No One Listens To Artists

Like a lot of people, I am really bummed about the UK elections.  It seems so obvious that Boris Johnson is a hateful clown; it's unthinkable that anyone would buy anything he's peddling.

Many folks say the same thing about Trump over here.  The thing is, Trump lost the 2016 election by three million votes.  It's only the antiquated Electoral College that let Trump "win."  The fact that pundits & commentators talk about Trump winning "half the country" always obscures the truth that he didn't really win at all.

We can therefore say that more than half of all voters didn't fall for his con-job, & probably most of them still don't.  But I don't want to speculate on that.  I want to talk about something I noticed in the run-up to the UK election:

To a person, artists opposed Boris Johnson.  Musicians, actors, visual artists - look at statements online & you'll see they almost unanimously supported the Labour Party.

This happens in the United States, too.  As was seen at the Republican National Convention in 2016, the biggest "star" they could get - someone who doubtless thought it would revitalize his career, although it obviously hasn't - was a 1980s actor whose biggest role was a supporting part on a long-running but mostly forgotten sitcom.

There may be a Jon Voigt here & there who supports Trump, but the vast majority of musicians, artists, actors, even professional athletes wouldn't go anywhere near that orange toxic waste dump of a man.

Why do artists skew left-wing?  My own thought is that is has to do with empathy.  To create worlds, to channel emotion, to be creative, one needs to be able to extend oneself to attempt to feel & understand many different ideas, points of views, ways of life.  Inside an artist there is rarely "one" person; usually there's a multitude.  & they see the cruelties of the conservative world-view.

& people utterly rely on artists.  Everyone goes to see movies, everyone listens to music, everyone watches television.  Even the most hackneyed & tired creations out there need some form of artist, either by inspiration or creation, to put them together.

Yet it seems most voters in the UK said, fuck the artists, let's go for the ridiculous man who has plainly said hateful & racist things.  Artists said, you will cause more suffering voting for this, you will lose your health care, you will bring economic ruin to your country.  & the average British voter said, as long as it doesn't benefit people who don't look like me, I'm fine.

What is the artist's response to this?  I have no answers.  I just hope that in a year, reflecting over the events of our own election, I'll be able to say, "At least the majority of us in the United States listened to the artists this time."