The Tide is Turning is what I felt on discovering that the Democrats had won such a major victory in the midterms. It took a few days to sink in, but it is a sentiment that I echoed to many people who lamented that the Senate did not flip to Democratic during the midterms. The Senate had almost no chance of flipping, as the number crunchers over at fivethirtyeight.com tried to point out, repeatedly.
The Tide is Turning is the title and refrain of a Roger Waters song, a tribute to Live Aid. I was reminded of Live Aid when I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody recently. I had never looked back on that event, and it’s music, as having been such an influence. Watching the recreation of Queen’s performance at that event as portrayed in the film, I was struck by how quaint it was. How quaint it was that the world got together and raised funds for the starving children in Africa back in 1985.
Quaint that we thought we could just change the world with that one event. Here we are, 33 years later. None the wiser, and one whole hell of a lot more cynical. And yet. And yet.
The midterm results show that the cynics are passing into irrelevance once again. There is no other way to read those returns. The largest shift in the membership of the House of Representatives in a generation. A Democratic shift all through the body politic, across all the states and the federal government. The tide truly appears to be turning once again, and it is about damn time too.
I remember listening to a copy of Radio K.A.O.S. shortly after its release. This song brought me to tears even then. Raised on M*A*S*H, self identifying with the hippies and long hairs more than I ever did with the high and tights of my time, the notion that technology could be taken out of the hands of the military and used make human lives better was a dream I most fondly wanted to see come true.
It still hasn’t come true, but the first sense of nostalgia that I’ve ever experienced, a longing for the good ol’ days, days that might actually have been better, was watching Rami Malek embody what it was to be
Freddie Mercury on screen. Watching him perform at Live Aid and realizing that Queen’s performance at Live Aid would go down in history as the peak of their popularity. That Live Aid itself codifies what it means to truly be human, to care about others to such a degree that you would give completely of yourself to save them. I just wish that we had gone on to take AIDS seriously enough that we could have saved Freddie Mercury.
But the world is changing. Change holds hope. Which is good, because frankly I haven’t had much reason to hope since 1999.
Satellite buzzing through the endless night, exclusive to moonshots and world title fights. Jesus Christ, imagine what it must be earning.
Roger Waters – Radio K.A.O.S. – The Tide is Turning
