UPDATE 15/11/16: Flight Facilities have responded to the criticism surrounding their US Election Facebook post
ORIGINAL STORY: You have to give it to Flight Facilities. The pair are eager and willing to engage in important conversations regarding culture, race and politics, but they’ve just landed themselves in hot water.
Over the weekend, the production duo copped a brutal hurricane of abuse for posting what was largely seen as a “privileged” Facebook rant regarding the US election result.
The band’s post (below) begins by describing the election’s outcome and the dawn of Donald Trump as, “one of the greatest reality checks of our time,” but it appears they lose their footing from there. The post is highly critical of the large-scale riots that occurred following the election throughout the US.
They continue, “Instead of kicking, screaming and insulting, maybe it’s time to stop, look around, and look inward as to exactly how this has happened,” before putting forth the argument that the riots were causing more damage than good.
The post concludes, “So, be excellent to each other, especially those you disagree with, and prove to us all that, irrespective of party politics, you can still be the greatest country on Earth,” which must have been a fairly painful thing to hear for minority groups and others actively targeted throughout the Trump campaign.
The ARIA-Award winners copped it from high and low, with fans, fellow artists and media identities all laying into them, including the likes of What So Not and Nina Las Vegas. You can read their full statement alongside some reactions, below.
Flight Facilities Facebook Post
This election should be treated as one of the greatest reality checks of our time. And instead of kicking, screaming and insulting, maybe it’s time to stop, look around, and look inward as to exactly how this has happened. Protesting and rioting in response to a democratically held election, undermines the fabric on which a great country was built. Sometimes things don’t go the way we want them to. That’s life. But if we live by the mentality of turning to violence and intimidation when things don’t go our way, why should we expect our adversaries to take the higher ground when it does?
There’s a cultural divide that has taken place, and the world is trying to point the finger, yet nobody wants to look at themselves. We’ve created a pop-culture, internet generation. A generation of people who have lost the ability to challenge their own preconceptions. We pick our friends on Facebook. We choose who we follow on Instagram. We select who to follow on twitter. And then delete, ignore, insult or pigeonhole anyone who differs from us, instead of asking “Why?”
We individually craft our own perfect little bubbles, then have the audacity to ask “how the hell could this happen?!” when the cards aren’t in our favour. We’re so buried in social media ‘likes’, viral nonsense, and a smug sense of self-congratulatory narcissism, that anybody asking “how could they be so out of touch with us?”, has dared not consider that “maybe it’s us who are out of touch with them?”.
The mainstream media wrote it off. Social media ignored it. Hollywood laughed at it. And the polls never saw it coming. Has anybody volunteered accountability yet? No. Because even now that the results are in, those groups will, somehow, profess themselves as the ‘smart ones’ who ‘get it’, as they continue to belittle the 59million+ Americans who likely used that as motivation to make their voices heard.
Diversity of elements like ideas, culture, class and race are all attributes that define a beautiful country as a whole. And naturally they divide us, too. Does racism exist? Absolutely. Are we to assume over half a country is racist? Absolutely not. To generalise about the complexities in the majority of a voting nation, is no better than the act of racism itself. America should be proud to have made a huge step in electing an African-American President, twice. The Republican party won the 2016 election with less of the white vote, than when it lost in 2012, which hopefully suggests that this week’s truly unbelievable result is less about hate, and more about the resonance of something more we failed to see.
The sun will rise tomorrow. The world will keep turning. So, be excellent to each other, especially those you disagree with, and prove to us all that, irrespective of party politics, you can still be the greatest country on Earth.
Flight Facilities Facebook Post Comments
