You'll excuse my week hiatus from the blog. After November 9th's election result in the States, I was legitimately depressed. This is the first time this has happened, I lived through both Bushes and Mulroney and multiple Harper elections without trouble, but Trump's election was out of right field for me.
More savvy writers than I will write more and better words about Trump. What struck me most was the acceptance of the casual bigotry, sexism, Islamophobia and general intolerance of this president. That alone should have been a deal breaker for most voters in the States. He called all Mexicans rapist and drug dealers and vowed to build a wall to keep them out. Called Muslims from unstable states terrorists. Insulted women with his casual sexism and his ability to do what he wants because he's rich. He straight up mocked a disabled reporter! Yet it meant nothing. While I realized that not all Trump voters were racist, the fact that his racist didn't turn them off meant it was accepted. At worst, a Trump voter was saying "racial issues, sexist issues, equality issues don't matter to me". Or, more direction, "I don't care about anyone who is denied their rights."
The racist attacks that followed Brexit are now happening in the US. White men telling anyone who isn't white that they're going to be deported. Muslim women with hijabs being hauled to the floor and having them ripped off their head. KKK rallies celebrating Trump's win. Thousands and thousands of racist twitter and Facebook posts. Sexual assaults on buses and trains. All of this has happened because Trump's win normalized this behaviour.
Trump's win is probably the least of the US's worries. The racism of the right is the much bigger problem. Racists, white supremacists, evangelical Christians, and others are now taking out their frustrations on anyone not white and male. I fear for anyone who came to the US looking to flee oppression for freedom, only to find more oppression. Those of us who are more enlightened must stand up for our friends regardless of their skin colour, religion or sex and say, "This is wrong" and tell those who are hurting others that it's not acceptable. As the saying goes, the loss of human rights to anyone is the loss of human rights for everyone. And, as the old punk saying goes, you don't stand up to fascism, you smash it.
Which brings me to our musical selection for the month. As any dyed in the wool punk knows, oppression from the right always breeds punk music pushing back against it. The Reagan and Bush years were incredible for the punk movement, taking the classic late 70s punk vibe of the lower class rising up against the ruling class, fighting for the rights of the downtrodden and calling out the hypocrisy of the rich. With a new ultra-right wing ruler in both the US and the UK, the stage is set for another wave of skewering music to pin the right to the wall. As I pointed out in my article about Janet Green, the right just doesn't know how to make good political music. Fighting against the left seems greedy, corrupt and shallow. But knocking down the self-important, the racist, the sexist, the intolerant, that's something worth fighting for.
Admittedly, punk music isn't my thing, save for a couple of bands. But post punk and new wave is my thing. After the election, I found myself listening to The Psychedelic Furs' 1982 album, Forever Now, which starts with "President Gas", an uncharacteristically political song from the band. Their work has rarely been political, but "President Gas" seemed cathartic for me.
"President Gas" captures the malaise of the late 70s and early 80s, as disco dies and the hedonism and apolitical age begins to die. It was easy to party away your sorrows while ignoring the corruption and wars going on in the halls of Parliament and the White House. The Vietnam War dying down and the rise of the years of Thatcher, Reagan, Mulrooney and the fear of the Cold War. It was in this time, with disco coughing up blood and the punk movement rising, that music returned to the 60s style of political activism. And the players might change, but the horrible, racist underbelly of the common man always comes back and pushes the ugly American back onto the throne. President Gas is President Gas again.
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