I haven’t really been writing much about politics these days. When I do, it tends to be pretty local or small-scale. Though I haven’t been making a ton of art, any political ideas never get too far.
Earlier this year, Conor Oberst talked about the difficulty of making protest-oriented art in the time of Trump. It’s the great paradox of Trump that is perhaps the most interesting thing about him: For a man with so many obvious character flaws, with only self-interest in his heart, he is remarkably difficult to actually insult. He is incredibly vain and therefore does care about image, but only in a specific capacity that art, or perhaps even language, doesn’t have a known capacity for.
Like I said, it’s a challenge, but one that I would think and hope any artist would be up for at least trying to overcome. That hasn’t really been my problem. Trump is just a guy, and in the end he’s a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.
What has become impossible, though, is reconciling the parallel horrors that have become the background noise of everyday life. The ongoing genocide in Gaza being one line; the Epstein Files being another. Blatant evidence of human life being ruined or ended at a massive scale to no consequence at all.
I have to imagine the only parallel in the United States would be living during the time of the slave trade. Slavery allowed for the evil to be on display the way it is now being broadcast over social media—after slavery but before the internet, the forces of white supremacy could use the media to generally control the discourse around atrocities. They could two-sides any scandal.
But there’s no way out of this one. These events are a mirror. From Palestine to Little St. James, there is no excuse for the systems that are operating via child trafficking, murder, mass rape, or ethnic cleansing to continue—much less for those who participate in any of it to get away unscathed. There is no room for debate. At some point, a line must be drawn, and to my mind, we crossed it years ago.
I’ve always felt that art is the closest thing we have to being able to get a better understanding of the soul. But these past few years have been killing off whatever was left of that human spirit, to the point where I ask myself, What am I even trying to relate to anymore?
Making art right now feels like hosting a party inside of a burning house. Anyone who wants to be entertained in this moment isn’t someone I’d want to entertain. But the lack of consequences for these monumental horrors are now embedded in our culture. And that makes me feel I just don’t want to participate in that culture any longer.
