Great stuff. I always learn something new from each of your pieces. One thing- I think you made an error at the end that might affect the tone of the conclusion.
“That’s why, in a way, I have some mote of compassion for Nichols. His behavior was, in a word, reprehensible, but I’m hesitant to call him a truly bad person.”
Did you mean to say Nichol’s behavior was reprehensible? If so, I missed that part; he seems like a pretty solid guy from the rest of the piece. You specifically contrast him (“as for Whitmer”) with the other guy in the next paragraph, who DID engage in some petty stuff, so I wanted to ask.
Thank you for the mention. I think the dynamics between left and right fringe behavior are similar in terms of any kind of outsider communities necessarily attracting people attracted to being outsiders for its own sake. For the left, with more access to the system and its rewards, being up to date with NPC programming can mean the difference between having a job and/or sponsorship or not. For the right, although there’s been progress, it’s more about pathetic, envious spite for its own sake. That’s why when someone does get crossover appeal, like Rufo or BAP or REN, here come the einsatzgruppen to warn everyone about the heavy hand of Mossad. It’s so transparently envious and repulsive and above all pointless that I honestly think it turns away more people than any spicy takes around race or religion.
I’m not the smartest guy, or the most connected, but what success I have, small though it is, I attribute mainly to the fact that I keep things positive for the most part, and try my best to promote others and keep the peace, save when it becomes impossible. I suspect that someone more talented and better situated than me could really clean up doing likewise.
No, when I said Nichol's behavior was reprehensible, that was a typo - it was intended to be about Whitener. Thanks for pointing that out because that mistake was extremely confusing. Suffice to say, so far as I've ever seen, Nichols is about as solid as a large internet personality can be and seems to keep his nose clean.
Honestly, that article you wrote is going to be evergreen. Unfortunately. Especially as the election cycle continues to ramp up and the Middle Eastern quagmire continued at pace. I see a lot of bandying in certain circles both here and elsewhere about how the "right are the real adults in the room" and that is just absolutely not true, and it all comes off as myopic ass-patting. For every hysterical leftist losing their shit over someone misgendering them (which really isn't even something I see a lot of anymore in the internet zeitgeist), you have some fat slob who, at heart, is a neo-liberal but just doesn't like the "woke" wallpaper of the Democrat party so now they posit themselves as some right-wing, anti-woke crusader, slobbering over himself and sobbing about "THEY PUT FUCKING PRONOUNS IN MY STAR WARS!" It's like, yes, that sucks, but you are also not looking more mature, collected, or intelligent than the other side when your cause d'etre is pronouns in a show made for kids that everyone with any sense stopped caring about years ago. Of course I think the right has better quality thinkers, by and large, but it is hard to see how it can progress with so much ridiculous quibbling and infighting, which seems to be increasingly common on this platform with the Notes feature.
Ah yes, the InPraiseOfShadows implosion. Once again, I find myself in the position of taking an interest in a man that I was unaware even existed until a couple weeks, due ago in large part to the way in which you present the events surrounding him. Unlike with Dirty Dan's salacious saga, namely most of the shows he created, I can't claim ignorance of this situation, though. I came across this implosion myself sometime last week, thanks to videos from a couple of the many people tearing his terrible take asunder. At the time, it looked to me like yet another case of an ideologically possessed individual attempting to set fire to perceived enemies only for the backdraft to blow through and ignite him.
After reading this, the situation looks much the same, with the key difference being that I now feel like I can look closer and make out clearer details in the remains of Whitener's proverbially charred corpse.
Fascinating as breakdowns of this sort are, though, I don't feel as if I have anything particularly insightful to add this time around. I'm sure I could think of something if I really put my mind to it, but frankly, I just don't feel particularly inclined to bother. You've already touched quite well on the lessons to be taken here, and I don't think repeating them with my own spin would add much to the conversation. I suppose the one thing I can and will say is that seeing this egotistically driven self destruction repeated so frequently has become quite tiresome. Collapses like this are fascinating in their way and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't at least some value that can be extracted in examining such instances more closely, but it's long reached a point where this sort of thing just feels expected. Perhaps that's my own biases and personal bubbles skewing my view, but given the prevalence of creators who dedicate their output to documenting the falls of their contemporaries, even if my view is skewed, (and it probably is, as with anyone's) I don't think it's skewed very much.
