Songs that Meet the Moment: "It Will Get Worse" - Lifeguard
As the Trump administration hollows out everything from FEMA to Medicaid, Lifeguard’s community-driven, DIY punk feels like a best-case response to surviving our current reality.
It will get worse till you can't stand it at all
Uh-oh
And you wish that you'd get bit, tend to wait for a fall
Uh-oh
“It Will Get Worse” - Lifeguard
I was out for a walk around my neighborhood when I had a chance meeting with a former student. These unexpected encounters can be iffy. You hope it’s a student you connected with; one you liked and whose name you remember. And you hope the same goes for them; that you weren’t just some placeholder they had between more impactful adults. This young man was somewhere in-between, but only because the class he was in wasn’t really a class at all. Flint was in my advisory; which, in theory, was supposed to connect a group of mixed students to a trusted adult for the entirety of their high school experience, people they could anchor to as the other names and faces in their schedule changed from year to year. Our efforts to become a thriving little community were often thwarted, however, by the intrusively tedious administrative tasks that cut into our time. I would rush through ham-fisted slide decks about bullying and the dangers of vaping so we could have real discussions – sometimes about those topics or other less serious things. Free from such clunky interruptions, Flint and I easily fell into conversation after I came across him hunched over, looking intently at a colony of ants as they worked on a piece of discarded donut.
This contemplative posture is consistent with the kid Flint was in advisory: quiet, observant. He’d think before he’d speak. Now, as college graduation waited for him on the other side of summer, I got the sense that he may have been fortune-telling before I interrupted: wondering as he stepped away from UMass and towards his future, what sort of ant he would be, what kind of crumbs he’d be working on. When I asked what he’d been up to he told me how, in between shifts at Whole Foods, he was filling his time with simple pleasures like reading and walks to the beach. Flint found discussing “what’s next” as engaging as one of those scripted advisory questions about his social media use. He was proud to be earning his psychology degree, but was unsure what he would do with it. Grad school is expensive, and “Things are so crazy right now,” he said, “it seems kinda pointless to think too much about the future.” While America sorts itself out, Flint will take some time. Swim in the ocean. Watch the ants.
He wasn’t looking for advice, which was good because I had none. What do you say to a kid trying to live in a moment he is both excited and disillusioned by? I left Flint at the beach gate, and as I turned my music back on, this song from Chicago’s Lifeguard cut through my earbuds:
In an age that confuses optics with honesty – one where algorithms show us filtered images that outrage, distract (and sometimes enrich) our restless eyes – this song and the band who created it merit attention for being something the people running this country are not: thoughtful and authentic.
No one around here
No one around here at all
Donald Trump took the marginal victory given to him by a scared, angry, naive, uninformed, and/or hateful third of eligible voters and combed it over into a mandate. In his second inaugural address he promised to “annihilate” our nation’s problems and lead us “to new heights of victory and success” culminating in our planting the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars. This was typical talk from a half-measure man with a full-measure mouth. On some nights we can see Mars, if we know where to look, but I’m not sure we’ll plant Old Glory there. At least not with this guy in charge of NASA:
Trump has leaned into his policies the way he looked into that solar eclipse during his first term: deliberately, but without deliberation. Combine this with the fact that Trump equates “loyalty” with “merit,” and you have foolish people making foolish decisions – ones Trump either doesn’t know about or will address in two weeks. There’ve been a myriad of lazily executed policies enacted with so much speed the 24 hour news cycle can hardly keep up. Those USAID cuts? They’re doing more damage to women and girls than any transgender track star. Remember Big Balls? He’s left the government. These haphazardly made and poorly thought out decisions – which often differ from the administration’s stated claims – are damaging our collective general welfare and victimizing people in real time. Take these three initiatives:
Government Accountability:
With Executive Order #14210 Trump established his Department of Government Efficiency to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” and then, as promised prior to the election, made mega-donor Elon Musk our Nation’s DOGE-lord. When asked how much DOGE could “rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget,” Musk said, “Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion.” To date, DOGE's own estimated savings total sits at $190 billion, but that’s before you include the costs associated with its incompetency. “Putting tens of thousands of federal employees on paid leave, re-hiring mistakenly fired workers and lost productivity” cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year per the Partnership for Public Service. The remaining $65 billion DOGE saved is only 3.25% of Musk’s lofty savings projections.
Meanwhile, our government has gotten less efficient and less productive, especially when it matters. Those deadly Central Texas floods, which claimed 135 lives, made this fact clear. According to the New York Times, crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service, “including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer… meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate” were unfilled as a result of DOGE’s actions. After the floods hit, the Department of Homeland Security’s response was so badly botched that Ken Pagurek, the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Branch, resigned in protest. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s new policy requiring her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000 kept Pagurek and his crew sitting for 72 wasted hours, waiting for her signature. So much for efficiency and productivity.
