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ccohanlon · 2 years

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my generation, part 3

There was a period between 1974 and 1979 — no more than four or five years at most — when it looked as if we might redeem ourselves. Punk rock is rarely identified with Baby Boomers these days, but it is the one enduring cultural legacy to which my generation can lay sole claim. From its raggedy-assed, New York originators — among them, Iggy Pop (born 1947), Patti Smith (born 1946), Richard Hell (born 1949), Johnny, Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee of The Ramones (born between 1948 and 1952), and The Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra (born 1958) — to the rawer, more politicised and subversive Londoners with whom the public most readily associates punk — among them, The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten (born 1956) and Sid Vicious (born 1957), The Clash’s Joe Strummer (born 1952), The Banshees’ Siouxsie Sioux (born 1957) and The Damned’s Dave Vanian (born 1956) — and its one great Australian band, The Saints, the late G.G. Allin (born 1956) oh, and Nick Cave (born 1957), still the coolest Australian alive, its protagonists were all, without exception, Baby Boomers.

Punk was unarguably a social as well as a musical revolt, and its raw, self‐negating anger was directed not only at an older generation, but at the majority of its own, which had sold out any chance for genuine social and political change. It was no accident that punk first emerged during the mid-1970s, when the city of New York, under mayor Abe Beame, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy or that many of its most coherent and vehement songs, such as The Clash’s London Calling, were released in 1978 just before the infamous ‘winter of discontent’ under Prime Minister James Callaghan’s Labour government, during which the economy began to collapse under the weight of high unemployment, industrial unrest, and dysfunctional public services. The rising groundswell of Conservative sympathy (and self‐interest) would carry Margaret Thatcher into power the following spring.

Punk’s musical prejudices were many, but a constant in all of them was impatience with its own generation’s obsession with the surface of things. With its pared‐down, DIY approach to recording, total disdain for basic instrumental skills, and simplistic, buzz‐saw‐like songs that were never more than one tempo — fast — two minutes’ duration, three chords and four‐beats-to‐the‐bar, with titles like Too Drunk to Fuck, Blank Generation, White Riot, and Anarchy in the UK, punk slashed at the tie‐died remnants of hippie counterculture — by then, an already long-in-the-tooth Eric Clapton, the legendary guitarist and founder of the ’60s ‘supergroup’ Cream, was appearing in British beer ads — and directed its razor‐edged, amphetamine‐fuelled intensity toward the shimmering glitter of disco and the grandiose posturing of heavy metal rockers, whose stadium gigs were becoming as over‐produced and robotic as Hitler-Jügend rallies in the 1920s and ’30s.

Malcolm McLaren (born on January 22, 1946 — one of the very first Baby Boomers) was punk’s arch manipulator, its media‐savvy Svengali. The then‐partner of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (who had yet to make her name and fortune as a couturier) and the co‐proprietor with her of a fetish and bondage clothing shop called SEX on London’s Kings Road, McLaren was the dandyish, amoral and rudely cunning (if not downright crooked) manager of Britain’s most infamous punk band, The Sex Pistols, fronted by Johnny Rotten (neé John Lydon) The band was a McLaren creation, inspired by both the disaffected, working‐class kids — prototypical punks — that hung out at SEX, and McLaren’s own encounters with the nascent New York punk scene during a visit there in 1974. The Sex Pistols lasted only a couple of years — releasing just one album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, before Johnny Rotten announced their break‐up during a shambolic American tour in 1978, and the band’s notorious bass player, Sid Vicious, killed his girlfriend in a drug‐addled haze at New York’s Chelsea Hotel the same year, over‐dosing on heroin a few months later at a party to celebrate his release on bail from the city’s Riker’s Island jail — but not before McLaren had demonstrated just how to execute what he would later call “the great rock’n’roll swindle”.

In 1976, McLaren showcased The Sex Pistols during punk’s first festival at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, London, and talked EMI into signing the band for what was said to be a half‐million pound advance — although this figure was probably just McLaren hype — and releasing its first single, Anarchy in the UK, at the end of November 1976. Less than a fortnight after the song hit the UK charts, the band members got into an on‐air slanging match with Bill Grundy, the host of Thames Television’s popular early evening program Today; guitarist Steve Jones called him a “fucking rotter”. It was the beginning of a run of bad press – “Punk? Call it Filthy Lucre” ran the front page headline of The Daily Express – and it was deliberately inflamed by McLaren. It scared EMI enough to terminate its contract with the band at the end of January 1977. Six weeks later, in a ceremony staged (probably by McLaren) outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, the Sex Pistols signed to Herb Alpert’s A&M Records. This time the deal didn’t last the day: at a party back at the record label’s offices, the band members sexually harassed secretaries, picked fights with executives and, in a lurid coup de grace, Sid Vicious trashed the managing director’s office and vomited on his desk. A&M publicly cut the band loose less than a week later.

It was left to one of the first of England’s Baby Boomer entrepreneurs, Richard Branson (born 1950) — who played in an altogether bigger league than McLaren when it came to both opportunism and shameless self‐promotion — to sign the band to Virgin Records for another large advance and the promise of total artistic control. In May 1977, The Sex Pistols released its second single, God Save the Queen. With the help of some well‐planned radio airplay and the usual sensationalist press, it reached number two on the UK charts during the same week as the country celebrated Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee. Later, one of the band‐members, Paul Cook, told a journalist: “It wasn’t written specifically for the Queen’s Jubilee. We weren’t aware of it at the time. It wasn’t a contrived effort to go out and shock everyone.” Maybe not, but Malcolm McLaren convinced the band to change the original title of the song, No Future.

McLaren recently recalled that he made money then “by doing the exact opposite of what most people would think would be correct. I acted the irresponsible, the ultimate, child and everything I did was what society hated.” His public posturing and game‐playing during punk’s last gob‐spit at ‘the system’ would have made Sir Guy Grand proud. Sadly, by the end of the ’70s, punk’s truculent nihilism had dissipated, and a corrosive process of co-option and homogenisation had begun. Within a decade, punk and all the other good things youth culture had encompassed over the previous quarter‐century — and would encompass, briefly, in the decade ahead, such as rave culture, graffiti art, gangsta rap and mash‐ups — would be reduced to an unidentifiable but easily consumable mush. Meanwhile, a faltering global realpolitik, resurgent squabbles in the Middle East, and economic and social disarray in the developed world (especially the United Kingdom) suggested a future more uncertain and dangerous than anything that George W. Bush would have us fear in the aftermath of 9/11. The brittle, pre‐Apocalyptic edginess of the early ’80s was reminiscent of the ’60s.

MTV was launched on American cable networks on August 1, 1981. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention had just recognised the first cases of AIDS, in five gay men in California. Of course, the two events were unrelated but it felt like the beginning and the end of youth culture.

