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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

I guess a counterculture that becomes the dominant culture is sort of like a revolutionary movement that has long since claimed victory, conquered the state, but still relies upon the identity of "radical outsider" because that's who they've seen in the mirror all these years. I'm thinking of old Soviets, old hippies, corpulent King Castro still in his jungle fatigues, etc, who would sooner face the firing squad than face the fact that they've become moralistic prudes and tyrants and lords of the manor with the same dirty hands and grubby motives as the rest of us.

And I guess they hold their illusions together much like our Social Justice ruling class does: locking themselves in an epistemic Versailles where the light stays flattering and no one would dare mention an uncomfortable fact (bc why bring up what you're also guilty of?), repackaging the same old nostalgic wine in new bottles ("Another toast to the glorious Revolution!"), and huddling together in the warmth of shared sanctimony, where the final consolation is being better smarter holier than those peasants in the countryside.

The absurd spectacle of our upscale NYT/NPR/PBS ruling class (who look like Ken Burns in the street but see Huey Newton in the mirror) writing, producing and directing this endless afterschool special called The Resistance™ is fake and tedious for 100 reasons, but the hardest part for me has been the eradication of artistic freedom and imagination, or really how just about anything fresh and real has been replaced by the same exact compulsive and reflexive "political" gesture.

I came of age in the 80s in NYC and saw Karen Finley, Annie Sprinkle, Cindy Sherman, Mapplethorpe etc, and there was still the frisson of the shocking and all the subversions we're so familiar with by now: Hey, look it's a woman flashing her tits and smearing her period blood on some Old Master! Hey look, a black woman dressed as George Washington! Hey look, it's Reagan and Falwell making out and tugging each other's dicks etc etc...but it's 40yrs later and we're still supposed to consider something "creative/radical art" because it subverts norms and traditions that didn't even survive into the 21st century.

"Fighting the Patriarchy" and "Subverting Gender Norms" are really the initiatory religious rituals for the young and "educated" of our time, but like all rituals they've become completely detached from their original purpose and drained of any meaning besides LOOK AT ME. It's like our entire creative class is stuck performing this same dance of Damnatio memoriae of the 4 Olds, or they've dug up the corpse of some heretical Pope and now the entire village has lined up to take their hack at it. (And the corpse looks suspiciously like Archie Bunker.)

Will we finally get past the reign of the post-60s counterculture? Will our virtual revolutionaries ever be dragged into the realization that all this time they've been fighting phantoms and playacting Rebels vs Oppressors like kids playing Cops v Robbers with Mommy & Daddy paying for the costumes and refreshments? I'll believe it when I see it, and if I do, I'll be breaking out the Dom P.

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Frank Lee's avatar

This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I can only ask "what the heck has taken them so long?"

The kids of my good friends who live in the UK have gone around and around on politics with me. They were livid anti-Trump and thought I was a lump of stupidity for supporting him. Then the pandemic and the education of what socialist authoritarianism really was... and now they are just waiting for one to reach the point of dual citizenship and want to move back to the US where they will join me in political action to get Republicans back in power. They see this as critical to saving the US and Europe.

I keep thinking... what is wrong with these kids supporting the political establishment and globalist cabal that is intent to make their lives even more miserable? If this change is real, maybe we should label it "woke".

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