Buck up, blue states

"One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain." - Bob Marley, Trenchtown Rock
"Fear is a weapon of mass destruction." - Faithless, Mass Destruction
"Anger is a gift." - Rage Against the Machine, Freedom


Music has always been there for me.
Like many people, I have always popped on the headphones when life's churned up some turbulence.
Through two decades punctuated by the occasional heartaches, disasters and defeats, pop music has been my constant solace. Bob Marley's double entendre gets right to the root of its relieving, anesthetizing, cathartic effects. It's always seemed to me that even - actually, especially - the saddest of songs can bleed away my blues.
But late Tuesday night, as I sat sprawled against a couch on my roommate's floor, music wasn't enough.
While some friends and I watched Ohio slip away, Roomie had been busy downloading some hot new jams. When I retreated to his room, the election wasn't quite over, but it may as well have been. When he tried to raise my spirits with sonics, I realized that no mere record could possibly assuage my rapidly mounting anxiety.
Particularly not Le Tigre's cover of "I'm So Excited," which only sounded like a cruel, cruel joke.
Given the high stakes of this election, it's not surprising that campus was such a sad sight on Wednesday. All the liberals and moderates - which is to say, a mighty hefty chunk of the student body - looked pretty inconsolable. Apparently, music wasn't enough for lots of us. Aside from a few ebullient College Republicans whose smiles were just begging to be kicked in, there was no joy in Mudville.
But this is certainly not the right time to accept ignominious defeat, or curl up and die of disappointment.
The presidency is lost, but an opposition strong enough to express the will of the 56 million people who voted against Bush this time around is not only a possibility but a necessity.
To further such an opposition's chances of coming into being by improving morale, and in the spirit of the Rage and Faithless quotes above, let's remember a few of the positive effects this election will likely have on pop music.
For example: By most accounts, pop gets better when the world is losing its mind. Just peep the '60s. I fully anticipate that as America's geopolitical role gets crazier, the music we're listening to will improve - at least until the crusading evangelical moral majority that now rules the country finishes off the infidels and us faggots, and starts in on rock'n'roll.
Of course, in Bush's defense, given how much his daughters seem to enjoy the swinging social scenes of blue-state metropolises, that day might still be a few years off.
Another corn kernel-like nugget of hope in the record-setting pile of elephant shit that Tuesday's results constituted is the possibility that P. Diddy will act on the threat implicit in his "Vote or Die" campaign. If you didn't make it to the polls, watch your back, because Diddy has many, many Sean John shivs.
And just imagine the next Radiohead and Bruce Springsteen records.
I don't mean to make light of a bad situation. As I see it, the world just changed for the worse, and the next four years have the potential to be truly dire.
Things are looking pretty bad right now for those of us afraid of a draft, a Supreme Court stacked to defeat Roe v. Wade, and the most epic budgetary buck-passing in American history.
But it does nobody any good to mope about. The quicker that former Kerry supporters get up off the mat and start swinging again, the better the chances for damage control.
Music wasn't much of a match for the apocalyptic disappointment of Tuesday night, but as we move on from that experience, it will once again motivate, move and comfort us.
Buck up, Blue States. It's time to start working again to take the country back. And don't forget to whistle.