With its all‐music‐video format modelled on Top 40 radio by former whizz‐kid Baby Boomers fresh out FM radio programming and advertising — the first video that MTV broadcast was The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star — and its use of young, good‐looking ‘video jockeys’, or VJs, who appeared to have been genetically engineered to match a broad cross‐section of the racially diverse, financially disparate, youth demography found in densely populated American urban centres, even if the music it first featured was predominantly white, MTV appeared to dull rather than enliven the collective imagination, despite its popularity. The symbiosis it had with a music industry already absorbed into huge, multinational media conglomerates — MTV itself was itself the product of a joint venture between Warner Communications and American Express, the Warner‐Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, that morphed into MTV Networks Inc. just ahead of an IPO in 1984 — was obvious and a little creepy: apart from hourly entertainment news spots and studio interviews with music stars, MTV’s only content was music video clips produced by the major labels and provided to the new network free of charge (although it would not be long before the network would charge them to put a video into what was called ‘heavy rotation’). In other words, MTV was running ads for the record labels twenty‐four hours a day, seven days a week.

None of its growing audience gave a damn. “Too much is never enough” as one of MTV’s earliest promotional slogans put it. In keeping with the times, the new network was about as cynical as you could get.

“I think the relationship between authentic youth cultural happenings and youth culture consumption is indistinguishable,” Douglas Rushkoff, Professor of Media Culture at New York University, said in a recent interview. He might as well have simplified it to “culture and consumption”, because even by the ’80s the porous membrane between the two had already been breached — and not just among youth. Shopping was the primary cultural activity of most major cities in the developed world, and with more products competing across more programming choices — if not yet more media –—for the exponentially shorter attention of more consumers willing to spend more time and money on themselves than ever before, it was inevitable that marketers would have to look for other ways of ensuring, if not higher (or more conscious) awareness of their brands, then more constant visibility. We needed the brands to become ambient, ever‐present. “Turn it on, leave it on” – another MTV slogan.

It didn’t take genius to figure out that brands should behave like the media they used to distribute awareness of themselves. Nuances of meaning and emotional engagement could be different depending on how and where the brand insinuated itself into a consumer’s awareness: the medium was no longer just the message, as McLuhan had argued when, in 1967, he rewrote his most famous catchphrase, but rather the massage, the effect on our sensorium. Traditional advertising was, and still is, interruptive — it deliberately intersected the periods of attention we allotted to entertainment and information programming across what was, in the ’80s, a limited range of passive media — so the logical step was to create opportunities for brands, their product expressions and values to exist not only within the context of entertainment and information (still mainly as interruptive advertising), but also within the content.

Today, a high percentage of the multi‐million dollar marketing budgets (and sometimes the $100–200 million negative costs) of blockbuster feature films — usually the action‐driven franchises such as James Bond, Spiderman or X‐Men, the so‐called ‘tent‐pole pictures’ that prop up the intrinsically rickety balance sheets of Hollywood studios — are funded by product placement written into the scripts even before shooting begins. For example, Ford’s multi‐picture, multi‐brand relationship (including Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Range Rover) with the most recent series of Bond films starring Pierce Brosnan was said to have cost the ailing US car manufacturer over $US125 million; and in 2000, international courier Federal Express underwrote much of the production and marketing budgets of Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks as your average FedEx executive who is transformed into a modern Robinson Crusoe when the FedEx cargo plane on which he catches a ride crashes on a remote island in the Pacific.

Pop singers such as Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Jay‐Z, Kanye West and Nelly supplement their already extraordinary earnings from record sales, music publishing and touring with millions more dollars just for ‘name checking’ brands in songs that will pervade, for a short while, the awareness of a huge number of young, impressionable consumers impatient to realise their potential. Agenda, a US youth marketing company, even tracks what brands are mentioned most in the songs on US music charts to create a Top 40 chart of its own, American Brandstand. (The current Gen Y pop stars have studied Boomer formulae for appropriation and hype, now so refined that anyone can use them. Rather than rejecting them, they have embraced these formulae with such enthusiasm that, for the first time since the ’30s, youth culture appears to be ‘aspirationally older’.)

In some cases, entirely new, purpose‐built content has been created as brand vehicles — not only TV programming, film and music but also sporting and cultural events. The array of high profile, sponsored literary prizes in the UK is an example. Another is the unregulated, post‐apocalyptic version of ‘the world game’, played inside a locked cage, that Nike invented to promote its involvement in the 2002 World Cup hosted by both Korea and Japan. Nike featured it in a couple of award‐winning TV ads starring some of soccer’s best‐known international players. Then the US company built a real‐ life arena — a playing field deconstructed as theme park and sci‐fi movie set — in a Tokyo warehouse, where Japanese youth, its target consumers, could play it as well.

All sides of the marketing/media/consumer equation are still dominated by Baby Boomers. We are the most powerful consumer segment in the global economy, with aggregate gross earnings in the United States alone of US4.1 trillion dollars a year (and with a projected global entertainment media spend of $US1.8 trillion a year by 2010). If we are no longer at the white‐hot core of the hyper‐mediated consumerism that passes for popular culture these days, our money — and the parasitic tenaciousness with which we have wormed our way into the imaginative ambitions of other generations, usually to their detriment, since the mid‐60s — enables us to exert influence everywhere.

Advertising strategists, demographic researchers and academics argue that both Generations X and Y are inured to Baby Boomer attempts to market to them on anything but their own terms. “Young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives,” Douglas Rushkoff writes in his 2000 book Coercion: Why We Listen To What They Say.“As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic‐based pandering, they adopt a stance of self‐protective irony — distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers.”

To some extent, this ignores the depth of the Baby Boomers’ experience. Boomers were still young when passive, pre‐programmed mass media began a slow transformation of its hardware, formats and programming, and we not only participated in the early evolution of interactive media — through which individualised information, entertainment, transaction and communication could eventually be accessed any time, anywhere — we were among its inventors. Media are as much a natural element for Boomers as they are for younger generations. We have appropriated, co‐opted or ‘remixed’ the disparate perceptions, attitudes and trends of four generations of youth culture distributed — and preserved — by old and new media in order to commoditise them (while sterilising any inherent idealism): how do you think we came up with the amorphous hip‐ness of The Gap’s t‐shirts and cargo pants, or Starbucks’ Beatnik‐manqué coffee lounges?

Will the younger generations ever break the ageing Boomers’ suffocating headlock on popular culture? To some extent, they have already by sharing music, video, games and software online. Baby Boomer executives, lobbyists and lawyers decry file‐sharing because it deprives a work’s creator of both income and control, and because it threatens all businesses — not just those in entertainment or publishing — which derive revenue and power from the licensing of intellectual property (in other words, most of the world’s largest corporations). Our real dread is file‐sharing’s subversive simplicity. All it needs is mass for it to erase traditional concepts of ownership and value.

The revolution starts there.

Part three of three. First published as part of a single essay in Griffith Review, Australia, 2006.

#culturewars #babyboomers #punk #music #mygeneration #mtv

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atpaine · 10 days

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What do we Do?

