Respect Authority

For residents of a time period so fraught with uncertainty, so overwhelmed by doubt, our causes for concern so looming and concrete, we sure are pretty unconcerned about it. Relatively, of course.

We live in a strange time. Peril is loitering on our front stoop and we’re all pressed against the floor in the TV room, whispering, “It’s just a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses… stay quiet and hopefully they won’t know we’re here.” Chronically sheltered, our generation has barely acknowledged, and far too late at that, the coalescence of catastrophes bubbling just below the surface. Where are our flappers, our beatniks, our hippies and our punk rockers? Indeed, where have all the countercultures gone?

Our generation’s great youth movement, the ubiquitous hipster, is in fact not a counterculture, but an extreme excess of all that mainstream culture adores. Hipsters embody the hedonism of the late 90s and early 21st century without any of the guilt of having to go to work the next day. In a sense, it seems they have almost given up, accepting the inevitability of Western civilization as we know it coming to an end, and therefore choosing to get as fucked up as possible in the meantime. Why bother rallying around a cause when there is nothing left to save?

Of course, this is not to say that hippies and punk rockers didn’t also get wrapped up in elaborate, vacuous fashion shows all their own, but at least there was a respectable value system and call to action behind these movements that allowed the fashion show to build itself around. The hipster’s value system? “Whatevs.” The hipster’s call to action? “Let’s dance.” Without a care in the world, we are dancing in the shadows of falling bombs.

Granted, somebody gave the Republicans the old heave-ho. In a brilliant flash of social responsibility, we, as a country, banded together to cast out the forces of corporate greed, institutionalized fear, and religious fanaticism. And then all was quiet. So proud of ourselves for actually getting off our asses, now we rest. I suppose the important distinction that needs to be made is: Was that all we had in us and are we now ignorantly satisfied? Or are we all merely holding our breath?

Besides, by its very definition, a counterculture cannot be a majority movement. Were the follies of neo-conservatism with all its corruption and “family values” so vast that the entire country was polarized in a relative blink, immediately reversing the tides once that critical breaking point had finally been hit? And perhaps more importantly, and quite a bit more frightening, is the new counterculture those who are left of the evangelical Christians, corporate parasites, and fear-mongerers, now lying in wait for the first signs of weakness in the new regime? Ironically, with a new year and our new president’s inauguration around the corner, more than ever, the future freaks me out.

Last Week’s Highlights

• Pronoun of the Year — “Seriously, in 2008 the American public does not want a villain being called ‘Man of the Year.’ Man of the Year is a heartwarming comedy with Robin Williams, a Lil’ Wayne song, and once in 2006, every man, woman and child in the United States, it can’t be a bad guy!”
• Life After Deaf — “Commercials used to be fun. Well some of them were anyway. Maybe fun’s not the best word. What am I tryin to say here? Ah yes — they used to not all be so very awful.”
• In Defense of Neo-Hooversim — “The big three should be allowed to stumble. Maybe one should fall awkwardly, break its neck and die. But two should definitely get another shot. So in that spirit, Chrysler should die. Not even the Germans could make it work.”
• Transformed — “The concept, after all, is a veritable orgy of adolescent male favorites – good guys and bad guys, cars, trucks and giant robots. Throw in a cowboy and some astronauts and the sheer perfection would emotionally stunt boys the world over.”