Regardless, if we can somehow get ourselves unstuck from this vitriolic mire, I hope it happens sooner rather than later. I'd rather see the interesting things people are creating than listen to the dramas of what they're doing. (Your articles fall into the former category by virtue of their quality.)
When I first sat down to write this article a day or two after the drama started, I didn't expect it to smolder as long as it have or even last as long as it has. People are still uploading videos about it weeks later, so I thought for sure I would be exposing most people to something they wouldn't have heard of. Now, however, I'm not all that surprised you heard about it.
I won't lie, I'm an easy mark for a good "rise and fall" story, so these kind of tales always fascinate me, no matter how routine they are these days. I will say that I try to posit a moral at the end, or some lesson to take so it doesn't come off as senseless bashing (or in the case of Verbalase, I genuinely had no ill-will towards the guy and wanted it to be more of a good natured clowning at his very public fuck-up than sincerely malicious mocking). I don't think there's much hope for many of these content creators to pull themselves out the almost Samsaric cycle of self-destruction. Personally, I subscribe to the belief that every creator has a shelf life, and once they overextend it, they're liable to go up in flames. Some have a very long shelf life that only ends when they die. Others have the good sense to get out while the getting is good. But a lot of them I don't think can. There's that line from Top Gun: Maverick that I think rings true for a lot of these people - "I'm a fighter pilot, a naval aviator. It's not what I am, it's who I am." To me, when content creators and influencers get into that mindset, they literally can't stop. What else can they do? What else do they offer the world? Well, probably something, and they could figure it out with some self-reflection, but it's easier to just continue until the wheels fall off and your car explodes and you end up forced to stop.
It's not unlike the rock star that finds success and flames out, no matter how grand or small that success might be. Back when I used to play the YouTube game myself, I took great pains to ensure that it didn't become the end all, be all of who I am, and certainly had no aspirations to make it my career. (Not that I'd have been able to, given the narrow niche I played in.) I played that game for about five years, but when it came to be too much to keep up with due to lockdowns and the work related madness that caused, my arms length hobbyist approach allowed me to easily close that chapter on my life.
The same can't be said for many of those who flame out in this. I'm with you on the idea of content creators having a shelf life. Not everyone is built to keep up with it long term. Trends change, passions and needs shift, as do the approaches we take and the interests of the audience. There's little out there that's truly evergreen, and even when people hit on something that is, there's few people who can maintain the pace for an extended period. The temptation to take easy roads is strong, and jealousy runs rampant, which sometimes creates a MAD hotbed that often ends with the artillery turned back on the ones who fired the first shots. Yet they keep going, because what else can they do? In reality, there's plenty they could do if they were to engage in some self-reflection as you suggest, but the trap lies in the fact that it doesn't feel like there's another choice. You know, sunk cost fallacy and all that.
Probably true, even if it is a tad depressing to think we only have so many worthwhile stories or articles or songs or films in us. Maybe it's more a matter of changing niches than stopping period. Recognizing when you're milking something for profit even it it's run its course...which is of course a huge problem with professional media these days.
As for your last paragraph, powerful stuff. Years back I saw a popular speedrun streamer go through this, where he was basically held hostage by one particular game he was very tired of, but he couldn't afford to lose the views and income by changing. It's a pretty brutal dilemma, and also inspired me to write a novel about a speedrunner going through something similar and coming to the realization you describe towards the end there.
On a related note, if you haven't seen it, I think you guys would enjoy the infamous speedrun rant by RWhitegoose, which also inspired a similar rant in my story when the protagonist finally breaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56N17d4WnM
"even if my view is skewed, (and it probably is, as with anyone's) I don't think it's skewed very much."
Just one more data point, but for what it's worth I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. That's also one reason I prefer post-mortems of bad fiction rather than real-people drama, if we're going to be taking things apart in the first place. At least fiction tends to fail in more interesting ways, and there's useful info to be had there if you're writing your own. Still, I also agree that the quality of our host's articles makes them worth it regardless.
"you’ll always be better served building up yourself than trying to tear down others."