[Acts 10:44-48] By the Reverend Tom Paine Preached at Westminster Presbyterian, Chehalis May 5, 2024 When I first walked into the Base Exchange at Joint Base Lewis McChord in 2017, I saw a kiosk selling sports paraphernalia. But one item really caught my eye. They were the “divided house” license plates and flags. You could get almost any sports team on one half and another sports team on…

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#Acts #ActsoftheApostles #Conflict #culturewars #Families #Friends #Gentiles #HolySpirit #Jesus #PC(USA)#Peter #Politics #presbyterian;#sermon #SimonPeter

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sublimeobservationarcade · 2 months

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The Culture Wars & Demonising Woke

The culture wars pits extreme reactionary conservatives against progressives. The war on woke is an example of this, where ordinary folk are encouraged to see efforts in favour of redressing the situation, where those among us traditionally excluded from a seat at the big table, as unnecessary. White supremacists are, of course, big fans of this and in some instances driving this ‘anti-woke’ narrative. Diversity inclusiveness is being pilloried as somehow unfair to the dominant white male cohort within our communities – this is ridiculous. The figures do not back this up in any way. The culture wars and demonising woke play to the politics of grievance.

Anti-Elite Another Right Wing Beat Up

The anti-elitist strategy is another beat up and manipulation by those on the right. Politically, it enables parties traditionally associated with big business to extend their appeal to working class people. This championing of the often bigoted values of non-college educated folk is another false narrative. Blaming one side for all the ills in the politics of grievance debate is further misinformation and deflection from the truth of the matter. The socially progressive policies of those wanting to include those marginalised, like LGBTQI+, women, and new migrants, are demonised by those on the right. Religious groups align with those on the right so that they can defend their right to discriminate against those that do not conform to their religious laws, which were developed many hundreds of years ago. These Bronze Age values were tribal and do not reflect the reality of urban living in big cities in the 21C. We are no longer primarily goat farmers.

Anti-Women Patriarchal Policies Underpinning GOP Patriarchal family values are outdated for good reasons and policies that seek a return to this power structure will not appeal to many, especially women. In the US, we are witnessing hardline conservative think tanks driving MAGA Republican party policy in this regard. “Wealthy right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation has published a detailed plan for the next Republican president to use the executive branch of the federal government to attack the rights of women, LGBTQ people and the BIPOC community, by eliminating the agencies and offices responsible for enforcing civil rights laws and placing trained right-wing ideologues in staff positions throughout the federal government. “ (https://msmagazine.com/2024/02/08/project-2025-conservative-right-wing-trump-woke/) Anti-abortion state policies and laws have galvanised opposition among women across America. Further efforts to ban contraception and limit the freedoms of women, more generally, are on the cards and it is hard to see how these will appeal to voters. The stacking of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) by former President Donald Trump provides another non-democratic pathway for the imposition of these laws and policies to be enacted at the state level in red states. However, women in these red states are rising up and the GOP are losing seats and representatives on this basis. You can see why Trump and MAGA want to take over the US by a coup or insurrection because they will not win the 2024 presidential election with the policies they have. Indeed, it would be a good bet that the GOP will also lose control of Congress at the next election too.

“Lock Em Up & Throw Away The Key” In Australia, we have a right wing opposition that takes its lead from the US. Their relentless attacks and negativity means they offer no credible alternative to the Labor government currently in charge. Peter Dutton, their leader, seeks to enflame fears and anxieties within the electorate whenever possible. Immigration policy has been a popular platform upon which to sew exaggerated fears now and in the past. Attitudes toward Australia’s Indigenous communities is another area in which the opposition divides the nation via polarising statements. Of course, they have no policies and only opinions on everything. Law and order remains a conservative touchstone, where knee jerk responses to sensationalised incidents of crime reported in the media play well to the gallery. Again, no ideas or solutions apart from locking everybody up are ever proffered by the LNP.

Old White Guys Want To Have Their Cake & Eat Yours Too The culture wars and demonising woke are popular here in Australia too. Old white guys want to have their cake and eat yours too. The war on woke appeals to dumb entitled folk who don’t bother thinking too deeply about much. Fairness was supposedly a great Aussie tradition, but only if you were white and like everybody else. Apparently, mateship and equality were and are reserved for the assimilated Anglo Aussie. Slagging off at stuff and people outside this box is all good fun. If it doesn’t bother the bloke saying it why should it bother the person being slagged off! This logic pervades the racism endemic throughout Australia. The culture wars are a beat up for political purposes. The real aim of the game is to get your vote and to put their insider mates in clover. Think PwC and all those billions being syphoned off from the public sector to private wealth via the consultancy business. Think the insider mates who got the billion dollar offshore detention money over many years. Think the labour hire sector where private interests grew fat on more and more government contracts across the board. This massive increase saw the private wealth of the few grow exponentially whilst the many were shafted. Wage growth during the Coalition years was moribund, union was power was decimated, and the rich got much richer at our expense. We now live in a much unfairer Australia. The divide between the haves and the have nots is a widening gulf. Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump. ©WordsForWeb https://read.amazon.com.au/kp/embed?asin=B0CY8CMT33&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_2K12J9EM5063CJ5BHEGK Read the full article

#American #Australia #culturewars #PeterDutton #politics #power #rightwing #Trump #waronwoke

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politicalmayhem · 6 months

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#fox #culturewars

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trekboi89 · 6 months

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Getting Bored with YouTube Channels Pushing the same Tired Narratives & ...

#youtube #CultureWars #Nerdrotic #Doomcock #GeeksandGamers #MidnightsEdge #ClownfishMedia #HeelVsBabyface #PopCultureWars

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taqato-alim · 10 months

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Analysis of report: Some critics see Trump’s behavior as un-Christian. His conservative Christian backers see a hero. (Associated Press)

Many evangelical and conservative Christians support Trump despite his behavior conflicting with Christian values. They justify this based on his policies that align with their religious views.

Some evangelical leaders argue that they support Trump for his "biblical policies, not his personal piety." Others liken Trump to Cyrus the Great who aided Jews despite having flaws.

Critics say evangelical support for Trump is based more on pursuing political goals and "politics of grievance" rather than Scriptural justifications.

Trump's key achievements for evangelicals include Supreme Court appointments that shifted the court right and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

There are ethical concerns about evangelical double standards in applying different moral standards to Trump, prioritizing political goals over principles and compromise integrity for gains.

Stakeholders affected include evangelical Christians themselves, Trump, the Republican Party, U.S. politics, democracy and religious pluralism. Both positive and negative impacts were identified.

There are potential threats to Constitutional ideals like separation of church and state, religious freedom and equal protection.

Stakeholder positions generally trended toward more autocratic tendencies that prioritize achieving goals over democratic principles.

Logical fallacies in evangelical arguments include appeals to consequences, special pleading and false dichotomies. Critics' arguments were more principled.

The analogy comparing Trump to Cyrus has limitations in overlooking key distinctions in character, intentions, scope of impact and political context.

Here is a summary of the document in bullet points:

• Evangelical and conservative Christians have largely supported Trump despite his behavior that often conflicted with Christian teachings. Appointments that shifted the Supreme Court right have solidified this support.

• Robert Jeffress, pastor of an evangelical megachurch in Dallas, supports Trump because of his "biblical policies, not his personal piety." Christians view him as a warrior fighting an "existential cultural war between good and evil."

• Some evangelicals have likened Trump to Cyrus the Great, who enabled Jews to return to Israel from exile despite having flaws himself.

• Trump's key achievements for evangelicals include moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and appointing three Supreme Court Justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade and broaden religious freedom.

• Some Christians approve of Trump because of the political results and gains in power, not because of his Christian behavior.

