Disco Demolition

For Jason Tseng, Micah Bucey, and Gloria Gaynor.

In the 1970s, disco,
the child of soul, funk, and salsa,
was the most popular music in America.
Every nightclub pulsed with that four to the floor beat
from New York to Los Angeles,

And it was gay and brown and beautiful,
not in spite of
but because of these things.

When the White Sox blew up a crate
of disco records at Comiskey Park,
they weren’t trying to destroy a few pieces of vinyl,
they were trying to comfort regressive troglodytes.

The backlash against disco
wasn’t just the usual exhaustion
with a dead genre,
but fear of a black planet,
of a gay revolution,
of a Latin uprising.

The National Pastime
has always been slamming
a boot down on the neck
of somebody different.
But our lives were never a game
and rhythm has always been
in a league of its own.

So when fascists arrive
armed with bluster and bravado,
erect cocks barely disguised,
show them how bone dry palms
wrung out by self-hatred can’t hold
this sweat slick skin.

When they try to apprehend your beauty
show them what all this cardio was good for
and make your fabulous escape.

Show them why
we measure records
in revolutions per minute,
and their only choices
are thirty three
or forty five
not zero.

When the idiot astronomers of
social conservatism
try to convince you that
the universe revolves around them,
tell them that retrograde motion
is nothing but the illusion of a false perspective.

Our Earth always spun around this exquisite sun,
unafraid to be sequin and glitter.
This world only spins forward,
and our dream of
beatmatched brothers and sisters
moving from song to song
seamless
is the Truth.

So when fascists call your heart a crime scene,

dance.

When they bring cinderblocks
to build your body into a prison,

dance.

When they try to bludgeon you with their God,
tell them love
has always been the moral majority

and fucking dance.

And when this is all over,
and we’ve won
smile
and ask them:

Did you think we would crumble?
Did you think we would lay down and die?

No.

We survived.

When racism dictates what to name your kids.

I want to have children someday. They’ll be mixed Jewish-Chinese. Carolyn and I wanted to name our kids something really Jewish to go with their Chinese last names. We were thinking “Anoch” and “Esther”. Reading about the Kaifeng Jews in China, I thought it would be really neat to give our first child the gender neutral (?) middle name “Kaifeng” as a tribute to both of our roots and the synthesis thereof.

However, in Trump’s America, with the rising anger against China, it might be advisable to name them something Anglo as hell, and give them her last name – “John Light” “Andrea Light” – to avoid bureaucratic scrutiny. The alt-right is anti-Semitic as hell and the Republican hatred of China is well documented.

My normal stance on these issues are “Fuck racists, I do what I want.” but this is not a choice I’m making for myself. This is a choice I’m making for my children, for people who will have to deal with that choice for the rest of their lives.

This is the kind of shit I have to fucking think about – how racism will impact what I name my kids. This is a awful violation. Small in the grand scheme of things, but disgusting nonetheless. Think about that in the voting booth this November.

Dear liberal friends.

Dear liberal friends,

 

Remember when I told you, throughout the Obama administration, that the normalization of extralegal assassination of American citizens was a terrible idea? Remember when I said that Project PRISM was a terrible violation of our rights and set a terrifying precedent? Remember when I told you that an expansion of executive power, under a president you trust, will eventually pass into the hands of a president you don’t?

 

President Trump will have the power to extralegally assassinate you with a drone strike. President Trump will know exactly what you’re writing on the internet about him RIGHT NOW. President Trump will also have the nigh unlimited power of the Presidential pardon, the support of the nation’s largest police union, and command of the world’s most powerful military, which has a limitless Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

 

The new powers you give to a president you trust will eventually pass into the hands of a president you don’t. I told you. I wish you had listened.