Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” For The GenXers Who Voted In Trump
GenX went harder for Trump than any other generation.
I saw the worst minds of the GenX destroyed by social media, starving ideologically naked,
dragging themselves from forwarding pro-Iraq-War email chains to joining Tea Party Facebook groups, to following MAGA Twitter trolls, to sharing QAnon Truth Social conspiracies till dawn looking for a Culture War outrage fix,
mid-life hotheads burning Fox News and Newsmax into the pixels of their televisions,
demagogic followers yearning for a modern connection to the fascist dynamo in the machinery of right wing government,
who cowered in easy chairs in their underwear burning their money in campaign donations for a wannabe billionaire’s legal fees and vulgar NFTs flaunting his fictional superhero virility,
who paced marital walks down mansion driveways aiming guns at peaceful civil rights protesters,
who chanted under the Capitol on January 6th for libertarian angels staggering through Congress defecating on the floors and pissing on the walls, beating up cops, and chanting “hang the vice president,”
who in stupors of economic frustration sat up comment-ranting in the supernatural darkness of rural and suburban basement home offices about urban chaos contemplating mass arrests, police brutality, walls, deportations, and doors shut on refugees,
who injected disinfectant and drank bleach while waiting for COVID test results, and purgatoried their immune systems day after day of neither masking nor social distancing,
who plunged themselves into hydroxychloroquine binges poisoning their stomachs and colon lining,
who swallowed horse medicine and dribbled their incontinence into their denim overalls,
who shot AR-15s at things labeled with names of liberal legislators in campaign commercials threatening invisible specters of Democratic gun control,
who shrugged off school shootings sharing pro-life memes in their Facebook group chats,
who burned books written with feminine and ethnic perspective or transgender experience,
who let themselves be f***ed in the ass by homophobic preachers and anti-gay legislators,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the young Latin pool boys of Evangelical university administrators,
who bared their hearts to a Republican Jesus with knives in their mouths to cut safety nets of bureaucratic charity,
who dreamt of nostalgically segregated towns where gays weren’t out of the closet and no one ever heard of unisex bathrooms,
who shunned and cast out their queer children lamenting the modern era’s scarcity of family values,
who hoped for patriarchal militarism with homoerotic aesthetics propagandized by totalitarian dictators with delusions of ethno-nationalist homogeneity,
who wept at the diversity and globalism of the streets calling any place with Black people “sketchy,”
who hallucinated in exurban enclaves and survivalists’ underground bunkers nightmare visions of urban voter fraud by bohemian hedonists bleeding red for communism,
who chained themselves to their gas stoves, coal mines, and fossil fuel car engines rolling coal down the interstate,
who clutched tight to their plastic straws, sexy green M&M mascots, Dr. Seuss picture books with out-of-date illustrated stereotypes, and gender-specific potato-based children’s toys hiding from the inevitabilities of cultural change,
who muttered profanities under their breath in public at reminders of Democratic governors and presidents.
who blazoned their hats, shirts, rural billboards, and bumper stickers with political Tourette’s slogans of “F*ck Joe Biden,” “Let’s Go Brandon,” and “Joe & the Hoe” to own the libs,
who were caught posting from burner accounts argumentative prefaces such as “As a lesbian Black woman, I think…” to publish attacks against gays, Blacks, and women,
who fumed ceaselessly about a president’s son’s penis to bury their heads in the sand of the jury-confirmed sex crimes of their preferred candidate,
who worshiped pedantry clapping to the hypnotic beat of militant whataboutism defending novel administrative depravities they cheer for!
What sphinx of petty grievances and juvenile comportment bashed open their skills and ate up their brains?
Trump! Narcissism! Filth! Ugliness! Obsessed with dollars! Women screaming at his Tic Tac breath! Conservative men cowering beneath his autocratic egomania!
Trump! Trump! Unindictable Trump, blackmailer of the GOP!
Trump whose empathy is a void! Trump whose mind is a dynamo of antichrist self-aggrandizement! Trump who says I alone can fix it!
Trump who will destroy American democracy before going to prison for his lifetime of crime!
Mad generation! 🥃
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