• Some critics argue evangelical support for Trump is based more on "politics of grievance" rather than Scriptural justifications.

• While some evangelical leaders have supported Trump, some prominent figures are now seeking alternatives for 2024, pointing to Trump's lack of character.

• Trump was raised Presbyterian but now identifies as nondenominational Christian. He infrequently attends church services.

Based on the content and style of the document, I would classify it as a news article or report.

Some indicators that point to this genre are:

• The document provides factual information about Trump's support among evangelical and conservative Christians. It cites specific figures, events and viewpoints from multiple sources.

• The document has a primarily informational purpose, seeking to explain and examine the phenomenon of Trump's popularity among this religious demographic.

• The writing style is formal and objective, using attribution and quotes from experts and religious leaders to support the points. There is limited use of value judgments or emotive language.

• The document covers a range of perspectives from both Trump supporters and critics to provide a balanced look at the issue. It does not seem to be advocating for any particular viewpoint.

• The structure follows a logical progression, beginning with an overview of Trump's evangelical support, then providing more depth through examples, analysis from scholars and perspectives from religious leaders.

• There are some common features of news reporting like summaries of key achievements, poll results and citations of prominent figures.

So in summary, the genre I would assign to this document is a news article or report, seeking to objectively examine and explain the issue of Trump's popularity among evangelical and conservative Christians. The content, style and structure align well with this genre classification.

The situation described in the document highlights some complex issues:

• There appears to be a disconnect between Trump's behavior and Christian values, yet many evangelical Christians continue to support him due to political gains. This indicates that political expediency may have taken precedence over moral principles for some.

• Some evangelical leaders justify their support by focusing on Trump's "biblical policies" rather than his "personal piety." However, others argue this separation of politics and morality is difficult to reconcile with Christian teachings.

• There is a perception among some evangelical Christians that Trump is "fighting for them" and acting as a "warrior" against perceived threats from the left. This has fostered solidarity around a culture war narrative rather than shared moral principles.

• The document suggests that Trump's power and proximity to power have attracted some church and religious leaders, even if they have reservations about his character. This indicates that access to political influence may be a motivating factor for some evangelical support.

• While some prominent religious figures have withdrawn their support for Trump due to his lack of character, many in his evangelical base remain loyal due to political gains and a perception that he "fights for them." This reveals the complexity of religious and political affiliations.

• There appears to be tension between upholding moral principles and achieving political goals that align with religious values. Some argue principled stances on character are needed, while others prioritize results.

In summary, the situation presents a mix of motivations for evangelical support of Trump. While political achievements that advance religious goals are a major factor, access to power and a perception of Trump as a "warrior" in a culture war also play roles. This complicates claims of support based purely on "biblical policies" and illustrates the challenges of balancing moral principles with political expediency.

There are some ethical concerns regarding the situation described in the document:

Double standards: Many evangelical Christians are applying a different moral standard to Trump's behavior compared to what would normally be expected of a Christian leader. They justify this by focusing on his policies rather than personal character. This could be seen as hypocritical and indicative of double standards.

Prioritizing political goals over moral principles: Many evangelical leaders and followers appear to be prioritizing political goals that align with their values over upholding moral principles regarding character. This could be viewed as compromising ethics for the sake of achieving desired outcomes.

Double loyalty: Some evangelical leaders who have reservations about Trump's character continue to support him for access to political power and influence. This suggests they may be putting loyalty to their political goals above adherence to Christian moral principles.

Promoting division: Trump's rhetoric portraying himself as a "warrior" fighting for evangelical Christians in a "culture war" promotes social division and an 'us vs. them' mentality. This could be seen as unethical and contrary to the Christian call for unity and reconciliation.

Failure of moral leadership: Many prominent evangelical leaders have failed to hold Trump accountable for his behavior and set a moral example by withdrawing their support. This represents a failure of moral leadership and could undermine their credibility and authority.

In summary, the situation reveals some potential ethical lapses among evangelical Christians regarding Trump, including double standards, prioritizing political goals over principles, double loyalty, promoting division and failure of moral leadership.

However, others could argue that supporting policies that advance religious values is itself ethical, and principled stances should reflect real-world complexities. Reasonable ethical arguments could be made on both sides of this debate.

Ultimately, there are legitimate ethical concerns regarding certain motivations for evangelical support of Trump and the willingness to overlook issues of character. But there are also complexities in balancing moral principles with political realities that complicate clear ethical judgments.

Here are the key stakeholders affected by the situation described in the document, along with potential impacts:

Evangelical and conservative Christian voters: While many support Trump due to policies that align with their values, there are concerns that compromising moral principles for political expediency could undermine Christian witness and testimony.

Evangelical and conservative Christian leaders: Some leaders who continue supporting Trump despite reservations about his character could lose credibility and moral authority. However, others gain access to political influence through their connections to Trump.

Trump: Heavy support from evangelical Christians has helped secure his political victories and continued backing of his base. However, the narrow focus on policies rather than character could limit his broader appeal.

Republican Party: Reliable support from evangelical voters has helped Republican political victories but could come at the cost of alienating other voter groups due to the divisive rhetoric and controversies surrounding Trump.

U.S. politics in general: The willingness of evangelical Christians to overlook issues of character to support a political ally could further erode trust in institutions, foster social divisions and normalize unethical behavior among public officials.

Democracy: The prioritization of narrow religious and political goals over moral principles intended to uphold democratic values could set a harmful precedent and weaken democratic systems in the long run.

Religious pluralism: The 'us vs. them' rhetoric and focus on advancing conservative Christian policies could further social divisions and alienate religious minorities.

In summary, key stakeholders affected include evangelical Christians themselves, Trump and the Republican Party as direct political allies, and the broader institutions of U.S. politics, democracy and religious pluralism. Both positive impacts in terms of political victories and influence, and negative impacts from compromised principles and deteriorating social cohesion, are potential results.

Here are the main stakeholders and their arguments as described in the document:

Evangelical and conservative Christian supporters of Trump:

• Trump promotes policies aligned with their religious values, namely on issues like abortion, Israel and religious freedom. This policy alignment justifies their support, despite concerns about Trump's character.

Christian leaders who continue supporting Trump:

• Trump promotes "biblical policies", so his personal piety or lack of character is secondary. His political achievements that advance religious goals are most important.

• Trump acts as a "warrior" for evangelical Christians in a "cultural war", making his ethical shortcomings acceptable.

Christian leaders who withdrew support for Trump:

• Trump's lack of character and failure to meet basic standards of moral leadership make him an unsuitable representative of Christianity, outweighing any policy alignment.

• Separating politics and morality in support for Trump is difficult to reconcile with Christian teachings that emphasize virtues of character.

Critics of evangelical support for Trump:

• Support for Trump based mainly on political gains reveals an overemphasis on "politics of grievance" rather than commitment to Scriptural principles.

• Justifying support for Trump represents "double standards", hypocrisy and willingness to compromise moral principles for political gain.

In evaluating these arguments:

• The policy alignment argument of Trump supporters has some logic but fails to sufficiently consider issues of character and integrity also valued in religious teachings.

• The "warrior" metaphor used by some leaders is problematic, promoting social division rather than Christian principles of unity.

