The past two years for me can be characterized as my exploration into the realms of Independent music and film. After being inundated by generic product all my life, discovering what music and film can truly do is like discovering an entirely new world that was actually just in my backyard. I encountered so many events, memories and actions that I wouldn't have before, like playing "No Surprises" by Radiohead at the NJASC Leadership Training Conference talent show, moshing at a Ty Segall concert, or watching "Garden State" for the first time, which made me want to dedicate myself to making films. Independent music and film has shaped my life so much that I could not imagine how my life would have gone without it.
Therefore, it's no wonder that I have had distrust in Hollywood and Top 40 music in the process. Listening to the radio or going to the latest Marvel movie, I could see flaws that I hadn't seen before. My entertainment life has been a huge lie.
After a while, though, I started to get a little tired of specific facets. For film, I missed an exhilarating film that kept me up for an hour when I went to bed that night, or the comedy that let me just sit back and laugh at something stupid for the sake of being stupid. In music, I was tired of the constant experimentation, the heavy use of irony to the part where irony was the new earnestness. And, going back to more mainstream alternatives (oxymoron, am I right?), I found that I was gravitating toward Independent art because all I've been exposed to in my life was the mainstream, and focusing specifically in the Independent realm was somehow a compensation for all the time I've missed. More specifically, though, I realized this: different doesn't mean better.
At the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, Eric Trump, son of Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, said "vote for the candidate that isn't a politician." This was met with huge applause, and I think that Eric Trump had keyed into the zeitgeist that has galvanized so many people into voting for Trump. With a stagnant Congress and a series of stolid establishment presidents in a row, much of Middle America is looking for an outsider to come in and use his or her fresh perspective on issues that have baffled those with experience, just as Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson and Ross Perot have done before. This reincarnation of this idea now is Donald Trump, a businessman.
It helps, too, that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, is as much as an insider as anyone can get. Wife of a former president and former Senator and Secretary of State, Hillary has also been criticized of being corrupt and a trustee, two common criticisms of politicians. That and several other reasons is why so many people, despite everything, have flocked to Trump, someone who has business experience, someone who doesn't need campaign contributors, someone who isn't a politician.
But let's be honest here. How much foreign policy experience has he had? If he gives all of his opponents names like "lyin' Ted," "little Marco," and "crooked Hillary," how is he going to negotiate with world powers? I'm thinking patronizing Putin, but I'm starting to also think that the only adjectives in Trump's vocabulary are "great" and "huge." He's a businessman, but how does that guarantee he is going to fix the economy, not just businesses themselves? Trump's complex solution to fixing the economy is to deregulate business, whereas the three biggest economic crashes in the past century (1920s, 1980s, 2000s) have happened during administrations where big business was at its least regulated. It's easy to say that an outsider can help with a job that isn't typically his, but does that mean that every outsider can? Sure, Lionel Messi might be good at track, but does that mean that Bartolo Colon would be, too?
And I'm not imposing a double-standard, here. Just as being an outsider isn't inherently better than being an insider, the opposite isn't true either. In many respects, I voted for an outsider in the primaries, except it wasn't a businessman; it was a senator from Vermont. However, when you put on that red baseball cap, make sure you're doing it not because of a person's perspective but instead what that person has gained from his perspective.
