Mixtapemotions

  • Can’t Hug Every Cat, The Gregory Brothers ft. Cara Hartmann, February 3, 2021

     

    Love songs don’t necessarily have to be about a person. They can also be about places and things too.  Today’s song is my first joke song of the year. The instant likability of this song is a combination of comedian Cara Hartmann doing a bit about “Debbie,” a doe-eyed, soft spoken, emotional girl in her early to mid-20s talking creating a dating profile video for E-harmony and the Gregory Brothers taking the already-viral video and turning it into a bubblegum pop track, adding video clips of cat videos for good measure. The result is a feel good track that gives you the warm fuzzies for man’s second-best fuzzy friend.

    I THINK ABOUT HOW MANY DON’T HAVE A HOME. My family had a few cats when I was growing up. I remember my mom giving up our cat when she found out she was pregnant because she read that kitty litter could be harmful to prenatal development. However, after my youngest sibling was born my sister found a cat in my grandfather’s barn who was quite keen to her. One day she said to me, “will you help me? I want to take him home.” We wrapped the cat in a blanket and she carried the cat on her bike. My parents just laughed, but the cat now named “Maple,” bonded with the family. However, my grandfather wasn’t happy. He said that the cat (to him it was “Tommy”) was  a great mouser for the barn. He talked to my sister but ultimately he said that we could keep the cat. What kind of grandfather would make a little girl give back a barn cat?
    I JUST LOVE THEM AND I WANT THEM. Sadly, Maple was hit by a car shortly after my family moved to North Carolina. Perhaps a year after Maple died my mom decided that she wanted a yellow cat. She had a picture in her mind of the perfect cat. But the strangest thing happened that year. No shelters, breeders, or families we knew in the area had any yellow kittens. My mom asked around at church and within our homeschooling network. Nothing for at least a year. She even attended a birth. She wasn’t satisfied with the kittens. Finally, there was a litter of kittens. This large Catholic family in our 4-H group had a cat that gave birth to three kittens. There was a black cat, a grey tabby, and a yellow cat! The cat was to her liking. The black cat was already spoken for. My mom decided to take the yellow cat and the tabby. She said she found her perfect cat and his sister. 
    SORRY I’M GETTING EMOTIONAL. I haven’t had a cat since I’ve been in Korea. My clothes thank me. My mom named the yellow cat “Sunshine.” His hair was everywhere–every couch and sweater. Sunshine lived for 17 years and his sister “Starlight” for 18. I miss having a cat and look forward to the time when I can have another one. 

  • "Space Age Love Song" by Flock of Seagulls, Tuesday, February 2, 2021

     

    I’m not a fanatic about space, like many children, I was fascinated with the prospect of traveling to other worlds when I looked out at the sky. From learning about the nine eight planets from The Magic School Bus to watching Hale-Bopp in the late ’90s night sky, the universe seemed like such an interesting place. After school it was Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns then to PBS for Bill Nye the Science Guy and Arthur. Fast forward to February 1, 2003 (18 years and 1 day ago). The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. This grounded America’s space program for two years. 

    POP MUSIC’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE ’80S. This is my memory of the attitude towards the ’80s. I talked a little about this when I covered New Order’s “World (The Price of Love),” but my memories of the views of the ’80s in the late ’90s and ’00s (what a time warp!) were of awkwardness, terrible hair, men in shorty shorts with hairy legs, girls in tight pink leotards and leg warmers. Tight jeans, porn star ‘staches, and aviators. Farrah Fewcett hair. If you watch Dirty Dancing or Top Gun too much you might get a hair in the back of your throat from someone’s mullet in the back of your throat and if you try to wash it down with Root Beer, you’d taste the ’80s. I immediately turned off music that took “’80s chord progressions.” But then in 2004, there was a shift. Falling Up released their second single from their album Dawn Escapes, “Moonlit.” The guitar riff sounded like ’80s metal. Of course Falling Up was probably not the first musical act to bring back the ’80s, but I started to realize that the ’80s were going to dethrone the ’70s hold on pop culture. Just as long as nobody’s getting Flock of Seagulls’ haircuts, we should be alright.