Wise words for any context, and of course this is what John Michael Greer steadfastly teaches when it comes to doing any kind of magic: blessings rather than curses, positive affirmations rather than negative ones, etc. That and his consistent condemnation of any kind of "black" magic is one reason I respect him so much. I'll admit I've never heard of any of these people involved in the drama of the hour, but I appreciate you making a plea for good old-fashioned decency in a public debate, rather than the spiteful pecking everyone seems to fall into these days. As you and others have articulated so well in various fora, there's such a feeling of immaturity to everything these days, that we're just fundamentally not serious. Everything turns into a dumb middle school drama. Or as I've started putting it, in that typical "joking but also not really joking" kind of way: this is what happens now that the last people who remembered the 1930s are gone. For all the faults and injustices of that time - and don't get me wrong, they were many and reprehensible - people seem to have had a certain kind of integrity we don't have any more. They were serious adults, not just overgrown babies. At least they stood for things, even if it were often things I strongly disagree with. And they had a tenacity we could only dream of. I suppose living through the Great Depression does that, even if no one should have to live through an era like that. I don't know, I've just been increasingly fascinated by the interwar era lately.
It's like a mirror image of our society, basically the same in most of the important ways, but without the absurd extravagance (to borrow another neat JMG stock phrase) or the intense commercialism. It was still Western/Faustian/Industrial civilization, but one that did these things for a purpose. Not necessarily one I'd have chosen, but there was thought and intention behind it. These days it's like we just keep shambling through the motions because we can't imagine anything else, and it's all we've ever known.
I also loved the part where Whitener complains about those oh so dastardly racist Southerners, only to find out he lives a stone's throw from his foe in the same South. Your impression about anti-Southern prejudice also seems right to me, as much as it can as a foreigner. Like I've said before, there's a strong undercurrent of elitism and snobbery against Americans here in Norway in my opinion, and naturally that tends to be directed at those deplorable gun-wielding, white, Southern Republican Christians more than anything. At the same time, we're constantly swimming in a tsunami of (coastal elite Liberal) American pop culture, and young people here pepper their sentences with Americanisms and speak English with impeccable American accents, so it's a strange double-edged thing.
Anyway: yes, it's depressing to see how many people seem to want moral crusading rather than a society built on good-faith debate and "live and let live". Maybe we're back to the median after the brief respite of ca. 1970-2010...
(As for Cowboy Bebop, guilty as charged. It's one of those things that's been on my "get to it someday" list for years and years :P)
It's interesting that you bring up this idea of the 30's being this great demarcation of generations. I don't think you're wrong. The Boomer ethos has been from the beginning steeped in the idea of perpetual adolescence. Even when the Flower Power, Counter-Culture Boomers moved into being "the adults" in the Reagan years, they still never quite... solidified, in a way. They never really accepted the fact that they were getting old and needed to take things seriously. If you look at how the Boomer-dominated government handles pretty much everything and has more or less sold the future of their descendants out from under them for their own gain, I'd say they never have, and now it's too late to do anything even if they suddenly and inexplicably decide to change course. I see the same sort of hesitancy to embrace age and experience in pretty much every generation since - it's all about pretending that the inevitable isn't happening. And, trust me, I get why we are, I'm certainly no paragon of accepting the fact I'm getting old, but as one of my favorite tweets ever says, "Aging is not 1% as scary as whatever the fuck is wrong with the people who do everything they possibly can to try and not age". And, yes, it trickles down into puerile discourse of two equally unserious and juvenile camps of ideologues spouting stale memes at one another. Like, there was a time I used to think the "Yes" meme with the blonde chad guy with the beard was funny, but holy fuck every time I see that stupid ass picture now I just know I'm about to see what's likely the worst opinion or take I'll read the entire day. I just don't see how either side of the political blocs will ever really make any progress if they continue to act like petulant kids antagonizing each other on a school yard.
I would also agree that we have, as a society, lost the ability to imagine anything other than a neo-liberal, industrialized, capitalistic civilization. I'm not saying that those qualities aren't better than the alternative - I'll take neo-liberal industrialized capitalism over living under the thumb of a despotic Mesopotamian God-King and eating dirt any day - but we also can't seem to get past it. Every solution offered to modern problems are the same solutions offered in the 1900's, to a fundamentally different time, place, people, and society. Like, there's a lot of people on the right who idealize Fascism, right? Well, Fascism was a 20th century solution to 20th century problems. I don't think Fascism, Communism, or any of the conventional political ways of thinking that defined the 20th Century are going to succeed in fixing the issues of the 21st Century, especially as things continue so rapidly changing and the 20th sinks further back into the rear-view mirror.
