Wilco's Summerteeth (or "How I Didn't Learn To Stop Worrying And Love The Electoral Process")

As I write this this we are exactly a half hour away from Election Day 2012 here in the President’s adopted home city of Chicago. I wasn't planning on writing this tonight, indeed, there are many other things that I should be writing, but I can’t seem to think about anything else. I guess what this all comes down is an overly-long justification for a confession that I can’t decide if I’m proud or embarrassed of.

I’m listening to Summerteeth right now and it’s the right album for a number of reasons. I’ll save you my amazing Zaltzman-style pun-run (the electoral tension? “I Can’t Stand It!”) and say that Wilco’s drugged-out neo-Wilsonian masterpiece is fitting because it perfectly balances optimism and despair, the dark night of the soul and the bright shining hope and that’s about as good an analogy for my attitude towards recent politics as any.

So about that confession… yeah. For those who know me this is probably pretty hard to believe but now, as of 11:41 on Monday November 5, 2012, I, John Michael Tryneski am still an undecided voter.

Stiff Little Fingers - Silver Lining

Well it appears that the elected representatives of America WILL be able to work each other just enough to pass a mostly symbolic measure that will keep our economy being detonated like a careless appendage on the 4th of July. Throughout the debt debate, I was consistently amazed at just how far to the right political discourse has moved in recent years. I don't think that most Americans really want to punish the poor and ask nothing of the rich, but goddamn does the other side do a better job getting heard.


So where do I go at times like these? Ironically enough, to the UK of the late 1970s. The Stiff Little Fingers have often been called "the Irish version of the Clash." I, for one, consider that a compliment. SLF could rock just as hard as their British idols on any given night and they even pulled off a nifty reggae cover when needed, so the comparisons are not unfounded. Writing in 1981 the boys from Belfast penned a perfect soundtrack our status quo.