    …AND I RAN. Music ran towards the ’80s sound. The Killers debuted around this time. Their first album drawing influence from The Cure. Little by little the “2000s” orchestra-hit laden Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys tracks gave way to new-wave sounding synth pop. Nowadays, if you look at a pop chart you will definitely hear ’80s influence. But what brought back the ’80s? Was it some sort of reaction to the conservative policies of George W. Bush mirroring Ronald Reagan? When I think of movies, television, and music of the ’80s I think of a time that was much more conservative than now. Television shows tried to instill morality, but yet tried to be edgy by introducing “issue” episodes. In the ’80s seemed like a counterreformation of the ’60 movements.

    THE SPACE RACE…ENDED. I’m writing a lot about a time before I was even born or have no memory of. Last year I enjoyed the Netflix documentary Challenger, which told the story about how NASA went from cutting edge to cutting corners. After America went to the moon, what was next? Mars? Venus? It seemed like nothing was in the way of human innovation. NASA introduced the space shuttle, a powerful rocket that was going to make going to space easy and common. Pop culture was space-obsessed.
    You don’t have to look far to find an ’80s song about space. It was the space age and everything was reading for the stars. Until the Challenger explosion. Upon closer inspection, it cost too much money to go to the moon, so NASA’s budget was slashed and with it our prospects manned explorations of the solar system. Of course we’ve made incredible breakthroughs in the field of astronomy since. It’s been mostly on the ground or in our back yard in the International Space Station.

    THE MULLET…TRIMMED. To tie everything together, much like the Space Age is still around in much less grand version of itself, so we have ’80s-styled dance hits without the hairspray. Or applied in different ways. America seems to be addicted to 1) conservative governments and 2) liberal entertainment. That doesn’t seem to be going away as Biden is probably one of the most conservative Democrats. SpaceX might take us to the moon. Let’s hope they don’t terraform Mars. Climate change may force us again to look to space, but really, though, is there enough time? Until, let’s enjoy some ’80s synth pop.

  • "Forever Yours" by Key (ft. Soyoo) Monday, February 1, 2021

    Last week when I blogged about BTS, I talked about my gateway drugs into K-pop. Shinee was one of them. The first song I heard from them was “Everybody” which oddly made me think of industrial rock. Later I heard their song “Stand By Me” when I started to watch the drama Boys Over Flowers. I’m sure I’ll talk about my love-hate relationship with Korean dramas later. If you listen to “Stand By Me,” don’t you hear hints of Rick Astley‘s “Never Gonna Give You Up“? Then in 2015 one of the biggest songs in Korea was Shinee’s song “View.” Some of the genius in Shinee’s producers is making hit songs that sound vaguely familiar. Sometimes you can pin a pop song comparison, other times you’re left racking your brain wondering where you heard that song before. 

    FOREVER YOURS. Key (born Kim Ki-bum) is one of the vocalists of Shinee. As the group’s career started winding down, Key started acting and becoming a TV personality on Korean reality shows. His talents stretch beyond music into fashion and philanthropy. In 2018 he released his first solo single, “Forever Yours” featuring former member of the girl group Sista‘s Soyoo. Key stuck to Shinee convention keeping the music semi-familiar yet fresh. Yet, starting out with the guest vocalist rather than the main singer is an interesting choice. And failing to feature Soyoo on the screen in the music video makes it seem a little lonely and incomplete. Speaking of the music video, if the song doesn’t give you early ’90s vibes, the video will remind you of a big budget music video from the year 2000. This is not to knock the song in anyway. In fact if you take the lyrics and translate them into English and watch the music video without listening to the music, it would too cheesy. Fortunately there’s the salty cracker that is the music.

    YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE INDIFFERENT TO EVERYTHING. Friends, this month is dedicated to love. I will share more love songs than normal. My goal is to write 13 days of love songs and one breakup as we welcome in the Year of the Ox and break up with the year of the Rat. But it might be a “social distanced” love song oe two. We will celebrate Cities day on February 20th. I wish everyone a happy “love month.” I wish that if you have love you’ll keep love and if you haven’t found it, the pandemic will end soon!

     

  • "Around the Corner" by Mike Mains and the Branches, Sunday, January 31, 2021

     

    2019 had its share of dark moments. I struggled with the questions about what to do with my life. I wondered if I was wasting my time collecting just enough money for a job that I would one day grow out of. I was in love with someone who was struggling to achieve a very hard to reach goal. The future looked so uncertain. I really started to deconstruct my faith at this time, too, giving myself permission to think through dogmatic statements I had always held to be true, mostly because I was afraid of the consequences of if they weren’t true. Mike Mains & the Branches‘ When We Were in Love was an album I listened to on long walks when I was trying to clear my head.