Also, even though I live north of the Mason-Dixon these days, I'm still a Southerner at heart. I kind of hate it for a lot of reasons, but it's also home, and it's engenders this feeling of, "Yeah, it sucks, but it's my home, and only I can talk shit about it because I actually live there". While the Southern US has been much degraded for a myriad of reasons and rightly does have a stigma of poverty, ignorance, and racial prejudice, it's really, REALLY not as bad as the Yankee propaganda would have people believe. And the thing about Whitener is, as a Southerner himself, he would know that. Asheville, where he lives, is notoriously progressive - a bright blue beacon of progressive ideology in the ruby red south. He should know damn well not everyone that lives south of the Mason-Dixon is a backwards rube. And he does, I'm sure, but at the same time, he has to stab his own culture and people in the back to make in-roads with the fellow travelers he wants to impress. If I sound heated, it's because that kind of mealy-mouthed duplicity sits particularly poorly with me.
I actually don't think we've returned to the median after a respite - I think the 1970's to 2010's were the norm, and now are the anomalous times. The majority of the population of any given country can NOT be so politically charged. It leads to major instability and unrest and, eventually, collapse - which is exactly what we're seeing now. If anything, I think the "live and let live" laisse faire attitude of the past where most people did have political convictions but didn't let it define them is something we direly need to return to. The current way of hyper-politicized fuckin' EVERYTHING is simply unsustainable.
I think the 30s work for a couple reasons: back then industrialism was brand new. A lot of people could still remember living essentially pre-industrial lives, and some still did. That makes for a profoundly different perspective. And of course it was before the idea of consumerism as an organizing principle for society was created after the War.
You're probably right about the Boomers selling out, as JMG has also talked about quite a bit over the years. Personally I have a soft spot for them, since most of the important adults in my life growing up were Boomers, and for the hippie project in general. I really do think the 1950s culture was stifling and full of prudery, and I can see why they rebelled against it. If anything, the problem is that their rebellion stopped when it won in the sexual and cultural arena without doing much about the economic side of things.
"I'll take neo-liberal industrialized capitalism over living under the thumb of a despotic Mesopotamian God-King and eating dirt any day"
"I don't think Fascism, Communism, or any of the conventional political ways of thinking that defined the 20th Century are going to succeed in fixing the issues of the 21st Century"
Oh yes, for sure. I'd say that issue for than anything is the end of eternal economic growth, which is the lynchpin of all those 20th century ideologies. Without it they're toast, plain and simple.
"I actually don't think we've returned to the median after a respite - I think the 1970's to 2010's were the norm"
See what you mean, and in one sense you're obviously right. The cynic in me wants to counter that in earlier times, that polarization wasn't usually an issue not because of a commitment to live and let live, but rather because everyone in society agreed on the fundamentals. By the point of a sword if need be. Believe me, I'm the last person to gush about "Western civ" and its glory, but I really do think the concept of freedom of speech, and by extension the idea of power subjecting itself to self-criticism, is a very dinstict and sympathetic concept in terms of civilizations. Whether it's sustainable without a huge surplus energy windfall is an open question, but I hope so.
Obligatory pre-finish comment to say that I did watch Cowboy Bebop, I did get the reference, and I did read it in their dubbed English voices. Now then, until such time as I finish this and am thus able to comment on the content itself, see you, space cowboy...
Controversial take, but I think the English dub for Cowboy Bebop is really the superior way to watch the show, anyways. I watched it again recently and while a lot of minor characters have some shoddy acting the performances for the main characters are great.
I agree. The Japanese work is good in Bebop, but it doesn't carry that same particular flair that the English dub does. The show is one that really begs for that Western style and the main cast really nailed that. The same is true of Hellsing Ultimate, to the point that the mangaka himself has said he considers the English version to be the official version of the anime.
I went through a Lovecraft binge earlier this year, which was a treat. One of his most amusing quirks is that anything that strays a millimeter outside of 1920s New England respectability is described in terms of utmost cosmic horror. In "The Whisperer in Darkness," the narrator gets freaked out because New Hampshire has granite hills.
If Lovecraft had ever seen a taco truck, he would have had a literal stroke.
Anyway, Whitener's saga sounds like standard issue dumb-shittery. We all get to wrestle with Envy and the rest of the Big Seven, at times.
Verbalase blowing his beatboxing fortune on high-quality mascot costumes and custom-made cartoon smut... that's something memorable.
Wonderful, and well written and interesting with humor and compassion, as always, which is something I really appreciate about your articles. Thank you so much.
