Extinct indigenous tribes and Neil Young

Every Neil Young fan has their own favorite Moment of Young Madness; the man's career overflows with them. My current favorite is "Like an Inca," a track no one's thought much about, seeing how it's buried at the end of side two of the only 1980's Young album that remains out of print. Trans is remembered as Young's Devo record, but this is inaccurate: it sounds like Styx's Kilroy Was Here, a chirpy arena-rock dystopia also hustled on unsuspecting fans in 1982. When it's not fighting for elbow room amidst the vocoders and EPCOT Center synths, Young's ugly guitar injects menace and danger to tracks whose search for tranquility in an environment crippled by disease and mistrust flirts with Aquarius-age complacency. In this it's got lots in common with other 1982 albums by aging boomers (Paul McCartney, Townshend, Reed, Billy Joel, Elton John) making peace with skinny ties and syndrums. Remove the Tron overtones and you've got Deja Vu.

But back to "Like an Inca." Often described as an unseemly amalgamation of "Cortez the Killer" and "Like a Hurricane," it's really a variation on "Cortez" set to a Santana beat. The melody anticipates 1986's "Pressure" (I'll defend that one some other time). The lyrics are jejune colonialism, as stupid and barbaric as Young and Nils Lofgren's competing guitars; and yet, and yet, Young's empathy and genuine desire to be one of those encroached Incas, at the point of extinction, crouching in "beautiful buildings to house the chosen few," sounds far less fatuous coming out of his mouth than, say, David Crosby's. The guitars reflect his confusion; he's honestly stupid, maybe. Or he's a stupid genius:

if you want to get high,
build a strong foundation
sink those pylons deep now
and reach for the sky
if you want to get lost
in the jungle rhythm
get down on the ground
and pretend you're swimmin'.

What do you do with verses which begin as empowerment cliches and end as survivalist doggerel? How are you going to get your hands on this song when Trans has yet to be reissued?