    WITH HEAVEN’S MANSION OUT OF REACH. I saw Mike Mains and the Branches perform at the second to last Cornerstone. Around that time they played the video for “Stereo” on TVU (new RadioU TV). The song  had some interesting lyrics, but the message was pretty orthodox. But in 2019, the band released their third album, When We Were in Love on Tooth & Nail Records. Rather than Springsteen-esque worship songs, Mains turned to writing about his experiences with depression and marital problems.  The album certainly has some happy songs too. But the most memorable tracks have dark verses and uplifting choruses. 
    YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S AROUND THE CORNER. “Around the Corner” relies on cliches and platitudes to drive its point home. However, that doesn’t make it insincere. I remember a quote from August: Osage County: “ Thank God we can’t tell the future. We’d never get out of be able to get out of bed.” But without being to tell the future, there is the possibility of hope. What Mains writes in this song, which is point in the album that chooses life, seems to be the cliches and platitudes you tell yourself to get through something. In this way, the song reaches beyond giving hope for suicide, but also for people who are going through any kind of uncertainty. Times are rough. Hope might lie around the corner. The chorus was my 2019 mantra when I was struggling or someone close to me was having a hard time.

    GOODBYE TO YESTERDAY. January 31st means a lot to me. When I was a junior in High School it snowed on that day. It was a Saturday, so no school was lost. But I spent the day outside enjoying the winter. I had a deep realization that it was one of the last times that I would live at home and enjoy the snow in such a way. The next day I watched the snow melt and think about it. I hope to chose a very meaningful song as a check in on January 31st. Everyone loves New Year’s Eve. We tolerate a New Year’s Day. Many of us have a day off on MLK day, which coincides with Blue Monday–the most depressing day of the year. We get to the end of January with a list of broken resolutions and we start to lose sight of who we are. Am I just the same bump on the couch as last year? Am I any better? I’d encourage you to keep it up. Start your resolutions again on Chinese (Lunar) New Years (설날). The days are getting longer. The weather will get warmer. Life will return to normal. Let’s see what’s around the corner.

  • "Communicate" by Jonezetta, Saturday, January 30, 2021

    Jonezetta‘s Popularity brings back memories of being 21. Although the album had come out the year before, I had been hesitant to buy it. But after tours with Anberlin and MuteMath I decided to buy the album and put it into the CD player of my 2001 midnight blue Toyota Corolla S, my second car, and the car I had paid for with my own money. This album is one that is forever linked to the hot black interior, the red night driving display, the drivers licenses-less friends and the friends of my little sister that I had to tote around. It was also the summer that I decided it was time to go to Cornerstone.

    I’VE BEEN DRIVING ALL NIGHT. My friends don’t always vibe with my musical tastes and that’s ok. I’m a little scared of people who like the same music as me. It makes me wonder when someone’s going to hand us a big cup of Kool-Aid. However, Popularity was quite a hit among my friends. It’s dancey and just ’80s retro enough to be put in your playlist sandwiched between Journey‘s “Separate Ways” and Def Leopard‘s “Pour Some Sure on Me.” I saw them at Cornerstone twice in 2007. They had a set in one of the bigger tents. Then miracle of all miracles happened. Relient K‘s band burned down, pushing Skillet and Anberlin to close the night, and a slot opened up for Jonezetta to play main stage. When they played “Communicate” they dedicated the song to Anberlin, their good friends who took them out on the Cities tour and helped them achieve they success they had so far in their career.

    WILL IT EVER FEEL THE SAME? I talked a little about the demise of Jonezetta when I talked about Corey Crowder last year. In November, after Cornerstone, some friends decided to drive to Charolette to see Family Force 5‘s Halloween themed tour with openers The Secret Handshake and Jonezetta. Going to the concert was more fun than the concert. It was a small club venue and we were used to the the bands having more space for their show/theatrics (think FF5). Main stage at Cornerstone earned them another on main stage. It didn’t go so well. It seems that the crowd was not into their new songs and the band didn’t have the energy they once had. Something was off.  As all good things must come to an end, so do most bands after 1 or 2 albums. The music industry imploded with the housing crisis of 2008/2009.  Just as the bands of young adulthood break up, we too move on. I sold my car to my dad when I came to Korea for student loan payments. Friend groups have splintered–some moved away, some have stopped being friends. Cornerstone ended in 2012. Life is full of sad goodbyes, but it’s better to have the sad goodbye than to never have had it in the first place. What’s left is a few Apple Music shuffles and memories of being 21 with keys to car and driving to Illinois for a dusty concert.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

