Insert Foot picks Neal Schon’s side while lamenting the probable end of Journey.

Merry Christmas. Journey is dead. 

I don’t want to screw up Jesus’ birthday for fans, but Jonathan Cain has attached himself to the flaming orange Hindenburg that is Donald Trump, and Neal Schon – the other important guy still in the band – isn’t having it.

I write this because I live in the Bay Area, Journey is a Bay Area band, I wore Journey shirts in eighth grade, and Journey and I are both old and don’t listen to modern music unless our kids make us. Then we pretend to relate, go back in our room, and watch Netflix alone in the dark, crying softly.

Maybe that’s just me?

Journey guitarist Neal Schon, who’s married to Michaele Salahi, who became famous for sneaking into an Obama state dinner with the last guy she married, is mad at keyboardist Cain, whose wife is Paula White-Cain, Trump’s former spiritual advisor.  

Uh-huh. My deep intelligence and sharp acumen (11/12ths of a community college political science degree) is cleverly calculating how this plays out: After nearly 50 years of existing, Donald Trump may be the final nail in the Journey coffin. 

Schon recently filed a cease-and-desist order against Cain, to prevent him from using Journey’s music at Trump rallies. Cain allegedly performed “Don’t Stop Believing” at a Trump event because … I don’t know. He’s a 72-year-old white man with a soul patch? It doesn’t matter. He’s clearly a deranged Trump worshipper and trying to become his generation’s Mike Love.

Cain, in turn, blames Schon for hurting the Journey brand with his history of suing everyone who breathes and his own weird behavior associated with his wife. 

This is all really gross. Does anyone else feel a little sick to their stomach? I mean, besides Steve Perry? 

Actually, Perry is probably enjoying this, not being in Journey anymore and knowing he doesn’t need any of this because he was clever enough to slap “Oh Sherrie” on a solo record and can live a long life not having to share a dime of the residuals with his former bandmates. Though he still has to live with that Christmas record he made last year. 

So a couple elderly rock stars are lobbing verbal bombs at each other. It’s Christmas and you’re trying to open presents and determine how much cash you can get with all those returns tomorrow. Who cares?

Well … we do. Because we live in the Bay Area. We legally have to care about Journey; Just like we had to vote for Carlos Santana in all those best guitarist polls. How else can we pretend to keep up with the cool places? 

For all its wild success, Journey has always proved to be resilient, through breakups, lawsuits, backstabbing, warring factions and money squabble. The band replaced two lead singers (three, technically), the last of which with a guy from a tribute band in another country they found on YouTube … and yet it keeps playing arenas? Forget about Keith Richards; Journey was going to be the band that survived the nuclear holocaust. 

But no one accounted for the Florida orangebomb. And someone in Journey has taken sides regarding the great divider.

Schon and Cain were also fighting over one of them allegedly charging the band’s credit card for bad clothes or soul patch maintenance or something … it doesn’t matter. They would’ve survived. But not now.

Everyone has the right to make stupid choices. But I’d be pissed too, were I Schon. Trump germs infect everything in their vicinity. He leaves Cheetos dust everywhere. He makes every human with whom he comes in contact worse by association. People lose friends and don’t spend holidays with family over Trump.  

Now we can add a Bay Area musical giant to the list. Though throw enough money at them in a couple years and see what happens. Hopefully we’ll have better things about which to argue by then. 

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.