Are Liberals the New Squares?
This title of this article is tendentious because, in truth, I already know that liberals are the new squares. Not only that – they’re terminally out of it.
But first, let’s roll back. Some time ago, for these web pages, I wrote of the Death (not the Birth) of the Cool. This was picked up and amplified recently, and graciously, by Ed Driscoll. As men of “a certain age,” as the saying goes, Ed and I remember Miles and Thelonious – the days when cool was cool and pot was a reefer.
Those days are not only gone, they’ve faded so far in the rear view mirror that not even the slightest ghost remains, only some imaginary version of an imaginary version. Cool is dead and now liberalism is the squarest of the square.
I mean – do you think Deborah Wasserman-Schultz is hip? This is one of the meanest things I’ve ever put in print or online, but that’s the girl who was standing in the corner at the sixth grade cotillion and you said, “Oh, no. Do I have to dance with her?”
And how about the great Obama himself – he and his “choom” friends twenty years too late to the party, replaying Bob Dylan and company in Hawaii long after the Band burned old Dixie down. It’s all a bad chapter from David Brooks’ already-predictable-when-published Bobos in Paradise. The minute rebellion goes middle class, there’s nothing less rebellious. It’s all as boring as a Volvo.
So we are in an era of desperation. A certain class of people who staked their lives on being cool ever since high school — whenever that was, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, who knows — are beginning to be confronted with the truth – that their ultra-conventional received wisdom, that which they thought was cool, is a bunch of hooey. (I was one of them, so I know.)
Of course, most can’t countenance this. They continue to believe that government spending is cool, that it is a good thing (how square is that?), but out of the corner of their ears they are beginning to hear a different song:
Libertarians are the cool guys.
Libertarians?
What does that mean?
Oh, yes, that’s a word for conservatives who wanted to get girls at parties.
Well, it probably was. But times have changed on that too and nearly everyone with half a brain is kind of a libertarian now, at least partly. The rest, like Paul Krugman, are out of it.
The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times are squaresville. Even the Village Voice is squaresville. If the East Village Other (remember that?) still existed, it would be terminally square. The Village itself is square – now just another shopping mall.
I guess it’s to be expected – that the cool grew up to be square. Hell, even evangelicals are hipper than liberals now. (I used the word Hell deliberately, even though it isn’t cool.)
Now here’s the thing: Liberals are beginning to realize they’re not hip anymore. They won’t admit it, but they do. Witness Obama’s behavior with the press. He’s sweating like Nixon – and that’s definitely not hip. (On second thought, Nixon was finally hipper than Obama.)
And Jay Carney? Would you call him hip? And what about Biden? Has there ever been a soul so square?
What makes modern liberalism the mess that it is today is that it is mainly composed of people who desperately wanted to be cool in high school – wanted to be Abbie Hoffman or Eldridge Cleaver – but never were. Their longing – this need to be Abbie – has clouded their thinking and their ability to perceive reality, placing us all in a mess along with them.
Meanwhile, Bob Dylan became a conservative.
“Meanwhile, Bob Dylan became a conservative.”
So did Eldridge Cleaver!
And that’s cool. They didn’t do it because they were cattle.
Animal noise that most represents the early baby boomers, “Moo”
I was imprecise. Not all early baby boomers, but the Woodstockers are summed up by “Moo!”
To quote my Company Gunny, circa 1983
“The only “Wood Stock” I remember in ’69 was on my M-14″
There are some 50,000 names on a black wall in DC, mostly Early Boomers! The TEA Party people I’ve met are mostly Early Boomers!
I own a t-shirt, bought in Vermont, in much jounger days when I drove a Honda Civic. The shirt no longer fits very well, as also the Civic joined the clunkers long before there was any “Cash for it” to be had. The shirt depicts a hill-side pasture with a grazing cow and a 1959 Mercedes limousine. The caption: “Moo-cedes. World’s greatest milking machine”. Today, I can affirm the truth of that statement.
My theory: Each generation “invents” itself to be “different” from its parents, and more distant sibs, creating its own peculiar “coolness” lasting exactly until it becomes itself the “older” gen, when upon the stoke of some incognizant universal clock the “cool coach” turns back into the “square pumpkin”, in synchronized mimicry of the above progression from Civic to Moocedes. We do unconsciously copy some “squareness gene” from our parents, and pass it on to ensure that our kids will do likewise. I have become convinced of this. I contend it is practically to be viewed as a law of nature.
Well, if you were to ask Dylan (and nobody bothered to until the last couple of years) he’ll insist he’s always been conservative. It’s just that the hippy’s were so drugged up they misunderstood one of his songs and thought he was one of them. He (intelligently) stayed silent and rode the gravy train.
Bob Dylan wrote “Neighborhood Bully”. (Google it if you don’t know it.) Now THAT’S speaking truth to power!
and John Lennon liked to needle his friends about their reactive conservative hate… being that close minded must have looked lame to him too.
And Harvey Milk was a veteran and small business owner.. not so sure he was a lefty true believer either.
And MLK… republican.
There is more but just because the left grabs someone as a hero doesn’t mean the person in question drank their coolaid.
MLK was explicitly not aligned with either party as a matter of principle.
No; probably as a matter of politics in my opinion. No need to alienate half the country by identifying with one party. Still; as a matter of fact he was a registered republican.
As the saying goes; you can have your own opinions… but not your own facts… and that he was a republican can not be misdirected away with spin.
Bullshit. Give me a citation for that.
Interesting line of thinking Mr. Simon.
What’s cool about being a Marxist statist and shackling your fellow citizens?
John Lennon was a closet conservative, that was the wellspring of his coolness.
John may have been a closet conservative but Yoko’s gone far left. It’s all about peace and love, right?
