes dough.
Back up the war bond man!

We have a score to settle on that far Pacific shore
Before we're done the Rising Sun will set to rise no more.

[...]

Why let your dollars nap, when they can set the trap
for the rat that they call the Jap, back up the war bond man!

[...]

What would your fortune be without democracy?
In liberty, security buy all the bonds you can!"

Little is left to the imagination there. And it's a swining tune too. Here's some lines from the Victory Polka:

And when we've lit the torch of liberty
in each blacked-out land across the sea,
when a man can proudly say "I'm free,"
we'll be dancing the victory polka.

It'll be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin:

It'll be a hot time in the town of Berlin
when our fightin' boys begin
to take the joint apart and tear it down
when they take old Berlin.

They're gonna start a row
and show them how
we paint the town back in Kokomo.
They're gonna take a hike
through Hitler's Reich
and change that Heil
to watcha know Joe.

And you know what, they did.

After the funding for the war came the funding for the peace. The song "Buy a Piece of a the Piece" exhorts Americans to swingfully use their gold and what money they could muster to fund the reconstruction effort after the war.

You can all buy a piece of the peace
big or small, buy a piece of the peace.
Seven times before you've bought the bonds we've sold
victory isn't free so trade it in for your gold.

This is it, buy a piece of the peace
do your bit, buy a piece of the peace
Please for freedom's sake don't cease
come on and buy a piece of the peace!

[...]

Dig way down, buy a piece of the peace
go to town, buy a piece of the peace.
Just to say OK no matter what the cost.
Listen friend, unless you spend
the things we've won can be lost."

I think we needed a few more exhortations to buy a piece of the peace. But I should not be cynical. It's too easy to slip into trendy and effete cynicism; it the money that was stumped up by Americans after the war that allowed Europe to revive economically, just as it was American power that kept us free and prosperous during the cold war.

I have no idea how much these songs contributed to the war and peace bond funding drives. As Lileks said, Americans will have had they BS detectors back then too. That's not the point. The point is that America did win the war, did liberate western Europe and Japan, we did have the Marshall Plan, and both America and Europe benefited enormously from it. For what it's worth: thank you guys. Europe owes you big time. It's disgraceful European politicians have forgotten that.