     

  • "Dead Flowers (Resurrected)" by Demon Hunter, Friday, January 29, 2021

    “I wore my Demon Hunter patch on every mission. I wore it when I blasted bin Laden. So, yes, in essence Demon Hunter did, in fact, hunt a demon” (Fuse). In 2019 when Demon Hunter released their two albums War and Peace, they encapsulated the two sounds battling for this band’s fandom. One one had, they are a fierce metal band and on the other hand, they love to write a dark ballad ballad for every album, which usually becomes their radio hit. The fandom around this band is intense. The opening quote from the Navy Seals on the team that killed Osama bin Laden listened to the band. Frontman Ryan Clark has stated multiple times that the logo and branding of Demon Hunter proceeded the band. And as one of the most influential graphic designers in Tooth & Nail album design (and mainstream rock for that matter), branding and style are everything. 


    REBORN. Music in the 2021 is great for old bands. They can capitalize on their fans and play old music online and stream it around the world. With artists not touring they can focus on writing and releasing an album or two (Taylor Swift ;). Anberlin has been doing their album series, Emery did Sunday night collaborations with other musicians, and Demon Hunter decided to resurrect some of their greatest ballads from their ten albums, from their first album’s “My Throat Is an Open Grave” to their Summer of Darkness hit “My Heartstrings Come Undone” and many other songs in between, all arranged acoustically with string–and bagpipe, in the case of today’s song– accompaniment. I must admit I haven’t kept up with dark album after album, but I do know that “Dead Flowers” holds a four star rating in my personal Apple Music library. Except for the the emotional touch of bagpipes at the end of the song, the original for the (electric) guitar solo is better. But why should you have to choose? I’ll post both versions today.

  • Lost It All~ Leagues, January 28, 2021


     Lost It All 

    I had a dream last night that I returned to America to visit my mom. Somehow, using dream logic, I looked in a mirror and noticed that I was bald with just a band of brown hair around the edges. Then I looked again and my face had aged and I noticed less hair on my head. I also saw liver spots on my head. I woke up to a beautiful, warm January morning, hair intact. Around noon I decided to go for a walk. On the walk I saw that the weather was predicting a winter storm. It’s 50 degrees, it’s not going to snow, I thought. Then as I walked farther away from my house I saw the gold had turned to grey. I turned around for my plan to walk farther had to be surrendered.
    STARTING OUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO SHINE. If you’re of my generation or older you know what it’s like to buy an album. You might hear the single on the radio or maybe the band had a good last album or you just like the cover art. You put the disk/tape/LP on and listen to it. You’re either immediately taken by it or not. If you didn’t like it you listened to it again and again to find some gold. And often in that search, you would find an album that was much better than the easily accessible one. I didn’t buy this record. I think the last physical album I bought was before 2011. I actually got it for free on NoiseTrade (now Paste) when the band was giving it away for free. I had heard “Spotlight” on RadioU. The band included former Audio Adrenaline guitarist Tyler Burkum, who has been awesome in every project I’ve seen him in. I had big expectations for this record. But it wasn’t immediately satisfying.
    THE TRUTH WOULD COME OUT IN TIME. I started making iTunes playlists (now Apple Music) some time ago. Just started dividing up my music part intentionally and part randomly into playlists like “Exercise,” “Coffee,” and “At Work.” One frosty morning I was biking to school and “Lost it All” happened to come up on shuffle in my “Bike Mix.” The song starts off slow and then builds. The musical guitars meet the vocals of Thad Cockrell and by the time you get to the bridge you think that the musical formula has solved the world’s problems. This song led me to listen to the rest of the album. Songs like “She Kissed Me” and “Walking on Water” have similar production that start off slow and build. 
    THE ONLY WAY OUT OF THIS IS TOGETHER. It seems that Leagues is no more. Time will keep marching on. But isn’t it great that this music exists? Isn’t it incredible that of the 50 million songs on Apple Music and Spotify we can keep coming back to the classics or our favorites? You and I have not even begun to scratch the surface of all the songs out there. And if things make a turn for the worse canceling all of our plans, we can find wisdom and comfort in a verse or chorus or guitar solo. Into the future, AirPods in.