Great stuff. I always learn something new from each of your pieces. One thing- I think you made an error at the end that might affect the tone of the conclusion.
“That’s why, in a way, I have some mote of compassion for Nichols. His behavior was, in a word, reprehensible, but I’m hesitant to call him a truly bad person.”
Did you mean to say Nichol’s behavior was reprehensible? If so, I missed that part; he seems like a pretty solid guy from the rest of the piece. You specifically contrast him (“as for Whitmer”) with the other guy in the next paragraph, who DID engage in some petty stuff, so I wanted to ask.
Thank you for the mention. I think the dynamics between left and right fringe behavior are similar in terms of any kind of outsider communities necessarily attracting people attracted to being outsiders for its own sake. For the left, with more access to the system and its rewards, being up to date with NPC programming can mean the difference between having a job and/or sponsorship or not. For the right, although there’s been progress, it’s more about pathetic, envious spite for its own sake. That’s why when someone does get crossover appeal, like Rufo or BAP or REN, here come the einsatzgruppen to warn everyone about the heavy hand of Mossad. It’s so transparently envious and repulsive and above all pointless that I honestly think it turns away more people than any spicy takes around race or religion.
I’m not the smartest guy, or the most connected, but what success I have, small though it is, I attribute mainly to the fact that I keep things positive for the most part, and try my best to promote others and keep the peace, save when it becomes impossible. I suspect that someone more talented and better situated than me could really clean up doing likewise.
No, when I said Nichol's behavior was reprehensible, that was a typo - it was intended to be about Whitener. Thanks for pointing that out because that mistake was extremely confusing. Suffice to say, so far as I've ever seen, Nichols is about as solid as a large internet personality can be and seems to keep his nose clean.
Honestly, that article you wrote is going to be evergreen. Unfortunately. Especially as the election cycle continues to ramp up and the Middle Eastern quagmire continued at pace. I see a lot of bandying in certain circles both here and elsewhere about how the "right are the real adults in the room" and that is just absolutely not true, and it all comes off as myopic ass-patting. For every hysterical leftist losing their shit over someone misgendering them (which really isn't even something I see a lot of anymore in the internet zeitgeist), you have some fat slob who, at heart, is a neo-liberal but just doesn't like the "woke" wallpaper of the Democrat party so now they posit themselves as some right-wing, anti-woke crusader, slobbering over himself and sobbing about "THEY PUT FUCKING PRONOUNS IN MY STAR WARS!" It's like, yes, that sucks, but you are also not looking more mature, collected, or intelligent than the other side when your cause d'etre is pronouns in a show made for kids that everyone with any sense stopped caring about years ago. Of course I think the right has better quality thinkers, by and large, but it is hard to see how it can progress with so much ridiculous quibbling and infighting, which seems to be increasingly common on this platform with the Notes feature.
I'm back, space cowboy.
Ah yes, the InPraiseOfShadows implosion. Once again, I find myself in the position of taking an interest in a man that I was unaware even existed until a couple weeks, due ago in large part to the way in which you present the events surrounding him. Unlike with Dirty Dan's salacious saga, namely most of the shows he created, I can't claim ignorance of this situation, though. I came across this implosion myself sometime last week, thanks to videos from a couple of the many people tearing his terrible take asunder. At the time, it looked to me like yet another case of an ideologically possessed individual attempting to set fire to perceived enemies only for the backdraft to blow through and ignite him.
After reading this, the situation looks much the same, with the key difference being that I now feel like I can look closer and make out clearer details in the remains of Whitener's proverbially charred corpse.
Fascinating as breakdowns of this sort are, though, I don't feel as if I have anything particularly insightful to add this time around. I'm sure I could think of something if I really put my mind to it, but frankly, I just don't feel particularly inclined to bother. You've already touched quite well on the lessons to be taken here, and I don't think repeating them with my own spin would add much to the conversation. I suppose the one thing I can and will say is that seeing this egotistically driven self destruction repeated so frequently has become quite tiresome. Collapses like this are fascinating in their way and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't at least some value that can be extracted in examining such instances more closely, but it's long reached a point where this sort of thing just feels expected. Perhaps that's my own biases and personal bubbles skewing my view, but given the prevalence of creators who dedicate their output to documenting the falls of their contemporaries, even if my view is skewed, (and it probably is, as with anyone's) I don't think it's skewed very much.
