Guantanamerika
One of the songs I’ve listened to the most in my life Guantanamerika by Alex Chilton. I think it perfectly captures American fascism, which has grown stronger today, but is essentially the same as it was 40 years ago, when the song was written. It’s a song about a specific era of American fascism—Reagan/televangelism fascism.
The melody of the song sweeps you right up, like you’re on some cool vacation. And that’s really what fascism is—a vacation from reality. But American fascism is unique because it has been able to be an endless vacation—decade after decade now, the vacation is still chugging along. It’s showing signs of ending soon, from total collapse, but the main spirit of it—a swaggering, vibing joyride—is still intact. In fact that spirit is stronger than ever, to paper over the increasingly obvious collapse.
The song is so cool because it is both a critique of the roots of contemporary American fascism, but also a kind of celebration of its absurdity. The narrator of the song delights in getting drunk and watching the top televangelist of the 1980s, Tammy Faye Bakker, hoping and praying that he will get richer. He says “Zieg Heil to the In God We Trust-ers, Ooh-ooh-ooh, drug busters.” The early 1980s was when the “War on Drugs” started, and In God We Trust rhetoric heated up—and the narrator in the song is hopelessly swept up in it, embracing it, making it his life, losing himself in it, reveling in the absurdity of it.
The song was written in the days of Reagan’s America, and all those themes have just mutated and amplified into Trump’s America. And all anyone can do now is be swept along with it—even as it devours and destroys the world. A vacation from the world—a vacation into nothingness, but a fun one. That’s really the experience of Trump’s America—a descent into the abyss, but one that’s so fun and absurd that you don’t even notice. All of this is captured in the song—an amazing thing for a fun little 3 minute tune. Only Alex Chilton could be this much of a genius…