• The critics rightly point to logical inconsistencies and double standards in separating politics and morality, though they downplay complexities in balancing principles with political realities.

• The "lack of character" argument of opponents has merit but could benefit from greater acknowledgement of partisan biases that likely influence perceptions of Trump's ethics.

In summary, while both sides of the debate raise valid concerns, their arguments also exhibit logical weaknesses and omissions that reflect partisan biases. A more holistic evaluation would give greater consideration to complex trade-offs between principles and pragmatism within Christian teachings.

Based on the information in the document, the positions of the stakeholders can be evaluated as follows:

Evangelical and conservative Christian voters: Generally more autocratic in their support for Trump. They are willing to overlook issues of character and democratic principles in order to pursue policies that align with their religious values.

Evangelical and conservative Christian leaders: Those who continue supporting Trump despite concerns about his character exhibit a more autocratic stance that prioritizes achieving policy goals over democratic ideals. However, those who withdraw support could be seen as more democratic in upholding moral principles.

Trump: His autocratic tendencies are well documented, and he has often disregarded democratic norms. However, garnering support from evangelical Christians through policies that align with their values could be seen as a more democratic form of representing constituencies.

The Republican Party: The Party has generally become more autocratic under Trump, embracing his norm-breaking style and partisan rhetoric. However, representing constituencies like evangelical voters is a fundamentally democratic role for a political party.

U.S. politics as a whole: The willingness of some evangelical leaders and voters to support Trump mainly due to policy alignment could indicate a weakening of democratic principles in favor of autocratic goals. However, pursing policy goals that represent constituencies is part of democratic competition between parties.

The key distinction is whether democratic principles and processes are upheld in pursuing those policy goals. In many ways, the situation described indicates a shift toward more autocratic stances that prioritize achieving goals over democratic ideals of character, moral consistency and principled opposition.

However, reasonable arguments can also be made that evangelical voters and leaders are simply exercising their democratic rights to support politicians who represent their values and policy preferences. There are certainly complexities and gray areas when evaluating these stakeholders along the democratic-autocratic spectrum.

Overall, the picture that emerges from the document suggests a general trend toward more autocratic stances, with some exceptions among religious leaders who withdraw support for Trump due to democratic concerns over his behavior and character. But there are complexities on both sides of this divide.

Here are the main stakeholders in the document along with some logical fallacies in their positions:

Evangelical and conservative Christian supporters of Trump:

• Argument from consequences: They justify support for Trump based mainly on the political achievements and consequences they agree with, rather than the consistency of his character with Christian principles.

• Special pleading: They apply a different moral standard to Trump compared to what would normally be expected of a Christian leader, making an exception in his case.

Christian leaders who continue supporting Trump:

• Argument from authority: Some rely on their positions of religious authority to justify supporting Trump, despite reservations about his behavior.

• Bandwagon fallacy: Some continue to support Trump simply because many other evangelical Christians do so, rather than based on principles.

Christian leaders who withdrew support for Trump:

• None identified. Their positions seem grounded more in principles of moral character rather than logical fallacies.

In general:

• False dichotomy: Some evangelicals seem to view supporting Trump as the only way to achieve policy goals aligned with religious values, failing to consider alternative options.

• Slippery slope: Some critics argue that compromising moral principles to support Trump sets a dangerous precedent that could further erode democratic norms and ethics.

In summary, the main logical fallacies exhibited by evangelical supporters of Trump involve justifying support based primarily on desired consequences, applying double standards, relying too much on religious authority, and failing to consider alternatives. Those opposing Trump on principled grounds appear less prone to logical fallacies.

The overall dynamic reveals a false dichotomy and potential slippery slope that oversimplifies the complexities of balancing moral principles with political realities. Ideally, evangelical Christians could find ways to uphold principles of character and integrity while still achieving broader policy goals.

In relation to the supreme law of the United States, the Constitution, the situation raises some concerns:

Separation of church and state: The willingness of evangelical Christians to support Trump mainly due to policies that align with their religious values could blur the separation of church and state. Government policies should serve the general public interest, not solely the interests of one religious group.

Religious freedom: The focus on advancing conservative Christian policies could come at the expense of religions that do not share those views, threatening their equal standing and free exercise under the law. The Constitution guarantees religious freedom for all, not just one group.

Equal protection: Accepting different moral standards and behaviors for Trump compared to other political leaders could violate the constitutional principle of equal protection under the law. All public officials should be held to the same high standards.

Rule of law: Overlooking issues of character in Trump in order to pursue political goals could set a precedent where leaders are above the law, undermining the rule of law ideal enshrined in the Constitution.

Democratic principles: As discussed previously, prioritizing narrow religious and political goals over democratic principles intended to uphold the Constitution could weaken constitutional democracy in the long run.

In summary, the main concerns in relation to the U.S. Constitution center around potential threats to key principles like the separation of church and state, religious freedom, equal protection, the rule of law and democratic governance.

While political parties naturally differ in their interpretations of the Constitution, evangelical support for Trump mainly due to policy alignment with religious values could indicate an overly narrow focus that risks undermining some larger constitutional ideals.

However, others may argue that supporting policies aligned with religious values is fully compatible with the Constitution, and evangelical voters are simply exercising their constitutional rights. Reasonable arguments can be made on both sides of this debate.

The analogy comparing Trump to Cyrus the Great has some strengths but also important limitations:

Potential strengths:

• Like Cyrus, Trump has enabled certain policy outcomes that align with the religious goals of evangelical Christians. His Supreme Court appointments and support for Israel fulfill important objectives for some evangelicals.

• The analogy portrays Trump in a positive light that justifies evangelical support for him, despite concerns about his character. It presents him as an agent for achieving religious objectives, similar to Cyrus.

• There are parallels in the perceived flaws and outsider status of both Trump and Cyrus. Neither conformed to traditional standards of a righteous ruler but still enabled desired outcomes for certain groups.

However, the analogy also has important limitations:

• Trump's behavior and rhetoric do not exhibit the religious humility, generosity of spirit and respect for other faiths demonstrated by Cyrus. Trump's divisive style is quite different.

• The policy achievements aided by Trump only benefit evangelical Christians and other conservative religious groups. Cyrus supported the freedom and livelihood of citizens more broadly across his empire.

• Trump's motives appear more self-interested and partisan, whereas Cyrus seem centered around a higher purpose of religious tolerance and unity. Their intentions differ significantly.

• Comparing a U.S. president to a foreign ruler who enabled religious exiles to return home may be problematic and undemocratic.

In summary, while the analogy captures some parallels in enabling desired policy outcomes, there are also important differences in character, intentions, scope of impact and political context that limit its aptness. Trump's behavior and rhetoric exhibit less religious humility, generosity and tolerance compared to Cyrus.

Overall, the analogy seems primarily aimed at justifying evangelical support for Trump based on policy alignments, while overlooking meaningful distinctions in character between the two figures. A more nuanced evaluation would recognize both parallels and limitations within the comparison.

For a news article or report, some common evaluation criteria would be:

Objectivity: The document presents a balanced view of the issue with quotes and perspectives from both supporters and critics of Trump. The tone is largely objective, with minimal emotive language.