Border and Immigration:
Trump has signed 8 Executive Orders dealing with immigration – presumably, as he told congress in a March 4 address, “to take out the criminals, killers, traffickers and child predators…” and “...bring in brilliant, hardworking job-creating people.” But “71.5% (of the people) held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction” according to data dated July 13, 2025. Many of those carrying convictions “have committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
Removing those 71.5% – which undoubtedly includes hardworking contributors to our economy – could potentially have dire economic consequences. Look at the state that has been the focus of Trump’s deportation efforts: California. Detaining and deporting people who, aside from being undocumented, are solid citizens “could impact the state’s GDP by up to $275 billion” according to the Bay Area Council. Bear in mind that, in addition to being a donor state that gives more to the Federal Government than it receives, California is also the 4th largest economy in the world. That economy relies heavily on people who contribute more to the economy than they take out, and yet this administration wants them gone because their presence doesn’t align with some amorphous definition of greatness.
Making America Healthy Again:
With Executive Order 14212, “President Trump has pledged to create the highest quality of life, build the safest and wealthiest and healthiest and most vital communities anywhere in the world.” Programs such as Medicaid already contribute to this admirable goal by providing health coverage to low-income people and families, including children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities. 1-in-5 Americans (undocumented immigrants are not eligible) benefit from this vital program.
When rumors of Medicaid cuts began swirling as Congress began crafting Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the president plainly said "we're not cutting Medicaid, we're not cutting Medicare." And yet, Jessica Glenza and George Chidi noted in The Guardian, “When Trump’s sprawling tax-and-spending bill passed..., it heralded more than $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid.” Less than a day after passing in the House, hospitals in rural Nebraska cited the cuts contained in the bill when they announced they were shutting down. Jeremy Nordquist, president of the Nebraska Hospital Association, told Nebraska Public Media, “This package will undermine health care in our state, hurt patients, and drive-up insurance premiums.” After this happens, how will these Nebraskans get to be healthy again?
This disconnect between the way policies were/are portrayed by the campaign/administration and how they’re executed on the ground has consequences that reverberate long after the media has moved on to something else. That’s this administration’s superpower: its ability to fold time and space in a way that makes current events seem fuzzy and distant enough to never dominate the news cycle the way they would if a Democrat was in office. Remember Signalgate? That guy “accidentally” being sent to a notorious El Salvadoran prison even though he was legally here? Antisemitism has been eradicated, right? Combine the chaos the administration creates with favorable Supreme Court rulings and a weak opposition, and we might as well be ants combing the ground for crumbs of truth or consequences. At least we got music. For now.
It's not enough
To sink your time
Always find you are
Running out of line
Running out of time
Running out of line
“It Will Get Worse” rolling over the credits of my visit with Flint was more than just an prescient needle-drop on our moment in time – from both the “Flint and me” and an existential standpoint. Asher Case, Isaac Lowenstein, and Kai Slater – who started making music together as Lifeguard on the heels of the pandemic – are just a year or two younger than Flint, who’s also the same age as my daughter. While not overtly political, their debut Ripped and Torn is a reflection of and reaction to the isolation that comes from the counterfeit connections people (particularly young people) are constantly plugged into, especially since COVID, ones Flint seemed intent on escaping by getting back to nature. The album is an analog answer to the digital gloss and shine of modern music; a deliberate homage to the seminal punk zine whose name it shares. While Lifeguard embraces bands like The Jam, who they covered on one of their early singles, Ripped and Torn isn’t the band’s attempt to “Make Music Great Again” by trading on nostalgia and complaining about how every other band sucks. It’s the product of three self-described “record dorks” trying to make great music – and succeeding.
How the band go about their business is out of step with the moment in a way that – whether intentional or not – makes them subversive, maybe even more than Kneecap. They design all of the artwork for their records, posters, and merch themselves. It’s an aesthetic rooted in connection, and is the antithesis of shallow, made for Instagram moments like this:
This artistic impulse began, Slater told Juan Velasquez in Teen Vogue, with a zine Slater created during COVID called HalloGallo: “In Chicago, activism started to feel like something that was very tied to repost threads and Instagram. There's not much else you can do when you're in the middle of a pandemic,” Slater says. “So a zine just seemed like the obvious way to be able to distribute information and a form of propaganda for the youth scene.” Soon, “HalloGallo” became the descriptor for the budding DIY music and art community it helped create and document. It’s made space for young bands like Dwaal Troupe, Friko, and Horsegirl alongside indie veterans like NEU!, Sterolab, and Robyn Hitchcock. Velasquez notes, “(Lifeguard) express frustration with how people don’t communicate anymore and how social media subtly distracts us, often draining the energy from real-life interactions.” For them, creating zines, going to shows, doing things that can live outside of the cloud and be shared hand to hand or shoulder to shoulder, “only grows more important as we become so sanitized and censored by fascist forces and social media.” It’s a powerful antidote to the gated communities we create with our keyboards.