Or three piles of dirt.
Hard-core Leftists aren’t cool, and could care less. When they get power, they’ll have the people who used to laugh at them shot. ‘Cool’ isn’t the issue with Leftism, but ‘not fitting in in high school’ surely is. Leftism has many obfuscating excuses, but it always ends with the destruction of normal human society, as in Russia and China. Leftists didn’t fit in in high school because they couldn’t fit in anywhere in normal America. BTW, notice how the simple word ‘normal’ affects Leftists like a crucifix works on Dracula? That’s because Leftists aren’t normal. Anyhow, Leftists are those whose inherent nature makes them incompatible with normal people. Being unable to negotiate the rules of normal society, they’ve decided to destroy it. Atheists (normal in no known human society) are never satisfied with tolerance — being tolerated, they launch into an all-out ACLU-style war on Christianity, because Christianity is the normal religion in America. Every leftist cause works the same way — no matter what the ‘problem’ the solution has the ultimate effect of tearing society apart. BTW, I’m old enough to remember this — Libertarians are the same people who used to belong to the John Birch Society or follow Ayn Rand, i.e., kooks of a particular type. If you notice that Leftists are misfit wack-jobs, check out the RonPaul folks. Harry Browne, Jr wrote the scariest book I’ve ever read as his manifesto. Completely denying the existence of human society, at least as far as he was personally concerned. People like this are burned in healthy societies. Libertarians share with all Leftists the fantasy that what men have known for 6,500 years is all a big mistake, and that they’ve finally figured out what Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, and Edmond Burke got wrong. Right…..
Good point about normal, Jacobite. Normal is a much better thing than “cool” or “hip.”
The people arguing here that conservatives should try to be more cool and hip remind me of 85% of the people I see driving loud, obnoxious Harley Davidsons: fat, middle-aged guys with straggly white hair who want to impress somebody that they’re some kind of outlaw. Well guys, you ain’t impressin’ anybody with your loud Harleys. And conservatives ain’t gonna impress anybody by becoming what our culture says is hip and cool.
Churches have gone down this Coolness route too, and look at the trouble they’re in because of it. Jesus wasn’t hip and cool either.
I think your missing it. The cool kiddies look lame these days. Obama can pose at the beach like a Kennedy but posing is uncool these days. A lot of what they do is being seen for what it is. Shallow and stupid.
Now the squares that keep their heads down and work, raise families, and keep things working / get things done look cool… even though they’re not trying to act like it.
As to buying a bike… well; there are worse ways to act out. Buying an airplane, expensive motorcycle, motor boat, or an old car to restore as a reward for working hard most of your life… hobby. Something lefties roll their eyes at… but the rest of us consider fun things.
I see what you’re saying, Thomass, and I agree with some things Roger Simon is saying, but he and some others here at PJMedia still seem to want to be in some kind of In-Crowd, and they seem overly concerned about impressing others by things other than the truth. I understand how Simon is maybe turning the idea of “cool” on its head, but that’s a dead end. We’re in a big war of ideas. Its true that its important how those ideas are presented, and its good to present them with wit and good style, but I have a hunch that Simon is going about it the wrong way. Reagan and Thatcher were by no stretch of the imagination “cool,” no matter what people say about them now, yet they were amongst the most successful people on our side in 150 years.
A few days ago I saw Mitt Romney speak here in Ohio. I don’t think Romney would typically be thought of as “cool,” yet he did an excellent job of putting across his ideas and his contrast with Obama to our crowd. He didn’t need a teleprompter, and he didn’t use ridicule, but he was successful with good humor and what appeared to me to be passion.
I agree with you that people who get things done and try to raise a good family are admirable, I just don’t think that “cool” is the right word for it, because of how “cool” has typically been used for decades by most people. Sorry to keep harping on it, but I want Simon to be more careful about how he defines things.
Buying an airplane, expensive motorcycle, motor boat, or an old car to restore as a reward for working hard most of your life… hobby. Something lefties roll their eyes at… but the rest of us consider fun things.
How people choose to spend their own money is no one else’s business. As for me, I seldom drink, don’t do drugs, don’t gamble, have never cheated on my wife (29 years this weekend) and don’t smoke. I do, however, have a tragic airplane addiction. My plane is a ’67 Piper Cherokee. Sure, it isn’t cheap (the only cheap thing in an airplane is the air in the tires) but it’s mine and it’s paid for (it cost less to buy than a lot of new cars). Any one of those other things I mentioned (especially cheating on the wife!) can easily cost more per year than what I spend on flying my little plane. It the lefties don’t like it, tough.
I didn’t become cool until I spent a few years with an outlaw biker gang. Bad boys never go out of style.
Of course being a libertarian since ’88 made me ahead of my time. And then there is my engineering work. A brainy bad boy. Girls just love that shite.
Just lucky I guess.
Egil-
The very facts you propose in your attack on Fat, middle-aged, scraggly white-bearded guys will no doubt get you a lot of response on this blog. I’m one of those guys your talking about, and quite conservative at that. I am 68 and wouldn’t ride anything else. The Harley Davidson brand is the ONLY one made in America! We like our pipes loud so the spaced out idiot next to us can HEAR us and not run us off the road…I have ridden bikes since 1969 and love riding, period. That there are outlaw clubs that exist in no way implies that all Harley riders are that way. perhaps you should visit their website, or that of the Harley owners Group (HOG)to find out what we really are. Last year we as a club collected $18,000.00 in 8 hours with a poker run for the benefit of PAWS FOR PATRIOTS (a seeing-eye dog raising/training non-profit organization for blinded veterans of war(s)). We have every kind of individual in our organization, but the majority are VETERANS, from Colonel all the way to private, from Korea all the way to Afghanistan,plus the other services.I would say not more than 20% have beards……..Try again!
