Summary: America has become quite weird. It’s getting more so. Here are a few recent examples. With an important conclusion at the end.
Political parody and comedy blur together in our America
Mad magazine ran the photo on the left on 12 December. Time ran the right cover on 29 May. Trump’s leftist critics have run out of new ideas.
Katy Perry’s new music video. It’s art! It’s weird…
Here is a new music video by one of America’s top pop stars. In the comments please explain what it is means. Perhaps it condemns objectification of women. But why the rappers (artists often misogynists, but with a special exception from feminist strictures)?
Memes show the darkness in the corners of America
These memes bubble up from the darkness in America’s soul. There are thousands of them. This is a relatively tame one. If you don’t immediately get it, you’re not going to understand much of the next few years.
Milo Yiannopoulos sometimes makes sense
Extremists (e.g., Breitbart News) manufacture propaganda through exaggeration and lies. Milo does it by showing news about the Left in action. He has gathered a large and growing following for his often-weird views.
“Sydney Boys High School Attempts To Celebrate Women, Gets Attacked By Sydney Girls High School. ” Boys learn a valuable lesson about the fate of beta boys, no matter how loyal to feminism.
“DNC Workers Are Suing The Party For Failing To Pay Minimum Wage.” Irony alert! In fact they are talking about suing.
“University of Illinois Cancels Nobel Prize-Winning Molecular Biologist James Watson After Faculty Cries Racism.” No heterodox ideas allowed!
“Nearly A Quarter Of Young Women Don’t Shave Their Underarms.” The next step in women liberating themselves from men’s desires. Of course, men need not play the game either.
- Why men are avoiding work and marriage.
- In the next decade we’ll see if the American family is broken. — Part 1.
- Will today’s young men marry? America’s future depends which of these answers is right. — Part 2.
A portrait of modern America.
Conclusions
“The Crazy Years: Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation, and social institutions, terminating in mass psychoses in the sixth decade, and the interregnum.”
— By Robert Heinlein; first published in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1940.
We’re in the Crazy Years, as foretold in 1940 by sci-fi author Robert Heinlein. There are precedents. The 14th century was a time of crazy years in Europe, brought about by a combination of massive social and political changes, plus natural catastrophes (e.g., plague and the onset of the Little Ice Age). For a vivid account of this time see Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
This irrationality is like an infection spreading through our society. I suspect (a wild guess) that it’s our response to our apathy and our resulting powerlessness. If so it is a choice not a destiny. Individually we’re pawns, but together we are strong.
All our reforms have helped strip the teeth of our gears, which can no longer mesh. They spin idly, side by side, unable to set the social machine in motion. It is at this exercise in futility that young people must look when thinking about their future.
— From Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” (1987).
For More Information
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- We live in the crazy years, but can choose a different destiny for America.
- The common thread that explains so much in America.
Another portrait of modern America.
