In Trump’s America, There’s No Escape
I tried to get away from our dark political reality with Dylan and ‘yacht rock’ and more—but music movies couldn’t shield me forever.
THE 2024 ELECTION RESULTS ARE IN THE BOOKS. Congress ended this ignominious chapter with dignity, order, and brevity. And Donald Trump didn’t deserve it—either the presidency or the deference to norms.
But it’s official now. He won, and we have to figure out what to do next.
To be honest, I was shocked by my reaction to this completely predictable, procedural act on Capitol Hill. If I had to distill it to one word, it would be fury, even after all these years. Trump hates America when he loses, I thought. He incites violence and death when he loses. He only tolerates America when he wins. He only behaves when he wins. He expects others to behave when he wins.
And it wasn’t much of a win, either time. Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 yet beat him by nearly 2.9 million votes in the popular vote. Joe Biden defeated him by over 7 million votes in 2020. Trump is now, finally, a popular-vote winner—but his margin over Kamala Harris was less than 2.3 million votes, and he didn’t even crack 50 percent in the popular vote.
Yes, I was so upset that I looked up all the math. And yes, it did make me feel better. Until I saw this:
Democrats are always expected to behave and set standards and uphold norms. And did they ever. Even Kamala Harris, who had to preside over the counting that cemented her loss to a convicted felon, as she repeatedly called him during her campaign. Who had to put up with it when Republican Sen. Deb Fischer’s husband gracelessly refused to look at her or shake her hand.
One after another, Democrats said they wanted to model a peaceful, constitutional transfer of power. And I understand, I really do. When Adam Schiff said Saturday that he would attend the joint session of Congress on January 6 to finalize the election results, I wrote that “I can’t argue with this. At the same time, what a choice one-time impeachment manager and new Sen. Adam Schiff has been forced to make, thanks to the baffling choices made by American voters.”
More than one person responded that they could indeed “argue with this.” I get that, too. In spades.
Music movies as comfort food
MY ONE NEAT TRICK to avoid thinking about any of this over the last couple of weeks has been to bury myself in films about music. Seven of them. I didn’t find deliverance, but time-travel to decades past has been a compelling distraction.
My family began our journey on Christmas with the Disney+ documentary Music by John Williams—gratefully sinking into this amazing composer’s biography, the inescapable hold of his music on our collective memories, and in particular his half-century collaboration with Steven Spielberg. They have made twenty-nine films together, from 1974’s Sugarland Express to The Fabelmans in 2022, from big sharks to extraterrestrials to dinosaurs, Indiana Jones, and World War II.
We closed out our music odyssey with HBO’s Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, in which we learned about Michael McDonald’s frenetic life as a composer, singer, and keyboard player in demand by practically every band recording in Los Angeles (who knew he was not just a mere Doobie Brother? And part of Steely Dan?). We belatedly realized we should have had more respect for Toto, a band so good they succeeded the 1960s Wrecking Crew as best-in-the-business session musicians—even as they turned out their own hits. (Also, “yacht rock” was the title of a 2005 “mockumentary” web series about soft rock stars of the ’70s and ’80s. It has nothing to do with boats unless you count Sailing, by Christopher Cross.)
Between John Williams and “yacht rock,” there was Beatles ’64 on Disney+, full of revelations even though I’d lived through the Beatles invasion of America as one of those bonkers preteen girls. They arrived a few months after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the film tacitly suggests that they were a much needed tonic—a tight band with tight harmonies, relatable yet revelatory original songs, big personalities, and constant jokes. They clearly enjoyed each other and the music they were making, and even watching them in old footage on a screen was a blast.
There was Brenda Lee: Rockin’ Around, from the PBS American Masters series. It’s the story of the tiny prodigy with the astonishing voice who won a school talent contest at age 5 and never stopped singing. Throughout her career, she managed to find upstanding people to guide her, and to transcend genres without fans getting angry if she sang pop or rock instead of country or rockabilly. Lee even scored a no. 1 hit with the song that gave the film its title, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, in December 2023—65 years after its release.
There was Elton John: Never Too Late on Disney+, which follows his last concerts in America (in 2022) as it fills in the backstory of a boy raised by violent parents who beat him in private and public, one of them a father who hated rock-and-roll. But the music triumphed over everything, and John himself triumphed over alcohol, drugs, and an abusive early relationship to marry and start a family later in life.
On Beatles night of our marathon, we had heard Paul McCartney talk about writing “She Loves You” with John Lennon, then going into the next room to play it for Paul’s father, who told the boys it was “very nice” but suggested they say “yes, yes, yes” instead of “yeah, yeah, yeah.” It was funny and lovely, and a sad contrast to the abuse Elton John and other artists endured.
Which brings us to The Beach Boys on Disney+, a touching yet far from idyllic family story of three brothers, their cousin, and their friend forming a band. There was, again, an abusive father. There was drug use. But through it all there was the music, so buoyant and seemingly carefree—yet so sophisticated as well.
That was fueled in part by the interplay, news to us, between the Beatles and the Beach Boys: the influence of Rubber Soul on Brian Wilson (he wrote “God Only Knows” after hearing it), the influence of “Good Vibrations” and the Pet Sounds album on the Beatles (who released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the following year). They knew each other, they inspired each other, and their creative competition lifted both bands to greater heights.
We observed New Year’s Day with an outing to see A Complete Unknown. To our complete surprise, it was wonderful, and so was Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan. He can sing and play and, yes, act. Like a jerk at times, to be sure. But also as a seeker and a creator, capable of conveying poignancy in the scenes between Dylan and a rapidly deteriorating Woody Guthrie, the electricity of Dylan’s breakout moments, and the hard-headed, sometimes abrasive certainty he needed to push forward and evolve, no matter how much that annoyed the folk purists.
We could not outrun reality forever
WE TRIED TO KEEP the music going Monday night, after I had done my election math and calmed down. But here I will offend untold thousands by confessing that we turned off the TV about fifteen minutes into a Kennedy Center concert with Sara Bareilles, interspersed with comments from her and others about their insecurities and letting love guide your life. This just could not compete with the edgy music films or the despair-inducing news of the day.
Which ended pretty much as it started, with a new outrage: Trump making an aggressive play to block the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report(s) on his two federal felony cases about Trump’s schemes to overturn the 2020 election and keep top-secret classified documents at his golf club home in Florida.
The president-elect (God help us) will never be able to redeem himself. Attorney General Merrick Garland could achieve at least some measure of redemption, though, if he releases the report(s)—just as he released Special Counsel Robert Hur’s unflattering report describing an elderly, memory-impaired Biden during Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign.
And the sooner, the better. Garland and Biden should make this happen within hours. Every day that goes by without a full airing of Smith’s findings is another day for Trump to manipulate, appeal, judge-shop, and work his will.
The delay is especially nerve-racking for people who can’t stop caring. I learned I was one of them as a teen at Dublin’s Trinity College while the Watergate scandal was heating up back home. It should have been easy to tune out, but I couldn’t. No matter how much we wish and how hard we try, at least for some of us, there’s no escape from being an American.
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