These sorts of columns seem to be a frequent occurrence here at PJMedia. Who the heck cares whether the conservatives are “cool” or the socialists/communists/fascists are “squares”? These sorts of idiocies are part of the thinking of the neo-con, ex-liberal mindset and the baggage of those people who are collectivists at heart. True individualist conservatives have always known that there is nothing better than freedom and liberty as a lodestone, not ephemeral pursuit of the collectivist “cool”. “Seek the truth. The truth shall set you free.”
Won’t this thinking keep you forever in the minority?
Its much better to do the right thing than to be cool or popular. Henry Clay said “I would rather be right than be President,” and that should be our attitude.
But ridicule is an awesome weapon… esp against the left. They adopted so many of their opinions just to fit in with a group that reinforces their self esteem. You must have seen the piles of articles about how intelligent they think they are… and that their opponents have mental issues.
Laughing at them is a crushing WMD counter strike.
(one I would not recommend if you must deal with said leftist in the future as they’ll never forgive it)
I was reading Ayn Rand in high school when most of my classmates were in thrall with the liberal-leftist pap that was being swilled their way by our communist NEA teachers. From Rand, I learned that those who pursue the “cool” are essentially collectivist sheep who look to other people to form their sense of self. They develop no personal identity or authentic individuality; rather, they adopt the poses that they mimic from the herd, like the cattle that they are. They are the sorts of people who “were only following orders” when they loaded the railroad cars and stuffed the showers and ovens with Jews and so many others. I learned very early that such as these were not “cool” in any way, shape, or form. And that includes all of the mind-blown liberal-leftist rockers and their Hollywood douchebag buddies.
To answer your question… it is important to them. Not having it will make them feel like the wind is against them rather than pushing them from the back.
They are collectivists after all. They like to chant things like ‘you are alone’ to counter demonstrators.
They’ll crack up a bit when they can’t deny they are the minority. Alone… and lame.
To us? Right; doesn’t matter as much.
As much as I like most of your columns, I have to wonder if you know anyone under 25. Or 30. 35?
The vast majority of young people get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and maybe a late night talk show. They follow celebrities and musicians like Kanye West and Lady Gaga. They watch the big hollywood blockbusters.
All of these things are overwhelmingly liberal.
I think many conservative bloggers must be living in something of a cocoon, with blogging being their main hobby. But if you go to other hobby related sites, at least the ones I visit – video games, rpgs, e-books, the people there are pretty much overwhelmingly liberal with maybe a handful of libertarian types (which would include me).
And I forgot another site I frequent, devoted to my favorite baseball team. Again, everyone is liberal. While politics is supposedly off topic, you have a number of people with leftist imagery in their avatars, like Che Guevera and such. And many occupy wall street statements in their sig.
Jeremy, I do know a lot of people under the age of 35. Some of them are gamers some not. Some watch sports but frankly I don’t any that blog about it. Some have ink and studs some don’t. Some listen to the TV pretend news and see it as comedy some take it seriously and think themselves ‘cool’. Most get their news from the internet. Some have families and are into Little League or church, some not. Some are Vets, some write Apps (and not just game Apps), some actually wear suits (like Mad Men) and not cargo shorts and t-shirts. They pretty much all drink coffee and beer, but other than that (music, clothes, politics, hobbies) they are all different. I know a lot of people under thirty-five.
I guess what I am saying is there are many different types and interests of people of any age. I hope you haven’t fallen into the notion that there is only one way to be (cool or nerd)for every generation. Just like all Boomers were not Hippies (though they got all the press) not all those under 35 are gamers that listen to Jon Stewart.
Jeremy,
Winston Churchill once said:”If you are not liberal at 25 – you have no heart, if you are still liberal at 35 – you have no brain”. There are lot of brainless people among our young.
I understand your point, since I see it every day too, but I don’t think that was Rodger’s point. The younger (i.e. under 30) people of today live in a reverse polarity pop culture world where to self-identify as liberal is to conform. The young adults out at Occupy[whatever] and marching in protests are really the teacher’s pets since that is what their professors and even HS teachers have been telling them. Is it even possible to be considered a “rebel” if you are advocating for institutions to take over more of your life?
They put icons of Che up and quote Occupy slogans as part of pop culture and only partly because they may believe them – and often those posting Che have no idea what he did or even advocated, just that they’ve been told those evil bible thumping rednecks hate him so he must be “cool”. Pop stars like Lady Gaga are popular for their libertarian statements (it’s ok to be gay) as much or more than for any pro-authoritarian Progressive statement they may make.
Jeremy, in the 18-45 demographic, the Daily Show pulls about a 0.5 share, as does the Colbert Report. By comparison, Swamp People pulls a 1.3 share, and even Pawn Star re-runs get a 0.6. I seriously doubt a “vast majority” of any demographic gets their news from Stewart or Colbert.
ACtually as someone who teaches economics to about 300 high school seniors every year, there is something to be said for this idea.
It is sad when I see the brighter ones spout something they heard in the mainstream media (or God forbid Colbert or Stewart). They rip on Palin because they heard she was stupid, but I get blank stares when I ask them about speaking “Austrian” or mention Solyndra. Conservative kids are almost apologetic to mention Fox News etc.
BUT
I definitely see the libertarian streak in them. They have been brought up to be gay tolerant and they probably favor looser drug laws, BUT many of them have woken up to, or are waking up to the insane spending and monstrous debts that they will ultimately be left holding the bag on. I’ve talked to some of the more mainstream liberals among them and the rose colored glasses of four years ago about Obama have definitely been taken off.