Regardless, if we can somehow get ourselves unstuck from this vitriolic mire, I hope it happens sooner rather than later. I'd rather see the interesting things people are creating than listen to the dramas of what they're doing. (Your articles fall into the former category by virtue of their quality.)
When I first sat down to write this article a day or two after the drama started, I didn't expect it to smolder as long as it have or even last as long as it has. People are still uploading videos about it weeks later, so I thought for sure I would be exposing most people to something they wouldn't have heard of. Now, however, I'm not all that surprised you heard about it.
I won't lie, I'm an easy mark for a good "rise and fall" story, so these kind of tales always fascinate me, no matter how routine they are these days. I will say that I try to posit a moral at the end, or some lesson to take so it doesn't come off as senseless bashing (or in the case of Verbalase, I genuinely had no ill-will towards the guy and wanted it to be more of a good natured clowning at his very public fuck-up than sincerely malicious mocking). I don't think there's much hope for many of these content creators to pull themselves out the almost Samsaric cycle of self-destruction. Personally, I subscribe to the belief that every creator has a shelf life, and once they overextend it, they're liable to go up in flames. Some have a very long shelf life that only ends when they die. Others have the good sense to get out while the getting is good. But a lot of them I don't think can. There's that line from Top Gun: Maverick that I think rings true for a lot of these people - "I'm a fighter pilot, a naval aviator. It's not what I am, it's who I am." To me, when content creators and influencers get into that mindset, they literally can't stop. What else can they do? What else do they offer the world? Well, probably something, and they could figure it out with some self-reflection, but it's easier to just continue until the wheels fall off and your car explodes and you end up forced to stop.
It's not unlike the rock star that finds success and flames out, no matter how grand or small that success might be. Back when I used to play the YouTube game myself, I took great pains to ensure that it didn't become the end all, be all of who I am, and certainly had no aspirations to make it my career. (Not that I'd have been able to, given the narrow niche I played in.) I played that game for about five years, but when it came to be too much to keep up with due to lockdowns and the work related madness that caused, my arms length hobbyist approach allowed me to easily close that chapter on my life.
The same can't be said for many of those who flame out in this. I'm with you on the idea of content creators having a shelf life. Not everyone is built to keep up with it long term. Trends change, passions and needs shift, as do the approaches we take and the interests of the audience. There's little out there that's truly evergreen, and even when people hit on something that is, there's few people who can maintain the pace for an extended period. The temptation to take easy roads is strong, and jealousy runs rampant, which sometimes creates a MAD hotbed that often ends with the artillery turned back on the ones who fired the first shots. Yet they keep going, because what else can they do? In reality, there's plenty they could do if they were to engage in some self-reflection as you suggest, but the trap lies in the fact that it doesn't feel like there's another choice. You know, sunk cost fallacy and all that.
Probably true, even if it is a tad depressing to think we only have so many worthwhile stories or articles or songs or films in us. Maybe it's more a matter of changing niches than stopping period. Recognizing when you're milking something for profit even it it's run its course...which is of course a huge problem with professional media these days.
As for your last paragraph, powerful stuff. Years back I saw a popular speedrun streamer go through this, where he was basically held hostage by one particular game he was very tired of, but he couldn't afford to lose the views and income by changing. It's a pretty brutal dilemma, and also inspired me to write a novel about a speedrunner going through something similar and coming to the realization you describe towards the end there.
On a related note, if you haven't seen it, I think you guys would enjoy the infamous speedrun rant by RWhitegoose, which also inspired a similar rant in my story when the protagonist finally breaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56N17d4WnM
I'll give it a listen on my lunch break.
"even if my view is skewed, (and it probably is, as with anyone's) I don't think it's skewed very much."
Just one more data point, but for what it's worth I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. That's also one reason I prefer post-mortems of bad fiction rather than real-people drama, if we're going to be taking things apart in the first place. At least fiction tends to fail in more interesting ways, and there's useful info to be had there if you're writing your own. Still, I also agree that the quality of our host's articles makes them worth it regardless.
"you’ll always be better served building up yourself than trying to tear down others."
