2016: A Eulogy
The many of writers bemoaning the terribleness of 2016 forget that for Trump supporters, this was a good year. Many cultural threats to the American way of life (i.e., farms, family and the wholesomeness of country music) dropped off the face of the planet.
Beyoncé survived, but other than that, George Michael is exactly the kind of bad influence who we’re better off without, as is androgynous star David Bowie (progenitor of everything bad in the music — at least the white people’s music — that George Michael and Elton John represent. Oh, and let us not forget Prince, the pinnacle of the androgynous stage performances for which Bowie laid the ground.
Who’s worse? Leonard Cohen, that smug, caustic spinner of uninterpretable lyrics, the ultimate symbol of the counterculture who never went away when the hippies died.
Trump people may not wish them dead, but celebrate the departure of their influence.[1] Besides, we would have lost them all sooner or later. But look who we got to replace them? Rick Perry, Mad Dog Mattis, Rex Tillerson and our shadow President Putin.
As for me, I don’t look back at 2016 as the worst year ever. Rather I wish that, if physicists are really correct about multiple universes splitting at every decision point, we ended up in the universe where Trump lost the election. Maybe a few of the wonderful artists who fell in Trump’s wake would have survived. At least for another year or two.
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[1]Who am I kidding. Trump supporters dwell in the deep end of black in a black and white world. Many probably thought death was too good for these artists.