The Daily Show and its spinoff each get fewer than 400,000 viewers a night. The vast, vast majority of young people in America DO NOT watch either. The ratings for these programs is so low, that they would be cancelled if they were shown on a broadcast network.
Most of the people I know who watch them are over 70; one is 89. Old liberals trapped forever in the fantasy world, which they actually admit is a fantasy world.
Watching Stewart is about as cool as watching Lawrence Welk was in the 1970s. The Daily Show used to be funny before Stewart took it over and turned it into a partisan propaganda medium. Too bad.
Or YouTube.
But the question is, are they simply young, or are they actually students?
When I see the comments on YouTube, from leftists or Paulites (and I prefer the former to the latter), I assume they are mostly in College.
By the way, back when I did make conservative comments on non-political videos (say, Star Trek) people were usually polite.
Strangely enough, when I went to my 30th high school renunion a couple years ago (I had never attended any previous reunion) I noticed that among my old classmates all the “nerds” back then seemed to have become left-liberals, while the cool guys were today all conservatives. And most of the Lefties seemed to be multiple-divorced public sector employees, while the conservatives (several quite successful) were private sector and in stable relationships.
Not saying it’s always that way, but it’s an observation I made.
That attempt to turn me into a liberal did not work!
Sorry to piss on the campfire … but you aren’t telling the readers the whole story.
The number of “minorities” has exploded from 16 million (in 1960), to 114 million (in 2011), and will reach 236 million by 2050…
So while the ideology of liberalism is dead, with the amount of “minorities” rapidly growing, while European-Americans age and slowly decline over the next few decades, the Democrats will soon have a permanent majority for the rest of the century.
You assume that all minority folks think alike and value the same things. There is considerable complexity and diversity of thought within “minority” groups.
Reality is right – but I’ll be dead, so I don’t care.
It is not a question of using the word “all” but a relative one. The diversity of interest and thought and most of all the accomplishment of Americans in 1960 was a world beater. Today, a city like Rio de Janeiro, which thinks of itself as cosmopolitan, and with a population of some 10 million, probably has 1/20 the number of book stores and libraries as Minneapolis/St. Paul, an area with a greater population of some 2 million.
Open a Yellow Pages in Rio or MPLS and the differences in terms of variety are stark. Rio and many other world capitals are big cities with as much actual depth as a small American town.
Catholics and white Southerners have also been expanding in population and, for much of U.S. history, they were the backbone of the Democratic Party.
“Cool” = “hipper than you.” That’s what Dylan was all about. But they didn’t really have any secret wisdom, did they? Maybe “Mr Jones” knew more than we gave him credit for.
Oh so now we now that Jones’s first name was … Darcy! And still totally clueless. Seriously, Mr. Jones definitely has an Obama/Biden sticker on his Prius.
If by “cool,” Roger, you mean someone who is an individual of integrity and willing to go against the herd, then I’m with you. But that’s not really what cool means in our world. If you go back to the 1950′s, the Doris Days and Hugh Beaumonts tended to be much more admirable than the Miles Davises or Jack Kerouacs. And “cool” role models have tended to be pretty awful ever since.
Believe it or not I do have a sense of humor now and then, and I think I get the points of this article, but cool mostly means those who are trendy or who set the trends, and who are, in the parlance of the Left, “transgressive.” I know that the people who are really transgressive today are those who go against Political Correctness and all of the dogmas of the Left, but such people will never really be seen as “cool” by the herd. In the experience of many of us, the “cool kids” were nasty to the nice kids and the awkward kids. And of course, our president is widely considered to be cool, as was Bill Clinton. So, cool is something to be admired?!
We shouldn’t be trying to win the battle of the ideas by claiming the Cool Ground, but by doing the right thing. And there are few things more silly than middle-aged or older people trying to be hip.
keep in mind the right thing is pretty subjective 2day. The O just made an illegal proclamation that millions of people believe was ‘the right thing’.
At some point you do realize that the world is divided into people who want to control others and be taken care of by an all-encompassing bureaucracy. And people who want to make their own decisions and pay their own way. They begin to resent those who are not productive but live well anyway because they belong to the parasitical, directing class. Where actual productivity doesn’t matter.
Going through life like the Choom Crowd believing that someone will always pay the bill and provide is going through life stoned. Even when you are lucid your habits and patterns have blinded you to reality. You cannot speak without a teleprompter unless it involves those radical beliefs that form the core of your soul. When events do not go as scripted, no reaction works.
Because reality was never part of your life experience and the statist solution that is the dream is running out of OPM. And losing all the endearing parts of its facade that obscured the ugliness within. The core that hates productive individuals and genuine innovators.
Because they have a gift of individuality that leaves you frustrated and frightened. So you use your power to squeeze that individuality out. And tax away the benefits of what survives.
The modern liberal dream of equality for all. In the gutter together unless you have political connections.
Sounds like a nightmare for all of us who see and deal with reality.
Cool has always been conformist…think about it.
It can be, but isn’t necessarily. It came from a new form of music that broke all the rules, don’t forget.
Conformity changes constantly…hip or hipster…whoever!
I agree with you, Ceteris Paribus. In the real world, Coolness is conformity. Yes, one could talk about innovative jazz musicians, but ultimately what most people consider cool, today and in the past, is to follow a certain conformity and to seek the approval of others.
Yep!
I’ve also defined it thus: “Damn I wish I HAD gone to see those bands play, instead of listening to Hall & Oates and Kim Carnes.”
Do you consider the “Tea Party” conformist?
I think it’s “cool.”
It’s the Libs/Lefties wear the mantle of “cool” while they’ve branded US as the “uncool” — ridiculed and demeaned us.
