Am I the Democrats?
Are you?
This song is called “The Ugly Americans.” It’s an edit of an improvised tune developed in a rehearsal space this Friday evening with my friends Albert (bass) and Stephen (drums).
I’ve noticed a tendency among those following politics in the U.S. to blame the party that lost the last election for a lot of things.
“Well sure, the Republicans are terrible and evil, but the Democrats?!? It was their election to lose and they lost it by being incompetent and useless.”
As the current administration continues to establish an authoritarian regime and burn up the Constitution, it’s become difficult to find anyone willing to speak well of the Democratic Party. Their approval rating among the U.S. public is at 33% according to a recent poll. That seems high to me.
They are failing to defend the basic rights of Americans (and everyone else in the world) or even the democracy that they named their party after.
This seems to be because they are spineless, incompetent, foolish cowards who have not the first clue about what they stand for.
They remind me of me.
I seem upset.
I’m making this observation because I’ve learned over many years of observation to be suspicious of my vitriol.
The old saw that we only hate people who remind us of ourselves seems very wise to me.
And boy, do I hate the Democrats right now.
They are hypocrites. They are weak. They are the only group that theoretically has the power to stand against the hateful and Hitlerian things the ruling party is doing and they are instead doing… nothing.
Why does this upset me?
On the one hand because, you know, the world is burning down and they could at least get a pail of water to try and stop it, but they’re not even doing that.
On the other hand – which I think is the hand I can benefit most from examining – I’m acting basically the same way.
No I don’t, as an average citizen of an adjoining country, have as many levers to pull as they do.
But I know what’s happening is a million miles past wrong.
I know we are living through a generational shift (many of them, actually) which might well destroy my children’s future.
And my response is… to write the occasional rambling Substack post bemoaning the situation (sometimes with a song attached!).
What can any of us do?
The question of how to act, what behaviours or habits might create change right now in the face of so much collapsing infrastructure and morality, is a big one.
One theory I have is that we all, as individuals, have the chance to reclaim reality in our own lives.
By which I mean: stop mediating every moment through a screen. Stop ingesting information and entertainment and the pacifying slop that our smart phones and computer screens provide.
Connect, in real life, with other human beings.
Start with your family, because if you’re like me (The Democrats), you may well have been choosing the crack pipe of your iPhone over them at times, and that’s partly how all this happened.
We’re all behaving like addicts who are constantly either engaging in our addiction or itching for the next hit.
How the hell can we organize a resistance of any kind while doing that?
We could send out invites to the resistance meeting via Instagram Stories, but it would get displayed between an ad for an erectile dysfunction pill (if you’re a 46-year-old dad like me) and a K-Pop Demon Hunters meme and then disappear from consciousness.
A modest proposal for a walk.
Instead, try this: put your phone on charge somewhere. Ideally in a cupboard or drawer.
Take your family out for a walk instead.
Knock on a neighbour’s door and see if they want to join you.
Keep doing things like that every day for a few weeks.
You may discover that you have reentered reality, a place where “community” isn’t some weird marketing buzzword that can be analyzed and optimized for AI-driven advertising (I’d like to hear about those dick pills from an actual friend, thank you very much MARK).
While walking, you may get some random bits and pieces of news about the atrocities being committed by the tiny-handed and black-hearted leaders of the world.
You will also hear about the life and thoughts of the people you’re with.
You may hear birdsong, and the sound of cars driving past, and the conversations of others.
The importance of what some tinpot shithead is doing to enrich himself should naturally decline in your head.
You have not, at this point, defeated said shithead. But you have regained the tools you need to work out how you might more effectively resist him: namely your heart and your mind.
Don’t be a Democrat. Be a person.
I hereby resolve to be better than the Democrats.
I hope they will resolve to be better than themselves. They are a party of spineless, useless cowards, as mentioned, and they don’t even pretend to have a plan to fight the great evil that is setting the world on a very dark path.
But as true as that is, it doesn’t give me or any of us the right to rest on our laurels and say “well the world wouldn’t burn down if those fuckers were doing their jobs.”
Because while we rest, we may begin to notice some heat in our rectal area as the aforementioned laurels begin to catch fire, along with everything else.
This is the only world we have and the only one we get.
It’s all our kids and loved ones get as well.
We owe it to ourselves, our communities, and the kids to reclaim reality for ourselves and fight back.
The Ugly Americans
You're a human animal
Making a tower.
Not even winning
Hour after hour.
I don't like it any more than you do.
I don't like it any more than you do.
You voted for 'em.
Spoke up in the forum.
Then you end up choking.
You're scared that they weren't joking.
I don't like it any more than you do.
I don't like it any more than you do.
But it's gotta be done.
But it's gotta be done.
Confident.
Maybe you should run!
Maybe you should run away!
Maybe you should run for office anyway!
Come to rule the ugly Americans
The ugly Americans
Ugly Americans.
Those ones are beautiful.
You know the ugly Americans
Don't know what, know what we do this for.
We bring the Americans.
The ugly Americans.
The ugly American
Future.
Future.