Accuracy: The document provides specific factual details to support its points, citing achievements, poll results, and viewpoints of religious leaders. There is nothing that appears to be factually incorrect.

Relevance: The content is highly relevant to the topic of Trump's popularity among evangelical Christians. It covers the key factors, explanations and perspectives related to the issue.

Breadth: The document covers a wide range of perspectives from prominent religious leaders on both sides, as well as analysis from scholars and experts. It does not limit itself to one particular viewpoint.

Depth: The document provides in-depth analysis and explanations for Trump's popularity, going beyond surface-level reporting. It examines factors like political results, grievances, and likening Trump to Cyrus the Great.

Clarity: The writing is formal but clear and easy to understand. Key points are summarized concisely. There are no major issues with confusing or ambiguous phrasing.

In summary, based on these criteria, the document performs well as a news article or report. It demonstrates objectivity, accuracy, relevance, breadth and depth in covering this issue, while clearly communicating its key points and explanations. The major strengths are its balanced perspective and in-depth examination of the complex reasons for Trump's popularity among evangelical Christians.

Based on the content and style of the document, I would categorize it as mostly factual, empirical and objective, with some elements of opinion and subjectivity:

Factual and empirical:

• The document provides specific factual details to support its points, like Trump's achievements, poll results and citations of prominent religious leaders. This suggests an empirical approach based on verifiable facts.

• The writing style is formal and uses attribution, indicating an aim for factual reporting. There are few value judgments or emotive language.

• The document examines explanations grounded in political results and court appointments - empirically verifiable factors - for Trump's popularity.

However, there are also some elements of opinion and subjectivity:

• The document cites the views and analyses of scholars, experts and religious leaders, which contain elements of subjective interpretation and opinion.

• Some of the explanations for Trump's popularity, like the "Cyrus the Great" analogy and perceptions of Trump as a "warrior," are inherently more subjective.

• The document does seek to present a balanced perspective by including the views of both Trump supporters and critics. But the selection and framing of these perspectives still involves some level of subjectivity.

In summary, I would classify the document as largely factual and empirical in grounding its examination of Trump's evangelical support in verifiable details. The writing aims for an objective, balanced and distanced tone. However, the inclusion of opinions, analyses and some interpretive explanations means there are also elements of subjectivity and opinion present.

Overall, the document seems to fall more on the side of factual reporting, grounded in empirical evidence and aiming for objectivity. But some degree of subjectivity and opinion is inevitable given the nature of the discussion.

GHhnu797cusfCTNZ5BUA

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truthcalling1 · 1 year

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Backlash to Backlash: Hernando County School Board Hearing Ignites Fiery Debate

In a deeply conservative county in Florida, the Hernando County School Board hearing turned into a battleground for opposing viewpoints. Teachers, students, and parents came forward to express their concerns about the impact of right-wing culture wars and anti-LGBTQ policies on the education system. The passionate testimonies shed light on the fear and division that have emerged, causing some educators to consider leaving the profession altogether.

Unveiling the Fear:

Social studies teacher, Victoria Hunt, articulated the prevailing sentiment among educators when she lamented, "I have never seen such fear from my colleagues as I've seen in the last two months." The county's culture, she asserted, has created an environment that compels teachers to contemplate leaving their jobs, their communities, or even the teaching profession entirely.

Challenges to an Unbiased Education:

A concerned parent attending the Hernando County School Board hearing expressed their apprehension, exclaiming, "I'm appalled by how many gay people are here." The crowd's enthusiastic response only intensified the speaker's concerns. They questioned how students could receive an unbiased education when teachers feel compelled to tread carefully. The parent, speaking on behalf of numerous worried parents, expressed deep concern for the future if teachers and mentors are silenced.

A Student's Powerful Message:

A student at the hearing passionately condemned the right-wing attacks on teachers and the school board's anti-LGBTQ stance. With a firm voice, the student declared, "You ... have alienated and made us feel as if our entire existence is an issue to you." They emphasized that their existence should not be a matter of contention. However, they made it clear that they would exercise their vote during the next election, highlighting the impact that this divisive climate has on the younger generation.

Demanding Change for a Safer Environment:

Speaking on behalf of LGBTQ students, another student passionately spoke out against the anti-queer laws and legislation affecting the school board. They courageously shared, "These clearly anti-queer laws... leads to kids like me killing themselves." The student clarified their purpose was not to change anyone's identity but to demand better from the school board. Their heartfelt plea emphasized the urgent need for a safer and more inclusive educational environment.

Challenging Traditional Narratives:

Sandy Roth, a child advocate volunteer, presented a unique perspective by suggesting that if preserving innocence is the goal, the school board should consider removing the Bible from the approved materials list. Roth argued that biblical stories are filled with cruelty, violence, rape, and murder, challenging the board's selective approach to determining what is appropriate for students.

The Resignation Crisis:

The intense school board hearing occurred amid reports of nearly 50 teachers planning to resign in protest. These educators stand united, expressing their discontent with the right-wing attacks they face following the passage of Governor Ron DeSantis' "Don't Say Gay" law. Their mass resignation represents a powerful response to the stifling atmosphere in the county and underscores the need for change.

Conclusion:

The Hernando County School Board hearing exposed the deep divisions caused by right-wing culture wars and anti-LGBTQ policies. Teachers, students, and parents fear the consequences of a biased education system and the alienation of LGBTQ students. The courageous voices that emerged from the meeting called for a more inclusive and accepting educational environment. The impending wave of teacher resignations further highlights the urgency to address these issues and work towards a more inclusive future for education in Hernando County, Florida.

#EducationMatters #CultureWars #LGBTQRights #TeacherResignations

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pennsyltuckyheathen · 5 months

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(via DeSantis Campaign Nears Drop Out Territory: NYT)

Poor, pitiful Rhonda Santis it seems is not cut out for the national political stage and his “war on woke” is a gigantic flop. He’s described as “Ted Cruz without the personality”. Let’s see if Fascist Florida can come back to their senses and reject the hateful, bigoted, homophobic, racist authoritarian agenda foisted upon them by DeSantis and the corrupt Republicans and become the Sunshine State once again.

#RhondaSantis #FascistFlorida #CorruptMAGA #MAGARepublicans #CultureWars #MAGAFascists #RacistMAGA

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sucka99 · 1 year

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#bud light #budlight #culturewars

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pluspete · 1 year

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Maintaining Christian morality in a social media world

#culturewars #facebook #meta #socialmedia #twitter

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ccohanlon · 2 years

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my generation, part 2

So much history, so much incident, and yet so little of substance has stuck in the collective subconscious of the Baby Boomers, let alone been carried forward by them. For thirty years, we have perceived ourselves, and encouraged younger generations to perceive us, as having been among the instigators of the ’60s ferment, those in whom its unarguable revolutionary and creative energies — not to mention its elusive ideals — coalesced, and yet our memories of that decade are remote, vaporous, and not quite real.