This ostracism of us not only slaps us, but keeps young people from exploring our ideas. Young people who will be very, very impoverished (unfree and worse) in the future following Lib/Leftist “planning.”
And we’ve too easily accepted the stigma they’ve placed on us.
It’s time we threw off their false branding — and claim the truth — We Are the Cool! The New Cool! It’s time we saw ourselves this way — and spread the word. And it’s the truth!
We are the New Ones — the Smart Ones — the Ones with the Good, Courageous and Big Hearts whose ideas of Liberty and Small Government will actually bring Prosperity to ALL — prosperity which will actually provide jobs which will “feed the poor” — instead of their rapacious and hypocritical “Welfare” and Failed Socialism.”
This revision and command of our REAL status should be a BIG PART of the CAMPAIGN to WIN THIS COMING ELECTION.
From avant to garde to rotten edifice that needs to be torn down…
Your point is interesting.
The hippies were extremely conformist.
Snobbish and clannish as well.
The hippes wanted everyone to “conform to their non-conformity”.
[To Aqua above: the Tea Party risks falling into the same trap. They started out with no social issues and not very much in the way of foreign policy. They stuck to domestic, economic issues plus support for the military. They were proud of not having any leaders, of being ‘grass roots’. Now just try saying anything on any blog against one of their leaders or candidates. If I say, for example, “I think it is in poor taste for Bristol Palin to have a talk show on single motherhood”(just an example, don’t jump on me) I will be beat down in the dirt and called everything from a RINO to a traitor to the USA. So yes, the Tea Party started off non-conformist. They are rapidly turning into the ‘conform to my non-conformity’ hippidom. Sorry)
There were basically two kinds of hippies in the ’70′s. The majority were leftist conformists who talked and dressed alike. Most of them are still hard-core leftists today. A separate minority of hippies craved the concept of freedom and acted accordingly. They (I) never accepted the conformist bu11shit. We simply want freedom!
And “hippy” was a gateway to cults. Look at some of the greenie raw vegan types these days. Cults. With communes.
I started to point out that religion is the gateway to cults, but then remembered that religions are cults. Oh well.
When I was a teenager, we would go into the Village to hang around with the last vestiges of the Beat Generation. Talk about conformists.
Well, there’s conformists and conformists. Speaking relatively, Americans have never been conformists. They are incorrigible and incurable eccentrics.
When I was young, the biggest unthinking, inflexible and intolerant rednecks I met were usually conservatives. Today those qualities seem to reside mostly in liberals I meet. Liberals speak authoritatively about junk psychology and history they’ve reduced to white crimes and think the expression “Third World” is offensive.
If your definition of “cool” is Abbie Hoffman and Eldridge Cleaver then today’s liberals are cool. Both Hoffman and Cleaver were front men for anti-American organizations, both opposed freedom in favor of tyranny and both would be at home in the Democratic Party. Yes, I know, it’s not “cool” to tie the anti-American organizations of the 60′s to the Soviet Union because that makes all the “cool kids” dupes, fools, useful idiots and rubes. I’m sorry but there’s nothing “cool” in advancing an ideology that’s led to the deaths of hundreds of millions and enslaved billions.
I think Hoffman was basically a con-man.
There is no such thing as “cool” anymore and, in my opinion, cool was killed by hippies who were anything but cool but insisted on co-opting the term. Stoned, drugged out, dirty geeks wearing combat fatigues and banging on about their boring leftwing ideology weren’t cool. Still aren’t in their long, grey pony tails and birkenstocks. Barack Obama cool? Please. Idealogues aren’t cool full stop.
Like it or not, Frank Sinatra was cool, Dean Martin was cool, Nat King Cole was cool, Lena Horne was cool, James Bond was cool. No one exists like them today.
There was a reason I skipped reading the Roger L Simon pieces. And this shallow and sophomoric bit of writing reminds me why. Vacuous. And so was the article.
Well, that wasn’t cool.
Roger —
I think most posters here up to this point, don’t quite “get” what you mean by “cool.” (I wish you’d respond to their objections.)
I do (especially coming from an age-range and background not unsimilar to yours), and I agree with your article.
Libertarian/Conservative IS the new “cool” — in the best (nonconformist) sense.
I saw an interview on YouTube the other day that showed me the difference between false cool and real cool quite effectively. It was an old interview in which Dick Cavett talked to Jimi Hendrix, interspersed with much later footage of Cavett reminiscing about the interview. Here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC1vtGo2JhY. It’s quite short, less than six minutes long.
I’d never seen Hendrix interviewed before and was struck by how quiet and polite – even shy – he was. I’d expected more swagger from a big rock star. And Cavett’s smug confidence that most Southern men of the day were all fire-breathing racists seem to me the ultimate in liberal smugness and self-righteousness. I think you can guess which of the two I found cool….
I’m going to ‘go there’ and point out he was another non lefty… he caught some flak for his rendition of the national anthem but he didn’t mean it to be disrespectful.
Jimi Hendrix, for all his faults, was a proud ex-Army paratrooper. His rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock was not meant as a travesty, but as a heart-felt tribute. But you’d never learn that from any liberal-leftist liars.
Yeah, that rendition wasn’t about “America sucks”, but “America is loud and tough and does not stand still for anybody else’s bulls__t”.
Your bleeding heart liberal see’s someting unjust and believes they can fix it thru a bill. Johnson with his Great Society.
The intention was true of heart but the byproduct is worse than the initial problem – dependency.
