All systems red
Nov. 13th, 2016 02:47 pmThe emotions of Trump's supporters need no economic explanation: hatred is its own ground. It is the oldest and most pitiful liberal self-delusion to imagine that ethnic hatred, or, now, misogyny is merely a masked form of economic distress — the bad way that an authentic emotion expresses itself.
— Adam Gopnik, A Point of View.
Felt a tremor stir beneath my breath
That forecasts storms on the gallup poll
Woke up from the nightmare news
And hoping to read a sign in the morning air
Nothing changes here and nothing improves
All say my friends who just want out
And leave these troubles behind
Scatter like paper in the eye of the storm
Documented with a silent snow
That's only heard from far away
More cards in play, follow in suit
Everywhere you look, you only see red
And wonder when to call off the race
Watching a horse running down its last legs
Just when you think it couldn't get much worse
Watch the numbers rise on the death toll
And the chimes of freedom flash and fade
Only heard from far, far away
I hear you can't trust in your own
Now the grey is broken in the early morn
And the words forming barely have a voice
It's just your heart that's breaking without choice
Everything you've learned is distorted in your head
Bouncing off the walls, unravelling the thread
Staying up with the blue screen glow
Forgetting everything you ever dreamed years ago
When the dread is flowing down my veins
I want to tear it all down and build it up again
Tear it all down, build it up again
Hear your heart that's breaking without choice
I want to hear those chimes ring again
Ring again
— Calexico, 'All Systems Red'.
The latter is my favourite political protest song, written as an anguished cry of despair during the George W. Bush years. How bleak, how horrifying, how much it crushes the soul that it is again applicable today, that it was always applicable, hiding just around the corner.