It's The Party v. The Pariguayos
People will want to dance, sing, and love. Hate can't beat the innate.
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What Bad Bunny did during the Halftime show, will go down as a testament to love, resilience, poetry, music, and movement. It also was just a mf party that would move you regardless if you moved toward it.
It’s hard to be angry at a song you know is catchy, to not move to a joyous melody, to actively dislike something that tastes delicious, to refuse a romantic gesture from someone you’re attracted to, to actively hate someone who invites you to join in love.
One of these things has got to give. When actually faced with these alternatives, many people’s visceral anger and hate, especially millennials and younger, doesn’t have a strong enough foundation against the immediate and lifelong benefits of love and joy. They give way to fun. Hate…just gets old. It atrophies. Love is, and has always been, a more active muscle.
This is why so many (old) people want to keep education and exposure far from reach for future generations. To keep traditions of ignorance and closemindedness alive. As they have for seasonless generation upon generation. But it’s too late. The metropolises and the internet have spoken. Fun wins out…if it’s up to the youth.
Now, our systems are not up to the youth—but the old guard is going to expire, and that’s why they’re flailing and grasping at straws.
Telling any young person to avoid the objectively cooler party had a great success rate since never. Elvis, Sinatra, the Beatles, Nirvana, all of Hip-Hop, which is now also a Billion dollar industry. L after L after L after L.
But still they try.
‘Pariguayo’ is a slang term in Spanish that originates from the US occupation of the Dominican Republic during the 1960s. It can mean an inept person, but its original purpose essentially meant ‘party-watcher.’ During the occupation, many American soldiers would go to local parties and just stand there while the people of the Dominican Republic danced meregue, batchata, salsa, etc, and enjoyed mf life. As is the history of so much of Latina America, the Carribean, and Africa — to dance and sing regardless of the injustice in the outside world.
Eventually, this dynamic, as it always does, will exist here, too.
Eventually, as time goes on it’s no longer The Republicans v. The Democrats
The Left v. Right.
Zionists v. Anti-Zionists.
No. It’s the right side of history v. the wrong side.
The side that didn’t want Sammy playing with Frank, and the Rat Pack became world renown. That thought Cuban Desi Arnaz playing and dancing on TV with a white woman was too ‘racy’ decades before Modern Family would become a household favorite. Who didn’t want Aaron to break Ruth’s record, nor Jackie to even step on the field—and now Shohei Ohtani shares the face of baseball with Aaron Judge.
The people were against Loving and for Virginia, and now have accepted the umpteenth conservative ‘hero’ in an interracial marriage. The current grandparents who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges on her way to school and clutch pearls at trans and immigrant ‘threats’ to child safety now. Who didn’t want a Jew in Levittown, Black people in Rosedale, a Palestinian at the DNC, or a Muslim for Mayor of New York City.
Some will always remain. Hating from afar. Looking on from their own talcolm-powder dry, swag deficient side of town.
But they dwindle in number. A wack party is a wack party. People leave. A good time just looks too appealing. And good-time seekers acquiesce to the fact that it comes with different complexions. And, for many, though not all, through exposure, that acquiescence turns ignorance to tolerance—and tolerance to empathy.
The rest just remain to watch and grow old in their crusty, stale animus.
La Gozadera against the Geriatric.
The Party v. The Pariguayos.
And the party undefeated.
