Trying to dance under the cloud of election anxiety

My partner and I were still buzzing with adrenaline from seeing pop star Dua Lipa close out Saturday night at the Austin City Limits music festival when we were subject to a drunk woman's 10-minute rant about how she hates her Democratic friend. Lipa's tour and album were both titled "Radical Optimism," and we were emersed in her curated world for over an hour, dancing and singing with an eclectic crowd of all races and sexual identities. We enjoyed our freedom as if nearly half the country isn't poised to snatch it all away. We were soon hit with a reality check. As we walked away from the show, we kept pace with a fellow concertgoer as she loudly denounced a friend for voting for Vice President Kamala Harris. 

"All she talks about is abortion," the woman, who looked in her late 20s or early 30s, slurred at her two friends. "But she won't listen about the economy. She said she doesn't care about the economy!"

I was skeptical that this woman felt much financial distress in President Joe Biden's economy, considering she got so loaded at a show where beer was $15 a pop. (I suspect she had been watching the other festival headliner, country star Chris Stapleton, even though he does not share her politics.) My suspicions about her true levels of economic anxiety were confirmed when she turned off the road into her home, in a neighborhood where houses frequently sell for over a million dollars. As I joked to my partner, whatever actual words came out of this woman's mouth, all I could hear was, "I think complicity will save me." But as more Republican women find out all the time, it really won't. 

The unwilling eavesdropping was a microcosm of the whole weekend. The Donald Trump defender was certainly the outlier at this three-day weekend in Texas's capital city. Austin, where I lived for nearly 15 years before moving east, is an iconic example of a blue city in a red state; a haven for hipsters, intellectuals and LGBTQ people who are often running from the more conservative towns they grew up in.

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The festival was even more of a blue bubble, mostly populated by queer and feminist artists and fans, all wearing their progressive politics on their sleeves. During pop singer Remi Wolf's set, for instance, she ran around the stage waving the Progress Pride Flag while singing a cover of the Rascal Flatts hit "Life is a Highway." Even the country stage featured Orville Peck, a gay country artist, who was joined by Willie Nelson for a rendition of "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other."

Inside the bubble, freedom felt inevitable. Still, the ugly reality kept seeping in. Amid joy, there were reminders that millions of MAGA Americans are gearing up to vote for a man who, with Project 2025, is planning to take all that freedom away. I danced to girl groups, only to look down at my phone to see a flurry of texts from friends freaking out about the polls. I'd have dinner with old friends from Texas and they would ask about the political climate of my current home, in the swing state of Pennsylvania. A friend proudly told me about her daughter coming out while in junior high school, and then fretted for the future of all her kids. 

I hadn't attended the Austin City Limits festival in over 15 years, which made it a useful benchmark for how much cultural progress has occurred since the early years of Barack Obama's presidency. Even by liberal Austin standards, the vibe was far gayer and more female than it was back then, with far more — exponentially more — representation for women, people of color and LGBTQ people than when I was younger. (I think I saw only one band with a straight white male lead, out of over a dozen sets.) By and large, these dramatic cultural shifts aren't welcomed by the millions of people voting for Trump in November. It was such a joy to be in this space of freedom for three days. But I could never truly forget that a fascist candidate is tied in the polls with Harris because millions of Americans want to steal that freedom away. 

These tensions came to a head for me during the last song of the last set I saw at the festival: "Pink Pony Club" by Chappell Roan. In the past few months, Roan has experienced a meteoric rise, going from a relatively unknown artist to having five songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100. Her drag queen-inspired look and horny odes to lesbian lust certainly made her the hottest show at the festival, which was the last stop on what has been a wild summer tour. Unsurprisingly, emotions were running high in the crowd. Nearly all the 75,000 people at the festival that day came to her set, all seeming to know every word of her hit singles. 

"Pink Pony Club" is a song about a queer kid arguing with a homophobic parent over her choice to move to Los Angeles to live life on her own terms. "She sees her baby girl, I know she's gonna scream/God, what have you done?/You're a pink pony girl/And you dance at the club," Roan sang. But the narrator rebels against her mother's oppression: "Oh mama, I'm just having fun/On the stage in my heels/It's where I belong." A sweet song at any time, but it's currently resonating with so many people, even those who aren't gay or don't have intolerant parents because it captures the larger conflict tearing this country apart. Some want their freedom to last forever. And others cannot stand to let them have it. 

Standing in a crowd of thousands belting out the lyrics, I couldn't help but sing through tears. The song is joyful, but with an unmistakable undertone of frustration and despair. "Still love you and Tennessee/You're always on my mind," Roan sang, but this love is met only with a hate that is frankly inexplicable.

Why does MAGA America care so much? Why can't they just let the rest of us keep dancing? How is any of this hurting them? Why are they going to such lengths, backing a man who literally tried to overthrow democracy, just to punish the rest of us for being free? There are reams of political science research into the origins of fascism, but understanding it intellectually only goes so far. But for that moment we sang together, a collective yelp of determination to keep dancing. The weekend was soon over and it was time to leave the fantasy world to return to the real world, where resentful Trump voters want to tear everything to the ground. We only have three weeks left before we know who prevails: the pink pony girls or the fascists who want to stomp them out.