  • "Up in Flames " by Years & Years, Wednesday, January 27, 2021

    If x then happiness. Find x. Simple algebra. What is the one thing you want for life or for the moment? How do you get it? That’s the problem. I can think about some times in my life when I thought everything was coming together only for it all to fall apart. There was this awesome housing situation in college until my roommate called to say that he wasn’t coming back next year. Or establishing the “dream team” at two of my schools. Spoiler alert: it never lasts, and new drama comes up to make the dream team more of a nightmare. If only I had that promotion. If only I bought X.  If only that person was available. X-Y= happiness. But what happens when it doesn’t happen? What happens when the exact opposite happens. You don’t get the promotion. Maybe you get fired. They get married rather than breaking up. The relationship turns abusive or maybe hidden infidelity. What happens next? That’s what this synth-pop single by Years & Years deals with. 

    I DREAMED OF A LIFE SO BIG AND TALL. Robert Burns wrote in “To a Mouse“: “Best laid schemes o[f] mice an[d] men [go oft awry].” On a very superficial level, I chose this song at 4 a.m. this morning. It turns out my day would be completely ruined by not being able to get to sleep until 5. It’s not the worst because it’s my vacation, but it made me start thinking about all the times when my plans didn’t work out. Of course, a sleepless night due to coffee isn’t the worst thing I’ve been through nor does it give proper respect to whatever meaning lyricist and singer Olly Alexander intended. We’re coming off the heels of the most unexpected year of our lifetime. We’ve had years (and years) of unexpected political craziness. Things that we grew up telling ourselves would always be true could be unraveled in 280 characters. The future will be rearranged. 

    WEAKNESS WON’T BE YOUR SAVIOR. Years & Years is a group I’ve gotten into gradually. I found Alexander’s usage of religious imagery in much of the band’s songs interesting. Themes of longing for connection, gender/queerness, and ritual permeate around the sounds of synths and a grooving beat. Alexander certainly isn’t the first openly gay musician to hit the radio, but most singers don’t use same-sex pronouns in their music as do Years & Years. What I’ve found when listening to the band is that it takes a while for their songs to hit me, but when they do each song becomes a transformative experience both musically and lyrically. Today’s song seems to be about the divorce of parents, but it could also be about falling in love with someone who is in a relationship waiting for the other relationship to end. The video is also ambiguous. Is it a love triangle between two men and a woman? Is it a New Order-styled The Shining? I’d have to spend more time with the song.



  • "Fake Love" by BTS, Tuesday, January 26, 2021

    If you have been in a cave for a few years, you may not know about this South Korean boyband. There’s usually a glass ceiling for how popular K-pop can get in America. But this group constantly shatters that ceiling. Number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100? Today, I recommend the song “Fake Love,” by BTS, particularly the “Rocking Vibe Mix” which replaces some of the keyboards and electronic music with guitars. They did a similar remix with their hit “DNA,” but we can save that song for another day. Because this is the first of what I assume will be several K-pop recommendations, I figured I’d start with my history of how I became K-pop listener, a genre I barely knew existed before landing in South Korea in late August, 2012, which you may recall was the time when a certain 40 year old rapper blew up the internet talking about his hometown in the wealthy neighborhood of Gangnam.

    A FAKE FAN. Please Internet and K-pop fans be kind. Please rock people hear me out. I want to tell you about my first impressions of K-pop, and it wasn’t positive. “Wow! Fantastic baby! Dance” 

    What the hell am I watching? I wondered as I saw dog chains, mo-hawks, shirtless boys. I was like watching Adam Lambert at the Grammys. That was my reaction to Big Bang’s “Fantastic Baby,” which had been a hit around when I was in high school, but I had to look it up because my elementary school students were shouting it out as a reaction to lessons. The little horrors! K-pop videos were certainly avant-garde. The dancing and camera angles were dizzying. Then there was “Gangnam Style,” which in many ways is a parody of K-pop. Psy, being much older than the boys of BTS or Big Bang, became huge mostly for breaking the Internet which made him all the more famous in Korea. Hearing first grade elementary students singing “Hey sexy lady” as they do the “horse dance” was funny and a bit disturbing.

