Retro Video of the Week: "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour

Four years ago, the day after Donald Trump was elected president, I posted R.E.M.'s "It's The End of the World As We Know It" and Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" as the Retro Videos of the Week.  Both songs seemed to accurately sum up what I was feeling at the time.  Four years later, as Trump's tenure in the White House is crashing to a fiery end, I'd like to highlight "Cult of Personality" again.  Even when it was released in 1988, it seemed like a powerful song.  Musically, it didn't really fit within the confines of the popular hard rock genres of the day.  It didn't sound like a hair band, nor did it sound like thrash metal.  Simply put, it's just a damn good hard rock song.  Vernon Reid's riff is brutal, and his guitar playing is spectacular.

Lyrically, though, it's a scathing commentary on the "cult of personality" -- the cultural/political phenomenon when a political leader or hopeful leader uses propaganda, lies, so-called patriotism, and the like to create an idealized version of him- or herself as a demigod.  Only what that person says should be taken as the truth, and anything that is contrary to what that person says is condemned and rejected as false or unpatriotic, regardless of its basis in actual fact.  Sound familiar?  Needless to say, the cult of personality is commonly associated with authoritarian regimes.

The song discusses various political and social leaders on both sides of the political spectrum, mainly from the second half of the 20th Century, and it comments on how they use their constituents' emotions against them to gain power and trust.  Sound familiar?  As Trump and his band of merry idiots try to discredit and dismantle American democracy, and as Trump's followers blindly believe his ridiculous claims of voter fraud (which is a phenomenon that simply does not exist in any significant manner in this country), and as Trump scoffs at the notion of a peaceful transition of power that our country has always enjoyed, listen to the lyrics of this song.  

"I exploit you / Still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three."  That essentially sums up the last four years -- and even now, as Trump is literally trying to say that he won states in which he was soundly defeated.  When this is all over -- whether by Trump resigning early, being dragged kicking and screaming from the White House on January 20, or going the cowardly way of Adolf Hitler -- it is my sincere hope that at least some of his supporters come out of whatever trance this charlatan put on them and realize they were duped, like someone who escaped from a cult.  Perhaps even some of them will choose to believe in science and fact again or re-open that part of their brains that engages in critical thinking, and maybe they'll even start wearing masks and socially distancing, so that we can all, as a nation, help quash COVID as much as possible while we impatiently wait for a vaccine.