I’m indebted to Velasquez, whose piece does an excellent job of capturing why Ripped and Torn and “It Will Get Worse” is a natural next step from “Grace,” the first of my songs that meet the moment: “Many of the tracks on (Ripped and Torn) deal with feeling trapped, emotionally and physically, and touch on the bleakness of isolation,” while “‘It Will Get Worse’ repeats the refrain ‘running out of time’ over clashing guitars with a detached, disaffected tone.” It makes me think of Flint, who may have found his answer – and our way through – in those ants without realizing it. “Every generation needs to do the work to combat what they think is making things worse,” (Lifeguard drummer) Lowenstein says. “I think for us, it's really important to try avoiding all the algorithmic shit and all the distractions.”
Time waits for a turn, waits for a turn, waits for a turn
Uh-oh
And it steps inside only to find accessory
Uh-oh
It could be that things are getting worse for Trump; that, as his policies rip and tear at the fabric of our communities in ways that hurt everyone, he could finally be “running out of line, running out of time.” It’s both encouraging and disappointing that his mishandling of the Epstein files could be his undoing. Encouraging because anyone connected to Jeffrey Epstein’s horrible crimes deserves to be punished, be they named “Trump” or “Clinton” or “Smith.” Disappointing because so many of the moves Trump’s made as president – things that have reached farther and done more damage throughout the country and the world – were made with the gleeful approval of the people who now feel so betrayed by him.
And yet he goes on, waving shiny new distractions in front of us on a daily basis. As new polling shows that Trump is losing support around immigration, the issue he basically owes both of his terms to, and as he struggles to convince us that he’s not in the Epstein files, he’s doubled down, meddling in the branding strategy of two professional sports teams, and taking down Stephen Colbert before setting his sights on President Obama. So far, none of these distractions has taken Jeffrey Epstein’s name and Trump’s connection to it out of the news cycle. New photos and revelations continue to bubble up, but it’s unclear what impact this will have on a man immune to all kinds of political kryptonite, and if Trump falls, we’ll still have a government that works against our best interests.
No one around here
No one around here
No one around here
No one around here at all
Trump took office — twice — by convincing enough people that the discrepancy between the lives they had and the filtered fictions they saw on social media was real. Then he took the feeling of relative deprivation he created, convinced MAGA to blame others for it, and promised “I alone can fix it.” That explains the electorate’s inability to see the Biden economy for the success it was, and why a friend felt fine angrily demanding, “why should we put migrants up in hotels when my kids are barely making it?” I understand that I’m oversimplifying here. A lot of American’s suffered in Biden’s economy, but my friend’s children are “making it” by most objective measures. That they’re “barely” doing so is not because there’s not enough “great” to go around. It’s because too much of it goes to these people:
As members of this 1% rent the entirety of Venice for their wedding, or build a mysterious Hawaiian compound on other peoples’ graves, the Trump administration makes them richer at the expense of my friend’s kids, and Christian campers in Texas, and small-business owners in California, and sick people in rural Nebraska. They just hope we’ll be too busy fighting about team names and trans people to notice when tariffs make back-to-school shopping more expensive and insurance premiums shoot up.
It's not enough
To sink your time
Always find you are
Running out of line
Running out of time
Running out of line
Lifeguard’s success is a direct result of the kind of community building that MAGA works to tear down or subvert. Slater notes, “We’re people that really, really care about the DIY scene.” But he recognizes that, “(the DIY scene) is something that you really have to work hard to keep alive.” I’m not sure there’s a “scene” more DIY than America, or one more fraught with community-killing gatekeepers (who rigidly define and control what belongs) and wannabes (who engage superficially and put style over substance). A single ant can lift up to 100 times its weight, but if they don’t use this strength to make sure there’s enough donut to go around, the colony dies. We aren’t ants, but this communal impulse lives in humans, too. It’s what propelled our comparatively weak, naked and afraid ancestors out of the caves and into the solar system, and it’s something my school clumsily tried to capitalize on with advisory. When the gatekeepers and wannabes subvert that impulse, this happens:
There’s something wrong with the American scene and only WE can fix it. Only maybe we can’t. We may have given too much of our collective strength to a person who means “Me First” when he says “America First” — a man who’s never been truly altruistic his whole life. Add in the fact that nearly everything Donald Trump has ever done has been touched by failure, and you have to wonder if our colony, this 249-year old American experiment that started with a cry of “NO MORE KINGS!,” is running out of time.