Wise words for any context, and of course this is what John Michael Greer steadfastly teaches when it comes to doing any kind of magic: blessings rather than curses, positive affirmations rather than negative ones, etc. That and his consistent condemnation of any kind of "black" magic is one reason I respect him so much. I'll admit I've never heard of any of these people involved in the drama of the hour, but I appreciate you making a plea for good old-fashioned decency in a public debate, rather than the spiteful pecking everyone seems to fall into these days. As you and others have articulated so well in various fora, there's such a feeling of immaturity to everything these days, that we're just fundamentally not serious. Everything turns into a dumb middle school drama. Or as I've started putting it, in that typical "joking but also not really joking" kind of way: this is what happens now that the last people who remembered the 1930s are gone. For all the faults and injustices of that time - and don't get me wrong, they were many and reprehensible - people seem to have had a certain kind of integrity we don't have any more. They were serious adults, not just overgrown babies. At least they stood for things, even if it were often things I strongly disagree with. And they had a tenacity we could only dream of. I suppose living through the Great Depression does that, even if no one should have to live through an era like that. I don't know, I've just been increasingly fascinated by the interwar era lately.
It's like a mirror image of our society, basically the same in most of the important ways, but without the absurd extravagance (to borrow another neat JMG stock phrase) or the intense commercialism. It was still Western/Faustian/Industrial civilization, but one that did these things for a purpose. Not necessarily one I'd have chosen, but there was thought and intention behind it. These days it's like we just keep shambling through the motions because we can't imagine anything else, and it's all we've ever known.
I also loved the part where Whitener complains about those oh so dastardly racist Southerners, only to find out he lives a stone's throw from his foe in the same South. Your impression about anti-Southern prejudice also seems right to me, as much as it can as a foreigner. Like I've said before, there's a strong undercurrent of elitism and snobbery against Americans here in Norway in my opinion, and naturally that tends to be directed at those deplorable gun-wielding, white, Southern Republican Christians more than anything. At the same time, we're constantly swimming in a tsunami of (coastal elite Liberal) American pop culture, and young people here pepper their sentences with Americanisms and speak English with impeccable American accents, so it's a strange double-edged thing.
Anyway: yes, it's depressing to see how many people seem to want moral crusading rather than a society built on good-faith debate and "live and let live". Maybe we're back to the median after the brief respite of ca. 1970-2010...
(As for Cowboy Bebop, guilty as charged. It's one of those things that's been on my "get to it someday" list for years and years :P)
It's interesting that you bring up this idea of the 30's being this great demarcation of generations. I don't think you're wrong. The Boomer ethos has been from the beginning steeped in the idea of perpetual adolescence. Even when the Flower Power, Counter-Culture Boomers moved into being "the adults" in the Reagan years, they still never quite... solidified, in a way. They never really accepted the fact that they were getting old and needed to take things seriously. If you look at how the Boomer-dominated government handles pretty much everything and has more or less sold the future of their descendants out from under them for their own gain, I'd say they never have, and now it's too late to do anything even if they suddenly and inexplicably decide to change course. I see the same sort of hesitancy to embrace age and experience in pretty much every generation since - it's all about pretending that the inevitable isn't happening. And, trust me, I get why we are, I'm certainly no paragon of accepting the fact I'm getting old, but as one of my favorite tweets ever says, "Aging is not 1% as scary as whatever the fuck is wrong with the people who do everything they possibly can to try and not age". And, yes, it trickles down into puerile discourse of two equally unserious and juvenile camps of ideologues spouting stale memes at one another. Like, there was a time I used to think the "Yes" meme with the blonde chad guy with the beard was funny, but holy fuck every time I see that stupid ass picture now I just know I'm about to see what's likely the worst opinion or take I'll read the entire day. I just don't see how either side of the political blocs will ever really make any progress if they continue to act like petulant kids antagonizing each other on a school yard.
I would also agree that we have, as a society, lost the ability to imagine anything other than a neo-liberal, industrialized, capitalistic civilization. I'm not saying that those qualities aren't better than the alternative - I'll take neo-liberal industrialized capitalism over living under the thumb of a despotic Mesopotamian God-King and eating dirt any day - but we also can't seem to get past it. Every solution offered to modern problems are the same solutions offered in the 1900's, to a fundamentally different time, place, people, and society. Like, there's a lot of people on the right who idealize Fascism, right? Well, Fascism was a 20th century solution to 20th century problems. I don't think Fascism, Communism, or any of the conventional political ways of thinking that defined the 20th Century are going to succeed in fixing the issues of the 21st Century, especially as things continue so rapidly changing and the 20th sinks further back into the rear-view mirror.
