Late on Friday nights when I’m safely home (admittedly after a few
beers) I like to play music videos on the DVD player. Often they're 80s videos,
some are hard rock, i.e. AC/DC (which annoys the neighbors because you have to
play those loud), or sometimes just a few “chill music” vids because I need to
calm down.
However, one of my favorites is Lionel Richie's “All Night Long.” Invariably
though this depresses me. It reminds me how we are going backwards nowadays.
The song is about how you can be so strongly moved by something (music) that
you just have to keep going. Party all night long. The dancers wear very
colorful outfits, surely meant to make a subtle point, and are multi-racial.
The dancing includes a wide range of styles with various mixtures of couples.
This was back in the 80s where it was slowly becoming common and acceptable to
see a black man dance with a white woman, a white man tango with an Asian
female, two males breakdancing together. It made it seem like things were
progressing to where we could all live together in harmony.
Then Trump came along and infested the White House.
Although we knew there were a lot of racists in our country, they at least had
become reticent to express it in public. Unlike the old days where Jim Crow was
normalized, racism had become a social deviation, something kept quietly
amongst a person's cohort or family. Not something you could bring out in
public without facing public derision.
Trump enabled racists. Emboldened them. He has tried to make it acceptable in
polite society, and criticized those who challenge him as weak-wristed Libtards
or overly PC elites.
Thanks to him, we see an increase in right-wing, racist organizations,
demonstrators who are unafraid of public shame chanting abusive, racist slogans
and public displays of offensive comments to anyone who looks foreign or of a
different race than Anglo-Saxon whites. Even the Republican Party seems to have
embraced the Trump vitriol and become largely the party of white males.
Although we've had problems with police interactions with civilians, as I noted
in my blogs “Tips for Tourists” and “Police reform Part I & II” I don't
think we've seen this level of police violence toward minorities since before
the 70s. It's as if they are acting as Trump's agents of violence that he often
spews at his pep, excuse me, "campaign" rallies.
I long for the days when we could dance the night away regardless of our race,
religion, political affiliation or whatever.
Sure, the video is a
make-believe world, but it was a world where people lived together peacefully,
where differences were immaterial, where people could dance together in
harmony. A world we need to find again.
