Some may remember the 1979 ‘disco demolition’ concert in Chicago. A garish event planned for between the games of a White Sox baseball double-header which invited people to attend with their disco records and have them detonated on the field with explosives (this actually happened).
What ensued was a spontaneous outpouring of disgust against the ubiquitous musical style that had grown to become a lifestyle and taken over much of the popular culture in the West.
As tens of thousands of average people poured into the stadium, it was clear that organiser, a popular local radio ‘disc jockey’, had captured the rising popular mood.
What became known as the ‘end of disco’ concert today marks the moment in history when disco went into a steep decline, never to recover.
The election of Trump is wider and more significant than the personal vindication and political triumph it undoubtedly is.
Trump’s election was the ‘end of disco’ for a modern America riven by Woke division and self-accusation.
It marked that moment when popular revulsion at the Left and its corporate controllers came sharply into public view.
Just as in 1979, when disco stars The Bee Gees switched to writing songs for other artists, never again commanding the heights of the popular music charts, so too are Kamala Harris, the Obamas, and the Clintons being nudged off the stage.
Many of us called this contest right from the start, and supported Trump as a necessary antidote to the rampant elitism and arrogance of the Left and the Deep State.
We have been enjoying a wordless giddiness since November 5, mixed with amusement at the ‘hard coping’ of progressives and the Trump-deranged, as they fail to deal with the fallout from the ‘end of democracy’ election (not the end of democracy).
It will take some time for historians to come to grips with what has happened.
What is clear today is that after four years of Biden’s sketchy rule, managed in the background by an entrenched Deep State and the corporate donor-class, most Americans were fed up.
And they were fed up with more than the cost of living the border.
Much like the thousands who staged a near-riot in Chicago in 1979, most Americans craved a correction – a return to something better, something wholesome and good, something they only missed because it had gone.
The End of Disco concert marked a popular uprising against years of ascendancy by the gender-bending, subversive, and sexually licentious disco movement.
So too, Trump’s election was the result of a massive correction against the destruction of social and moral norms in the United States led by the Woke-Left and their powerful donors and corporate sponsors.
Today, the disco era is a distant memory, laughed at more than seriously missed.
Many commentators on the Right are hoping we have now seen the end of the era of Woke, of rule by corporate-media-progressive elites, and of self-appointed guardians against ‘hate speech’.
Do not be so sure.
Yes, economic and immigration issues were important – but there was a wider, more emotional, almost guttural, dynamic at play: revulsion at the cultural and moral direction of the country.
Trump, the great modern marketer, expertly leveraged this under-tow, highlighting the worst excesses of the Left’s licentious social regime, from the physical harm of children via surgery and powerful drugs, to illegal migrants, to warning of the ‘murder of newborn babies’ under the Democratic Party’s extreme late-term abortion policies in some states.
Many new Trump voters – far from the ‘shy’ voters of 2016 and 2020, are revealing the moment they decided to switch their vote.
They tell of a visceral, urgent decision driven by gut instinct and the bitter experience of the last four years, informed by a generation of hollow Democratic Party promises gone unmet, and near-constant wars fed by debt spending.
The Trump advertisement that grabbed their attention and held them until polling day ended with the tag line, still ringing in the ears of history:
‘Harris is for they/them; Trump is for you.’
We’ve witnessed the turning of the page between eras.
So, what comes next?
The end of disco was followed by the 1980s and 1990s – two decades that produced some of the best, most original and long-lasting pop, rock, and grunge music.
Trump is calling for ‘common sense’ and a return to American greatness – simultaneously vague and ambitious.
For a man under-estimated by all his contemporaries – every one of whom now strewn at his feet – the next four years is full of promise and full of dread.
Trump’s enemies are busy, right now, creating the worst possible conditions for the new presidency.
For example, this week the Biden administration reportedly escalated the war with Russia by green-lighting the launch of US-made missiles into Russia, using US-targeting data.
The Neocon war-mongers appear to want the Ukraine war to get so bad by Inauguration Day that Trump simply cannot make peace.
We have seen the End of Disco politically, but it is possible the Trump presidency may already have peaked.