Obama’s intentions are to transform the country to benefit the elitist. They have zero concern outside their own omnipotent power
African unemployment up – who cares they’ll continue to support me because im black
Kill the keystone pipeline to ensure the enviro vote – hurts the country, who cares
What were witnessing is an egomaniac so bent on succeding he’ll sell out anyone in the name of his own preservation
Thats what people are realizing on both sides of the political spectrum….and that aint cool
“The intention was true of heart …”
Horsepucky! The INTENT was to steal a voting block from the republicans by “giving them stuff.” They knew that people would vote for “stuff” rather than substance and they were right. Democrats have been doing just that ever since and people are too stupid to realize they are voting for slavery. They just see the stuff and don’t realize that people who give you “stuff” can very easily take it away. They think they can riot in the streets to get their stuff and don’t realize that these people would kill them in a nano-second, especially if they have complete power and no fear of losing it.
I think part of what Roger meant that Libs/Lefties STILL think that they’re
“cutting edge,” “new,” “fresh,” “with the current moment,” “gutsy,” “exciting,” “standing up to power,” and “anti-establishment” — and think they’re “cool” because of that …
when, in fact, they ARE the power-establishment, and instead of being “courageous” and “new” — they are cowardly, tired, boring and clinging to 40-50 year old attitudes that are obsolete. (They are NOTHING like they think they are — which is “cool” — they are NOT.)
While, all that they attribute to themselves, are, in fact, the attributes of today’s Libertarian/Conservatives — which is very “cool.”
Roger, you put down in words what I’ve been thinking for quite a while; that liberals have become the new rednecks. With their mind-lock and evisceral reactions, they don’t realize that their ideology has been proven to the world not to work, yet they hang on, supporting the axiom that people fail socialism, not socialism failing people.
I don’t know if liberals are the new squares, but they’re definitely the new puritans. They’re pious church ladies without a church, and their entire scripture consists of “Thou Shalt Nots.”
I’ve had this theory for a long time – that almost the entire reason Liberals are Liberals is because they’re trying to get back at people who were mean to them in high school.
If they were just content with who they are, they’d be libertarians.
Try to start a business, a koolaide stand, gas up the guzzler, who’s there to ‘harsh your mellow’? Stinkin’ commie lib government pukes supported by commie lib pukes.
Roger,
You are right, and I have noticed on the local level, as well. Every medium sized city has them. The people that have some money, who have determined that liberal is the enlightened way to be, that go around either starting things or joining organizations and religious organizations to up-end them. They honestly believe that if they and their friends do it the masses will follow them because they are the enlightened ones, the well traveled ones, the ones that seem to be ‘in the know’ about how to do anything. They also know that nice people, who may have some money, won’t fight them because they are so nasty when they don’t get their way.
Well, I’ve noticed something over the past few years; they are losers. I mean people aren’t following any more. They try to start a new city wide program, bring in a new head for the school board to shake things up, have a charity event for some liberal cause, back a candidate in a primary and they lose, every time. They are so shocked! In the 90′s and early new milinium they were the movers and shakers. Not so much anymore. There is no big fight. People just go vote for the other guy or choose not to participate, they just don’t follow. Of course this has caused a ‘crisis in leadership’ as we hear every day because the ‘cool’ people that determined they were our leaders didn’t get their way. But it is happening.(on the National level think of the reaction on Broadcast News to Cable News)
Perhaps it will reach the big cities soon. Then maybe, just maybe, the decent people, who are also smart and may even have a little money to change things will come back out in numbers big enough to do something. If they know they won’t get their brains bashed in, there will be more Paul Ryans and less Sara Jessica Parkers with a microphone.
Being “cool” is stupid because it causes you to rest your whole sense of self worth on what other people think of you. It’s kinda like going into debt to buy a big house, fancy car and other crap you can’t afford because you want other people to think you’re wealthy. I remember reading a story about an average middle-class couple who bought a huge boat that cost almost as much as their house, and yes, they had large loans on both. The wife said “the looks of envy on the faces of the other boaters was worth it.” Really? And while those two are working their asses off to pay off these loans, the envious neighbors will be relaxing in front of the TV and/or playing with their kids. But yeah, they’re also “cool”… and stupid.
But don’t you see? What you just wrote — and your evaluation of that situation … it was so right … and so …
Cool!
Well, the cool kids (or wannabe-cool kids) need to remember how Abbie Hoffman exited the stage.
Pretty uncool, actually.
I thought it was a heart attack but read at wikipedia it was a drug overdose, age 52. Was “bipolar”.
The FBI had a huge dossier on him, he couldn’t travel anywhere w/o first getting permission.
And Che.
No, I think liberals are brain dead!!
Libertarians? Anyone with half a brain? Huh?
Libertarians are liberals who finally figured out their tax rates. Or people who want to be libertines but can’t admit because their spouses would kill them. Honestly, it’s an upper middle class, college educated position of someone still living the fantasy of total self reliance. You need at least 4 years of college to believe that shit.
And for the person who said under 30s get their news from Stewart, I teach on the college and graduate level and you are dead on. By Friday, they will all think Romney never saw a touch pad before.
Absolutely! Everyone who’s a “real” conservative knows we need the government to take care of us. Silly Libertarians, doubly silly if they’re “educated”.
Wow. With that definition of libertarian, you really shouldn’t be teaching anyone anything.
I always thought lib ertarians were supposed to be people who valued small federal government were states rights advocates. I believe in these principles.
On ethical issues (drugs, sex etc) they are either fence sitters (unable or unwilling to take a stand) or they tend to believe that people should be allowed to go to hell in their own way.
While I’m sympathetic to this view, I also believe in good citizenship and for people to comform to that good citizenship. There should be a code of behaviour that makes it pleasant to go about your daily life without having to worry about running into some asshole on the streets. We used to have that and the streets were safe for the most part because people didn’t tolerate the bad behavior. There was a cost. Now you’re vilified for pointing out the assholes.
