shrine to the prophet of americana

if trump created the dirtbag socialist and obama fostered the nonpartisan "markets" rationalist mindset, what was the defining...

Anonymous asked:

if trump created the dirtbag socialist and obama fostered the nonpartisan "markets" rationalist mindset, what was the defining counterculture political movement of bush the younger? just being anti-war? the blogosphere? how bout Clinton? battle for seattle anti-globalization? and before *that*, what did it mean to have a political movement outside the big parties and gaining traction near the margins, alt-weekly social justice? you're older than the Pangea, how does the wheel turn?

argumate:

this is really a @kontextmaschine ask

Well for Clinton there were altermondialists and environmentalists and animal rights types, and culture jammers and guys who marched with stilts and papier-mâché puppet heads cause of the sideshow revival and technoshamans and post-structuralist professors and the X-Files space where “militia” met Coast to Coast matured 70s Sasquatch-n-aliens supernaturalism and meanwhile you know, Legalize It and be cool with the gays and the internet and libertarians.

In retrospect so much of was either politically content-free culture branding, Che t-shirt and RATM listeners that just took the message as standard anti-authoritarian rock; or so full of earnest enthusiasm so pointlessly misapplied to such peripheral issues it was laughable.

I think the key was with the boomers’ maturation, the understanding finally became hegemonic that the sixties counterculture were the good guys and so the following generations tried to reenact it

Dubya, the antiwar stuff was at least honest replay of the 60s peace movement not mattering. Past that I guess street art had links back to culture jammers. Vice and American Apparel urban scumbag? I suppose the epic-bacon-fucking-love-science thing, bad enough before it spiraled into Funko soy. Really a lot of “the counterculture” had just been folded into the culture by then. Internet culture arose from there, there was the expectation that’s what would be built on going forward, part of why Bush rubbed so many raw is he was an anachronism who didn’t seem to acknowledge this.

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