Most of us were too young to have been anything other than spectators in the early ‘60s, despite the saunter we feign now in late middle‐age as survivors and faux‐savants. True, we had been among the casualties at Kent and Jackson States, at Berkeley and several other American universities. We had been roughed up and arrested by police in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. We had even hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails beneath clouds of noxious tear‐gas on the streets of Paris, Rome, Prague, Belfast and London — or of Watts, Hough, Detroit and Newark, where those of us who were black had come under fire from police and National Guards during bloody race riots between 1965 and 1967. In the end, though, they were not our battles. They belonged to the Silent Generation. We lent our support, if we were old enough, but we were on the periphery of most of the struggles, and our understanding of what was really at stake — however genuine our sympathies — was often incomplete.

Instead, we watched on television, and listened to the soundtrack on our record-players. We read eye‐witness accounts in Rolling Stone.

A generation born and raised in peacetime, during a prolonged period of economic well‐being (even in Europe, thanks to the billions invested by the USA under the Marshall Plan), Baby Boomers had no more certainty than the previous generation — forty years on, I sometimes relive the visceral chill of a seven‐year‐old’s terror of The Bomb: cowering with other children under desks during a Los Angeles school drill for a nuclear attack, air raid sirens wailing in the streets — but we were less inclined to hold strong beliefs, let alone agitate for change. We learnt to adjust, to be fluid, to “go with the flow”. In our mediated, proto‐virtual understanding of the world, everything was, and still is, fungible.

We dreamed instead. More than any previous generation of the twentieth century, Boomers had been raised amid the constant white noise and screen clutter of increasingly ubiquitous mass information, entertainment and communication media. By the late ’60s, the counter‐culture already had its own media, including magazines like Rolling Stone, New Musical Express and Creem, and aspects of it — all necessarily youth‐oriented — were being assimilated by the mainstream through films, TV and advertising. Gradually, we came to believe that these same media, with their McLuhan‐esque seductive power and their apparent free flow of images, information and ideas, rather than protest and confrontation, were the key to building the new world of our imaginations. It’s a notion borne out by the flood of Baby Boomers — among them Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Timothy Berners‐Lee (all born in 1955) — who, since the late ’70s, have nourished an age of technological invention to rival the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even if a genius comparable to Tesla or Edison is less apparent.

Baby Boomers preferred the surface of things, the context rather than the content. We were easily distracted. We grew up with the passive, low‐level attention required by ‘old’ electronic media such as TV, radio, film and recorded music to reading — one of the few things we still have in common with other, younger generations. We wanted easy access and the ability to switch between content (we already called it channel surfing) whenever our attention lagged — which was more often than we liked to admit.

Well before the benign effects of the early ’60s counter‐culture seeped into the community at large, we were drawn less to its ideals than to its image. For us, the medium wasn’t just the message: it was everything. For the rest of the century, the Baby Boomers’ unconscious reverence for Marshall McLuhan’s contention that a medium affects society not by the content it delivers, but by the characteristics of the medium itself was evident everywhere. The best entertainment (and advertising) for Boomers was, to use McLuhan’s own jargon, hot or data‐plenty, demanding less concentration but delivering ever‐greater effect. Social protest gave way to the profane. Rock concerts became ‘shows’, each an extravagant gesamtkunstwerk with complex staging and lighting. No longer happy to stand in one place and just sing or play as older performers did — even Elvis, who insinuated the snakey promise of hillbilly rutting into middle America’s subconscious, was still pretty tame — band‐members turned manic and feigned sex with a Fender Stratocaster guitar (or a half‐naked fan), destroyed a wall of speakers, or bit the head off a live chicken before swan‐diving into the crowd. Vinyl LPs were no longer two twenty‐minute sides of discrete, three‐minute songs, but multi‐disc concept albums that were almost Wagnerian in duration and structure.

The Boomers’ preoccupation with scale and spectacle at the expense of nearly everything else became apparent in other media. Steven Spielberg — born in 1946, the first of many successful Baby Boomer directors — turned his back on the sort of smart, unsettling, contemporary character‐driven dramas directed by Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Bob Rafelson, Martin Scorsese and others that had revitalised American cinema during the late ’60s and early ’70s to create Jaws, a film in which the main ‘character’ was a man‐eating shark, and any semblance of coherency in the narrative was subsidiary to the gradual amplification of suspense and the timing of set‐piece action sequences. Jaws was the first ‘blockbuster’ (a word only a Baby Boomer could love, meaning then a big‐budget Hollywood production that grossed over $US100 million in revenues in the United States alone). More importantly, it was a watershed in the entertainment industry’s perception of what the mass audience really wanted — excitement, the more intense the better. With uncanny intuition, honed during a decade of almost obsessive fascination with cause and effect in a variety of media, Baby Boomers knew how to give it to them.

It didn’t take long for this talent to be adapted as a means of exerting greater control. If the Silent Generation had been raised during times when the whole concept of control, let alone the means to exert it, must have been impossible to imagine – a sense of impotence was yet another compelling motivation for it to try to demolish the rickety postwar social order and establish something in which it could have some say — the Baby Boomers understood (as did the Roman Emperor Titus when he completed the Coliseum in 80BC and ordered that it be used for gladiatorial combat) that attention was a form of currency: acquire enough of it and you could transform it into real capital — which, in turn, gave you power.

And what better way to gain attention than by gaining the upper hand in entertainment media? It was an idea that would come into its own during the ’90s technology boom, when Generation X entrepreneurs, in harness with Boomer venture capital, would use the equation to leverage unimaginable value for their development of a new medium, the world wide web, inverting the idea of using fixed programming to capture the passive attention of a faceless mass audience of millions — the measure of value in old media — to create something a great deal more valuable, an infinitely customisable, two‐way interaction with a million‐fold audience of just one.

Control was — and still is — a big driver for Boomers. It underscored our relationship with the rest of the twentieth century, during which we tried to impose our views on others and to regulate their social and sexual behaviour with a zeal that smacked of a new Puritanism. We were stricter with our children, giving them less leeway to make their own decisions than our parents gave us. We were more ready to get involved in their education, or in any other area where we thought we might be able to exert influence on the shape of their lives. (To give us the benefit of the doubt, maybe we figured that if we didn’t, television would do it for us.)

The first of the Boomer legislators, judges and prosecutors were a lot less sympathetic and humanist than those of previous twentieth century generations. They were almost eager to limit or dispense with inconvenient legal and civil rights, impose stiff sentences or resort to the death penalty. As for Boomer politicians, if the Bush and Blair governments are anything to go by (their Silent Generation deputy, John Howard, could be said to be ‘aspirationally younger’), they are conservative, pragmatic, unethical, secretive and suspicious of free speech. They don’t much like the idea of a free press, either. Even if they are not as malignant as Bush, Boomer politicians can be little more than artful constructs (the former New South Wales premier, Bob Carr, springs to mind): a shiney, media‐friendly façade, a few well‐ turned, anodyne phrases and a lack of real empathy. All Boomer politicians have tried to cloak their legislative forays into social engineering as timely, well‐intentioned ‘modernising’ of existing political and social frameworks, but their version of modernity is always more intrusive, restrictive and careless of our rights.

There have been several Boomer political leaders who have tried to adhere to a more liberal, pluralistic and inclusive social philosophy, but there appears to be among them a disturbing propensity to engineer their own failure — as the former Australian Federal Labor party leader, Mark Latham (an on‐the‐cusp Boomer), appears to have done — or to self‐destruct. William Jefferson Clinton, the first Boomer to be elected President of the United States, and arguably one of the most intelligent and charismatic men to have occupied the Oval Office, ended up betraying the expectations of his generation because of a shallow preoccupation with what can only be described as ‘surface effect’, a disquieting moral ambivalence, and a tendency to self‐indulgent excess and hubris that are archetypal of our generation’s flaws.