Well, lemmesee. To the donks: Stay the hell out of my wallet! And to the pachyderms: Stay the hell out of my bedroom! So what does that make me?
Contrast that with this post by Ed Driscoll: http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/06/11/confirmed-the-death-of-the-cool/
Conservatives were deeply uncool for most of the 20th century, partly because they were defending conservative institutions against a liberalism that was On The March. By the sixties, conservatism was so beaten down that we had liberals playing both parts (institutional defenders and the revolutionaries). There’s a reason that the most notorious anti-war action was at the Democratic Convention: it was just one of many battles between the incumbent New Deal democrats and the (for lack of a better term) the hippies that supplanted them, and who rule today. During this period, conservatism as a movement had be basically reconstructed from scratch– Republican politicians mostly being either Big Government Conservatives or intellectually decrepit paleo-fossils. The seeds planted by Goldwater and Buckley had sprouted but not yet blossomed.
OK, so that brings us to the present day. Liberals have largely finished their Long March Through the Institutions. Academia, unionized government staffers, the national religious organizations (even those where their constituents are mostly conservative!). That’s a lot of institutional obligations to uphold!
The modern liberal is uncool because keeping Liberalism going is big business. It requires full-time work and the coalition is so big and the catechisms required to keep your membership are so intricate that all the cool people have been exiled for overturning one apple cart or another.
Meanwhile, the very fact that conservatives and libertarians have been shut out of most of our institutions gives us a wonderful flexibility. We’re free to say what’s obviously right without worrying about offending some part of our fragile coalition. Bill Cosby, as die-hard a liberal as you can find, says some uncontroversial things about personal responsibility and education and suddenly becomes an un-person. Gays are being hanged in Iran, women raped, oppressed and murdered in the middle east, and they’ve got real live concentration camps in North Korea, but liberals dare not say a word for fear of upsetting the anti-war movement. In Egypt, an American journalist was sexually assaulted by a mob, who all the time chanted “Jew! Jew! Jew!” The Left averted its eyes, nervously. Where’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan? The modern Left would have drummed him out, like they did Lieberman and even moderates like Harold Ford.
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz seems like a typical liberal, substituting hysteria and name-calling for saying something that’s actually meaningful. Should anyone be surprised? She’s the Party Hack in Chief, that’s her job. What’s surprising isn’t that DWS is shrill and vapid and boring, it’s that Bill Maher and Jeanne Garafalo and Paul Krugman and Bruce Springsteen are, too. Cool and/or new ideas are their job, and it’s odd that they mostly spend their twilight years spouting tired old tropes that I doubt even they believe.
Liberalism is big business. Without it, Garafalo is yet another mediocre, unfunny comic. She can’t carry off the Smart Act– she’s just not smart enough– but with some big glasses and a page of talking points, she can get Left, Inc. to laugh and tell each other how much they respect her.
That’s how liberalism is uncool. They’re simply too encumbered by their own success, the fragility of their coalition, the contradictions inherent in their own system. (See how I snuck some Marx in there?)
Don’t worry, we’ll lose our cool, too, eventually. Our only hope is that, because we intend to take power and disperse it rather than keep and use it, that we’ll dodge the bullet. But if history is any guide, conservatives and libertarians, given a taste of power, will horde it and be corrupted by it.
May that day be long off.
“Libertarian?”
“Oh, yes, that’s a word for conservatives who wanted to get girls at parties.”
Me in college, in other words.
As for the main premise of the article, check out a group photo of any university-level liberal arts faculty: these are the people who got their heads flushed in the toilet on a daily basis in high school.
It’s all as boring as a Volvo.
Actually, it’s even worse. It’s as boring as soccer.
Like Aqua @ 10 I realized I was seeing ‘cool’ through the same generational and cultural glasses as Roger. Hell, Abbie Hoffman slept in my living room in South Shore in Chicago while he was raising hell at the Democratic convention. I discovered, to my surprise at the time, that I was very uncomfortable with what he was doing. I thought I should agree but found I didn’t want anything to do with him and avoided talking to him when he was at my place. It took me years to understand why I felt that way, but that was the first moment that I became aware that something was wrong with the liberal orthodoxy that was the received understanding of the time and place I grew up. I know, I know – i’m slow, but you will have to forgive me – I graduated from an Ivy League school. At the same time, in my rear view mirror I can still hear Monk playing at the Five Spot on Third Avenue, and Ginsberg reading at a dive on Second Avenue called The Metro.I never thought of them as ‘cool’ particularly but I knew I was in the presence of something extraordinary. I’m saying that politically the dominant belief system of 60s turned out to be embarrassingly wrong, but culturally the period produced some great art that makes many contemporary efforts seem tepid. Compare the outrageous Warhol to the passion we all feel for conceptual art.
Spot on.
BTW, did I see you at the Five Spot? I snuck in underage to hear Monk and Coltrane.
Re: Abbie, if you happen to have a few spare hours to read Turning Right at Hollywood & Vine, you will find my interesting – and somewhat amusing – connection.
Thanks Roger. I thought I recognized how much your point of view on ‘cool; was based on that experience of New York in the early 60s. Egad, The East Village Other. I think the comments here show that the evolution of ‘cool’ has been a genuinely different ‘trip’ for people who grew up elsewhere and I learned something from most of them. And that it is fair to say that in the early 60s New York was simultaneously at the center and provincial as hell. I think I am a bit older than you (42) and only went to the Five Spot a few times even though I lived at 4th and B. (Sigh) I find that I have most in common with Liberals who have made a right turn somewhere along the way, and that goes double for New Yorkers, so I will get your book, which I see is available on Kindle.
Oh my.
Thank you for posting this comment.