    I’M SO SORRY BUT IT’S FAKE LOVE. Inundated in the world of K-pop from hearing it at all the cafes and grocery stores, I built a tolerance and eventually an affinity for some of the songs. It started with Busker Busker’s first album which wasn’t exactly pop, but by 2014 songs like “Everybody” by Shinee, “Mr. Mr.” by Girl’s Generation, “Give Love” by Akdong Musician, and Taeyang’s Rise album were all in my personal music collection. Slowly I added more and more songs that I liked. It was fun to try to catch words, to see if I could understand a little bit as I learned Korean. The instrumentation on some songs was interesting. “Did they really just sample that song? Why did they use that instrument? 

    GANG WARFARE. South Korean teenagers LOVE K-pop, especially girls. They worship their teen idols. This has been happening for 30 years. In the drama Reply 1997 there is the K-pop fan rivalry between the fans of H.O.T and Sechkies. When I came to Korea it was Shinee and EXO. Then BTS and Wanna One. BTS however outlived their rival and set to conquering the world. In 2019 publications started comparing them to the Beatles. This of course could outrage music fans. While they may not be the Beatles, their fans certainly seem to embody “Beatlemania.” BTS is able to sellout shows all across the world, and they even sell a special light that is controlled by their light production manager at live shows. 

    CONQUERING THE WORLD WITH A MESSAGE.  Again, I’m not a REAL fan of BTS. I don’t listen to them all the time. They’re in my Apple Music library, and I listen to some of their songs from time to time. However, I admire this group. They have a message for their fans. It’s simply to “Love yourself.” South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world for teenagers. There’s so much pressure to do well on the 수능, or college entrance exam. There’s also cultural pressures to get into the best schools and marry the right person, get the right job. The group is also an outspoken proponent of LGBTQ rights, which was virtually unheard of for a K-pop group before them. A message of self acceptance will hopefully keep many South Korean young people alive. 

    And a metal group covered this song:

  • "Great Divide" by Lovedrug, Monday, January 25, 2021

     

    Lovedrug’s fourth album released in 2012 transitioned the band from a heavier Keene-sounding piano rock band to a full-fledged guitar driven rock band. This album came out in my last few months in America and proved to be an album that helped me transition to one of the biggest changes in my life, living abroad. The title Wild Blood, while I don’t think intentionally done by the band, drew a connection to Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, which is a crazy story about a backwoods preacher who starts his own stranger religious organization. Whether or not the connection is intentional, the music of Wild Blood makes me think about the novel and vice versa. There certainly are some great tracks on this album, but it’s not one that I come back to too often. Today on my walk, however, I took a close listen to this song and remembered the sticky summer of 2012 and the great divide that’s come up ever since.

    YOUR SILHOUETTE STANDING THERE IN THE DISTANCE. So let’s name the great divide. Right now it’s politics. I understand that it’s pretty easy for me to sit in another country and write about what’s happening in America and to condemn the last four years of Trump. I think maybe because I’m outside of the South, I’m less tuned into the voice of Republican ideals. I’ve seen what Trump’s presidency has done to the relationships with other countries. However, if I had taken a job back home, would I have seen it? I often wonder how long I would have remained a Republican? The problem is there is a point to Trump-ism. In 2019 the economy in America was doing pretty good–that’s not to say that there wouldn’t have been a natural fallout from the Trade War with China–but with what looked like a healthy economy, people attributed the success with a “hands off business” leader. Trump also spent lots of time campaigning and basking in the glory of working class people. He gave them a voice. He united them. The unity was based on fear of other races, genders, sexualities, economics, levels of education–in short fear of the other. Trump listened to a large portion of voters who had been marginalized in elections past and gave them a voice. 

    FEELS LIKE WE’RE LOSING, BE WE HAVEN’T MISSED IT. But it was the wrong voice. A real leader who is going to “survive across this great divide” is one who will listen to the working class. One who will listen and educate. Ultimately, Trump did very little to improve the lives and working conditions of the working class. Instead, the controlling party legislated in the favor of big business and against immigrants. Now, the cult of personality with Trump is so strong that his supporters will not listen to facts. So, is the great divide too deep? Will Thanksgiving dinners ever be enjoyable again?