Also, even though I live north of the Mason-Dixon these days, I'm still a Southerner at heart. I kind of hate it for a lot of reasons, but it's also home, and it's engenders this feeling of, "Yeah, it sucks, but it's my home, and only I can talk shit about it because I actually live there". While the Southern US has been much degraded for a myriad of reasons and rightly does have a stigma of poverty, ignorance, and racial prejudice, it's really, REALLY not as bad as the Yankee propaganda would have people believe. And the thing about Whitener is, as a Southerner himself, he would know that. Asheville, where he lives, is notoriously progressive - a bright blue beacon of progressive ideology in the ruby red south. He should know damn well not everyone that lives south of the Mason-Dixon is a backwards rube. And he does, I'm sure, but at the same time, he has to stab his own culture and people in the back to make in-roads with the fellow travelers he wants to impress. If I sound heated, it's because that kind of mealy-mouthed duplicity sits particularly poorly with me.
I actually don't think we've returned to the median after a respite - I think the 1970's to 2010's were the norm, and now are the anomalous times. The majority of the population of any given country can NOT be so politically charged. It leads to major instability and unrest and, eventually, collapse - which is exactly what we're seeing now. If anything, I think the "live and let live" laisse faire attitude of the past where most people did have political convictions but didn't let it define them is something we direly need to return to. The current way of hyper-politicized fuckin' EVERYTHING is simply unsustainable.
I think the 30s work for a couple reasons: back then industrialism was brand new. A lot of people could still remember living essentially pre-industrial lives, and some still did. That makes for a profoundly different perspective. And of course it was before the idea of consumerism as an organizing principle for society was created after the War.
You're probably right about the Boomers selling out, as JMG has also talked about quite a bit over the years. Personally I have a soft spot for them, since most of the important adults in my life growing up were Boomers, and for the hippie project in general. I really do think the 1950s culture was stifling and full of prudery, and I can see why they rebelled against it. If anything, the problem is that their rebellion stopped when it won in the sexual and cultural arena without doing much about the economic side of things.
"I'll take neo-liberal industrialized capitalism over living under the thumb of a despotic Mesopotamian God-King and eating dirt any day"
"I don't think Fascism, Communism, or any of the conventional political ways of thinking that defined the 20th Century are going to succeed in fixing the issues of the 21st Century"
Oh yes, for sure. I'd say that issue for than anything is the end of eternal economic growth, which is the lynchpin of all those 20th century ideologies. Without it they're toast, plain and simple.
"I actually don't think we've returned to the median after a respite - I think the 1970's to 2010's were the norm"
See what you mean, and in one sense you're obviously right. The cynic in me wants to counter that in earlier times, that polarization wasn't usually an issue not because of a commitment to live and let live, but rather because everyone in society agreed on the fundamentals. By the point of a sword if need be. Believe me, I'm the last person to gush about "Western civ" and its glory, but I really do think the concept of freedom of speech, and by extension the idea of power subjecting itself to self-criticism, is a very dinstict and sympathetic concept in terms of civilizations. Whether it's sustainable without a huge surplus energy windfall is an open question, but I hope so.
GOOD ONE!
Obligatory pre-finish comment to say that I did watch Cowboy Bebop, I did get the reference, and I did read it in their dubbed English voices. Now then, until such time as I finish this and am thus able to comment on the content itself, see you, space cowboy...
Controversial take, but I think the English dub for Cowboy Bebop is really the superior way to watch the show, anyways. I watched it again recently and while a lot of minor characters have some shoddy acting the performances for the main characters are great.
I agree. The Japanese work is good in Bebop, but it doesn't carry that same particular flair that the English dub does. The show is one that really begs for that Western style and the main cast really nailed that. The same is true of Hellsing Ultimate, to the point that the mangaka himself has said he considers the English version to be the official version of the anime.
I went through a Lovecraft binge earlier this year, which was a treat. One of his most amusing quirks is that anything that strays a millimeter outside of 1920s New England respectability is described in terms of utmost cosmic horror. In "The Whisperer in Darkness," the narrator gets freaked out because New Hampshire has granite hills.
If Lovecraft had ever seen a taco truck, he would have had a literal stroke.
Anyway, Whitener's saga sounds like standard issue dumb-shittery. We all get to wrestle with Envy and the rest of the Big Seven, at times.
Verbalase blowing his beatboxing fortune on high-quality mascot costumes and custom-made cartoon smut... that's something memorable.
Wonderful, and well written and interesting with humor and compassion, as always, which is something I really appreciate about your articles. Thank you so much.