I’ve been following Radiohead’s brilliant build up to the release of this new record. Disappearing from the frontiers of social media only to have the opposite effect. They stirred the conversation, reestablishing a distant name ever on the tips of tongues back to the center of reclaimed relevance. I dropped my phone this afternoon, broke it and disappeared from social media. And all I got was a panic attack.
And when I returned to social media I found out that Donald Trump was the presumptive nominee for the republican party. DONALD FUCKING TRUMP. I think I’d have preferred Game of Thrones spoilers. Not even sure how this is possible. I mean, he’s probably the president we deserve, our king of fast food culture, wielding clips, snippets and hollow slogans, catch phrases to rally anyone who doesn’t bother with a follow up question. Let’s make America Great. How? Let’s make America great. The two sentences an ouroboros, devouring each other into infinity. Last week when I was asking the Festival Gods if San Diego deserved Blues Traveler, Jimmy Buffet, Sugar Ray and the Goo Goo Dolls, all I had to do was walk down Newport Avenue on Saturday night to know that’s exactly the correct event for us. So when I take the pulse of America, the real pulse, not just heartbeat of my closest friends, but the America that you feel when you take a greyhound bus from San Diego to Newark, sea to oil slick sea, I get it. When Obama took office we heard a term Post-racial, as if electing a black man could erode all that blood thick lead heavy history. But as we took those strides forward, in view of masses, those quiet racisms once relegated to corners surfaced, they were aggravated, amplified, placing them in corners made them feel cornered and they started to lash out. And Donald Trump tapped into that sentiment. The first generation born mostly minorities, the status quo felt its back against extinction’s wall, saw gays marrying, a black president and legalization of marijuana as the end times, where we saw some amalgamation of progress and simple logic. But here I am both wrong and rambling. I saw it as an exasperated gasp, those antique tongues of the last generation to spit venom with such nonchalance, the refusal of a few aged hands to let go of tomorrow like it was the gun in a Charleston Heston sentence. But Donald Trump made it all the way through the primaries. Enough people swallowed his lies, but worse, swallowed his truths. We’re living through interesting times, polarized, the earth’s rumble before a drastic change. I’m as curious as ever to watch and partake in the unfolding.