A number of artists reacted negatively to Donald Trump’s Tuesday night upset to become President of the United States, but none quite as vehemently as Moby.
Moby wrote a lengthy open letter, published at Billboard, calling out the American people for their choice:
america, why are you so afraid of evidence?
you smoke cigarettes, naively believing they won’t kill you. you eat garbage, believing it won’t make you sick and obese. and now you’ve elected donald trump.
’christians’ and family-values voters have en masse helped elect a twice divorced man who openly brags about infidelity and committing sexual assault. 30% of latinos have helped elect a man who has routinely maligned latinos and called mexicans ‘rapists’. 45% of women have helped elect a man who brags about ‘grabbing women by the pussy’ and has called women ‘pigs’ & ‘slobs’. business-minded middle america has en masse helped elect a man who has led roughly half of his businesses to bankruptcy and lost close to a billion dollars in 1995 alone. and blue collar middle america has en masse helped elect a trust-fund baby who has, over-time, inherited over $600,000,000.00 from his father.
and in the process you’ve denied the presidency to an experienced and erudite woman whose only shortcoming is being on the receiving end of a 30 year right-wing smear campaign. as a life long progressive i’m supposed to be diplomatic and understanding, but america, what the fuck is wrong with you? but then i ask myself, very sadly, why am i surprised? this is the same america that eats at burger king and is baffled as to why it ends up obese and cancerous and dying this is the same america who thinks that granting health care to 20,000,000 people is somehow treasonous.
and this is the america who has now elected a dim-witted, racist, misogynist. a dim-witted, racist, misogynist who has ruined businesses and has no policy proposals other than ‘build a wall’. i guess there will be some cold, bitter schadenfreude in spending the next 4 years watching middle america wake up to the fact that donald trump is an incompetent con-man.
the rust belt jobs won’t come back. the wall won’t get built. and hillary won’t get locked up.
donald trump will be impeached, or end his presidency with single digit approval ratings. and hopefully, somehow, america will finally wake up the fact that republicans are, simply, terrible. reagan and bush sr. and the republicans ruined the economy, bill clinton and the democrats fixed it. george w. bush and the republicans ruined the economy all over again, obama and the democrats fixed it. in some baffling, habitual masochism americans keep going back to what’s bad for them, whether it’s food or political parties.
and the climate will suffer. the inner cities will suffer. children will suffer. animals will suffer. gun deaths will continue to skyrocket. we will suffer. all because americans live in this delusional, upside down world wherein they’re unwilling to look at evidence.
but here are the facts: junk food makes you fat and kills you. cigarettes give you cancer. and donald trump is a racist and a misogynist who has ruined countless businesses and will be the worst president our country has ever, ever seen.
-moby
R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe also had criticism of the outcome, saying “It is so sad that we have allowed ourselves to sink to this level of reality entertainment, that’s what it is. I blame media completely for it, including Saturday Night Live.”
He also pointedly asked Alec Baldwin, who has been portraying Trump on the show, “What does it feel like from inside? What does it feel like playing that character? It’s satire, it’s brilliantly done, but it’s still adding to the push of… Warhol said, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. How have we created this monster? How have we put our particular American brand on this thing?”
Johnny Marr also had criticism but kept it short and sweet. “A good alternative to Donald Trump for President of the United States: Any reasonable 12-year-old child.”
