Nazi Punks, F*ck Off

Boy, that Donald Trump is really shaking up Washington, huh? Pretty much all of his cabinet picks are old, rich white men, which comes as a shock to no one who’s even glanced at a newspaper over the past four decades. Who did you think has been running the country this whole time? The politicians? You poor, poor soul. The people we elect to office, Republicans and Democrats (but mostly Republicans), have been so indebted to Corporate America that some seemingly upstanding citizens actually believe that institutional racism does not exist, that corporations are people, and that what happens overseas does not affect us. Since the dawn of Wall Street, we have spent our working lives in the cozy back pockets of old, rich white men. And now that they’ve revealed themselves as the nation’s real string pullers, we are right in thinking, “Are they really that audacious?”

Or. Or could it actually be desperation? America is getting browner – the biggest wall in the world won’t be able to stop that – and all these old, white fuckers are gonna be dead soon …

In the 1980s, the country wasn’t as divided politically as it appeared to be culturally: young versus old, black versus white, rich versus poor. Now that we are almost evening out culturally and that the mainstream media apparatus has made politics – like “real” house-flipping and “real” wife-ing – a national sport, we mostly non-old, mostly non-rich, mostly non-white rabble go at one another over issues. Like cage fighters with brass knuckles. And Google search bars (of iron). In a world where Democrats and Republicans couldn’t be any further apart, and where pro-choice activists and pro-lifers won’t even attempt to find common ground, an ideologue in chief – who won despite the fact that 3 million more people voted for the other person – is physically predetermined to make things worse. “Drain the swamp” should be the rallying cry not of a huuuge imbecile and the huuuge closeted racists, open xenophobes, or proud bigots who love him but of high-powered journalists at high-powered newspapers and magazines across the globe.

But it won’t be, because Hillary’s still emailing or something.

The good fight is the only fight worth fighting, and “by any means necessary” should be progressive America’s modus operandi. Whatever you do, do it now.

“To celebrate the inauguration of America’s first Cheeto-in-chief,” some local musos are “gonna be at Lola’s, playing punk rock songs.”

That was the call from producer/musician Ben Napier that went out via social media the other day, and it made me happy. “Well,” I hear you scoff, “Ben’s just preaching to the choir.” While true to an extent –– yes, a lot of progressive-minded folks will be at Lola’s that night, Inauguration Day (Friday, Jan. 20) –– he and his cohorts are doing more than just reveling in their liberality, luxuriating in it like a soft-porn First Lady in thigh-highs and fur. As Mean Motor Scooter will perform the music of The Ramones and Stoogeaphilia the Stooges plus other proto-punks of yore, Napier and his bandmates in Bogus Green will be covering the Dead Kennedys, a band that until its dissolution in the late ’80s stood against mass-think in all of its nefarious forms. Unless thinking for yourself meant hurting other people. Or hurting yourself.

Bogus Green, Napier continues, will be “getting political, because fuck this alt-right, new white, Fox News, neo-fascism garbage. And because we’re covering DK.”

Of course we can never have anything nice. You can’t even talk about the Dead Kennedys today without mentioning all of the legal crap they’ve been through. What does it say about us when one of our most punk punk-rock bands broke up over back royalties owed and corporate tidings? Wait a second. Don’t answer that. In a couple of weeks, a warped, lousy, lecherous businessman will be sworn in as America’s 45th president.

Cover charge for the Lola’s gig is $10. The money should go to Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 campaign.