The aggressive, repetitive chanting that has come to dominate modern pop music, the way I encounter it in almost identical conditions every day, has elevated its own banality to the realm of the sinister. If there’s a collective unconscious this is its Tell-Tale Heart Moment.
I hear repeated over loudspeakers at least 10 times in a given day:
“WE AIN’T EVER GETTING OLDER
WE AIN’T EVER GETTING OLDER”
Before this it was another chant about partying like there’s no tomorrow, with a heavy emphasis on the no tomorrow part. Is the end of the world an aphrodisiac? I suppose it must be.
Before the election happened and the actual lines of the laughable revealed themselves, there were polls where Trump and Clinton both were trailing “A Giant Meteor Hitting the Earth.” We could’ve had that, but the two-party establishment kept the meteor out of the debates.
It was presumed that Trump was finished at numerous times; in the beginning of his campaign he was treated as a joke. In the debates he came across as incoherent and possibly coked up to the gills. Trump was the ultimate post-modern candidate, the one who existed outside the binary of “true/false” and won despite it? Because of it?
I wondered as I walked my dogs this week about another world where in fact the Giant Meteor had made it to the debates. Where people laughed off the Giant Meteor but the Meteor had more get up and go. Where members of the press warned “This is literally what killed the dinosaurs” instead of “This is literally Adolph Hitler.” Where the Giant Meteor chose an appropriate running mate, say an outbreak of cholera. I could see the signs on peoples’ lawns.
“METEOR/CHOLERA 2016:
GETTING THE JOB DONE!”
“GETTING THE JOB DONE!” because, of course, “BETTER TOGETHER” was already taken.
As directly as Trump managed to connect with voters in the apocalyptic rust belt, I feel like a Giant Meteor could’ve connected even more directly. The Giant Meteor has had at least as much exposure in TV and the movies over the last 30 years as either of the other candidates and unlike Trump, who only did cameos for the most part, the Giant Meteor has been the de facto star of every vehicle it’s appeared in.
We thought the threat of an American Hitler was enough to warn off most of the US public from voting for one and we were wrong. It’s not like we as a culture didn’t spend enough time obsessing over Hitler. At least one US cable channel could be accurately renamed The Hitler and Aliens Network. They broadcast 24/7.
What odds would Nate Silver have given the Meteor? Who would have been the Meteor’s secret constituency? Who would the Meteor have appointed as its advisers on how best to collide with the Earth?
The Meteor is the bigger outsider. The Meteor could’ve effected substantial change and overcome congressional deadlock. The Meteor has never held public office. The Meteor has never sent any e-mails.
You laugh at this. We all laughed at Trump months ago.
“The Meteor promises all this stuff but it’ll disintegrate in the atmosphere before it gets to congress. It’ll just be business as usual soon enough,” NPR would have said..
Dear god let’s hope so…