At the edge of politics, straddling faded dividing lines between church and state, Boomers are among the most vociferous proselytisers not only for Christian fundamentalism — what better way for Boomers to exert control than through a belief system that behaves like an entertainment medium? — but, it might also be argued, for Islamic fundamentalism as well (Iran’s Islamic President Mahmoud Ahnadinejad, born in 1956, and Osama bin Laden, born a year later, are notable examples). Whatever side of the political, religious or cultural fence they’re on, Baby Boomers have a predilection for dogma that stems from their discomfort with — and inability to control — the confusion and contradictions of the times through which they have lived.

Even before the last Baby Boomer came of age — at eighteen, not twenty‐one, entitled to vote and drink — we had stepped out of the long shadow of the Silent Generation, looking for the main chance. We were never really idealists: we were — and still are — innately selfish and cynical (if not downright hypocritical). We focus on achieving a semblance of order, of control — we like to get the façade just right — in the context of right now, but we tend to overlook what it might cost us in the future. The idea that just because something can be done doesn’t necessarily mean that it should doesn’t occur to Boomers. Maybe it’s another indication of our hubris, but we don’t waste much time thinking about consequences.

The Magic Christian, a film directed by Scotsman Joseph McGrath, was released in 1969, the same year as Easy Rider. Adapted by the American satirist Terry Southern from his novel of the same name — Southern also cowrote Easy Rider with its stars, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper — The Magic Christian was an absurdist comic fantasy starring Peter Sellers as Sir Guy Grand, an Englishman of egregious wealth and a wicked sense of irony. Grand adopts a naïve, homeless young man, played by The Beatles’ drummer, Ringo Starr, to be his heir, renaming him Youngman Grand. He instructs Youngman in the operation of the “family business”: exposing and exploiting in most lurid ways the unquenchable greed of everyman. In one of the film’s funniest — if least subtle — moments, Sir Guy fills a swimming pool with excrement and tens of thousands of dollars, then invites passers‐by to retrieve as much money as they want. Soon the pool is overflowing with people fighting each other for fistfuls of cash as they struggle to keep their heads about the foetid shit, all under the gaze of a bemused Sir Guy and a troubled Youngman: “Grand is the name, and, uh, money is the game. Would you care to play?”

Indeed we would.

Film supplanted literature in the late ’60s (if not comic books, which we reconceived as ‘graphic novels’ to market them to a younger generation) as the repository of all our myths and parables. The medium appeals to restless Boomers because it enables us to rework these narratives from time to time. Eighteen years after the premiere of The Magic Christian, Sir Guy and Youngman Grand were transformed into Gordon Gekko, a rich and ruthless corporate raider (played by a middle‐aged Michael Douglas), and Bud Fox, a young if not‐so‐innocent stockbroker Gekko sets out to corrupt (a still fresh‐faced Charlie Sheen), in Wall Street, American director (and Baby Boomer) Oliver Stone’s celluloid eulogy over the fresh corpse of a decade notorious for its avarice and self‐interest. Boomers don’t like to acknowledge it any more (maybe, in part, because it reminds us of just how old we are now), but the ’80s were our best of times. The stern, Boadicea‐like Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, and the doddery, paternalistic B‐movie actor and pretend‐cowboy, Ronald Reagan went out of their way to reassure us that the worst aspects of our generational character, the very traits that still grated on the Silent Generation, were not just OK but desirable in a world in which old‐fashioned values like ambition, self‐interest, wealth, privilege, heartlessness — oh, and empty‐headed celebrity — had made a comeback. The decade’s bible (or, as another writer would have it, Yuppie porn), was Vanity Fair, a glossy magazine edited by the Baby Boomers’ own brainy It girl, Tina Brown.

Even the collapse of the stockmarket on October 19, 1987 — so‐called Black Monday, when the New York Stock Exchange suffered its steepest‐ever one‐day decline and stripped the Dow Jones Industrial Average of nearly a quarter of its value (by the end of the month, the Australian stockmarket had lost over forty per cent of its value) — couldn’t deflate our confidence. Within a decade, Boomers would set in motion another bubble in stockmarket values, this time partnering with tech‐adept geeks of Generation X — our myriad neuroses and obsessive compulsive tics an unlikely match with their tendency to Attention Deficit Disorder and Asperger’s‐like syndromes — to conceive a New Economy, an alternative system of values underpinned by an entirely new medium of communication, information, interaction, transaction and entertainment.

It was a quartet of Silent Generation scientists at the US Defense Advance Research Projects Agency — Lawrence Roberts, Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn and Vincent Cerf – that developed the technology and architecture to interconnect remote computer networks and thus create the internet, although it was a Baby Boomer, Timothy Berners‐Lee — an Englishman working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN) – who came up with something he called the world wide web. The far‐reaching revolution inherent in Berners‐Lee’s creation was at first lost on his peers (including the hyper‐intelligent head of Microsoft, now the world’s wealthiest individual, Bill Gates), so it was left to a younger generation — the Xers, whose very namelessness reflected a disconsolate sense of being a generation adrift, disenfranchised from a mainstream economic and cultural agenda now dictated (or, more accurately, obscured) by Baby Boomers — to recognise the liberating possibilities of the web’s capacity to interconnect not just documents — text, static images and, later, sound and video — but also ideas.

The Boomers were never big on originality. We were, after all, the generation that invented technology to make the appropriation or ‘sampling’ of anything as simple as a few keyboard strokes on a computer. We were good at refining existing ideas — the World Wide Web was a case in point, so too were the first iterations of Microsoft’s DOS operating system — but what we were, and still are, best at was hype. Our aptitude for effect — the gesamtkunstwerk of those ’60s rock shows — allied to our almost forensic absorption of mass media over the previous forty years meant that we were well prepared for the ’90s dot.com boom. Most of us were less interested in the web’s technology than we were in devising its business models (where, almost instinctively, we sensed the real power would be) and articulating the precarious value equation that turned attention into cash. Nonetheless, the early years of internet entrepreneurism were the apotheosis of the Boomer generation. Too bad that they resurrected in us an ethos that had tainted us during the previous decade — excess in all things, especially greed.

In Wall Street’s best‐remembered scene, Gordon Gekko confronts the restive shareholders of the fictional corporation, Teldar Paper, to convince them to sell off the company’s assets. With the fervour of a TV evangelist leading his congregation in prayer, Gekko tells them: “Greed ... is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” This wasn’t just another of those cinematic moments that resonated briefly in the media‐sensitised subconscious of Baby Boomers before receding into the ambient low‐frequency noise. Gekko’s words became our mantra (Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works.) They permeated our attitude for the next twenty years.

The irony is delicious: Baby Boomers turned out to be the Sir Guys for at least two generations of Youngmans.

Part two of three.

First published as part of a single essay in Griffith Review, Australia, 2006.

#babyboomers #culturewars #generationaldivide #mygeneration #film #music #greed #'60s #politics

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