Yes, I can tell a little story too:
in XXX, XXX (sorry, have to watch my back) Ginsberg came for a recital. So many people came that, after a fast negotiation with Ginsberg, the direction of the theater announced that Ginsberg would have shortened the show and repeated it immediately after finishing the first, so the crowd could be divided in two (both times more than filling the theater). I was astonished , I knew most of them and I knew they knew nothing of what Ginsberg was doing at that time (Tibetan Buddhism, Shambala, etc.)
I laughed when I watched them at the opening of the recital: Ginsberg invited all of us to chant with him a mantra. Simple simple, but going on and on and on. And on. And on. They realized he had said something about “praying” and they were really out… in unknown high seas…
They were really not the kind of people who pray, in any way or fashion.
They were there for the “name”, they were there to be there and to be able to say they had been there. They had not foreseen any “praying”.
Very cool !!!
And thank you for your story which catches another side of the cultural change. ‘Cool’ went collective in just the way you describe. Suddenly large numbers of people were interested without much if any understanding of why. I was a bit older and came by my interest in art naturally. Sure I went around reading Beat poets hoping to impress girls, but I also read them because I liked them and had some understanding of what they were trying to say. But when Woodstock happened I was as surprised as the organizers that a mass cultural revolution was on. Prior to that I thought of myself and my friends as an art clique no different in kind than Hemingway and his friends in Paris in the 20s. Last year I had the good fortune to accidentally encountered one of my poet friends from those days reading his poetry and was delighted to discover that he still crafted his poems with an undiminished passion for precision and control of tone. I think you nail it when you say that the people you observed ‘were there for the “name”, they were there to be there and to be able to say they had been there’. I don’t resent what happened for ruining my cosy little art world – I marvel at it as a case of how great collective cultural waves can sweep though cultures and change them beyond recognition.
“The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times are squaresville. Even the Village Voice is squaresville. If the East Village Other (remember that?) still existed, it would be terminally square. The Village itself is square – now just another shopping mall.”
Seen Haight-Ashbury lately?
There is nothing liberal about them. The proper term is conformist.
I don’t let people I despise make decisions for me.
First it’s cool. Then it’s crowded.
Yeah, and I always try to remember that when I was Hip, nobody Hopped.
If you think of “cool” as being “popular”, then I can see Simon’s point. The pendulum has swung from living in the moment, the disregard of social structures and values etc. But it seems to be just beating a dead counterculture horse.
I’d say in America the Tea Party is ample evidence of people embracing an American-Victorianism. A belief in upper class values, meritocracy and such. There is a classic Liberal push as concerns freedom, but not Libertinism.
Social liberalism seems to have simply road the coattails of “cool” simply by association with those on the bottom. “Cool” and “hip” like jazz were appropriated from black culture. To be “cool” is associated with detachment, of being an outsider and living moment to moment.
In “Easy Rider” Peter Fonda (a style over substance liberal in my book) spends some time in the commune and “digs” all the crazy kids trying to build some failed utopia, but moves on. It’s not his scene.
“Cool” has little to do with earnest eager beaver types trying to create a social safety net, feed the poor or save spotted owls. By the same token Huey Lewis may sing “It’s Hip to be Square”, but it doesn’t back Simon’s premise.
I prefer the Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold.” The antithesis of “Easy Rider.” Check it out.
What could be simpler than: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
No guarantees, though.
How about “life, liberty, and property?”
How about Prosperity? I like that better.
Goodness, not coolness, is our proper aim.
Hallelujah !
Yes.
Nonetheless, what Roger Simon is talking about is a true cultural revolution, that is happening now.
“Goodness, not coolness, is our proper aim.”
–Yes, that is what I was trying to say earlier. Today, most of our celebrities and our President are considered cool by those who value hipness. Is that what we really want?!
Hugh Hefner was considered the Coolest guy ever by millions in the 50′s and 60′s. Is that what we want?
As Ceteris Paribus said, groups which have done really good things, like the Tea Party, are not about coolness. They are about doing the right thing.
I always thought Peppermint Patty was an annoying douche.
The tea party movement has nothing to do with coolness. It is about freedom!
I think that either you got your terminology wrong, or the usage of the term Liberal has drifted in common parlance.
Ask some of the famous supporters of Barack Obama if they are “radical” and see what response you get.
The actions of his administration demonstrate that the policies favored by the old “F*ck the System” radicals from the 60s are being implemented. Liberals want the system to work. To that end, they have spend the last several decades developing transparency and accountability rules (in co-operation with Conservatives, I might add). This administration is not interested in making our system work.
I wouldn’t quibble about this point, but for my firm conviction that classical Liberals are as offended by this administration as you are. I think that if you make common cause with them, you’ll do more than win the upcoming elections; you will be able to implement some very good solutions to our current problems.
Good stuff Roger.
Reminds me of this defection: http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-11/news/why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-liberal/full
When will they ever learn?
Strength is cool. To me, Dick Cheney was the coolest guy I know after Ronald Reagan, who was by far the coolest. Right after 9/11, when asked what the Bush administration was doing to go after al Qaeda, Cheney just gave a semi-psychotic grin and swore that they would hunt down the people responsible and bring them to “justice,” which actually ment that he would almost personally shoot a Hellfire missile up their butts. You felt secure with a guy like that in office, the type of fellow who didn’t say much but got a lot of results. And you certainly didn’t want to get on his bad side because that would almost be like irritating Darth Vader. And everybody new Darth Vader was cool, NOT Luke Skywalker.
“it’s composed of people who desperately wanted to be cool in high school — but never were”
OMG! If that’s true, and William of Occam is smiling, it’s a damning indictment and terminal curse.
They will, however, never be able to look themselves in the mirror and admit it.
(Barack, with all his emotional problems, is so screwed. Debbie W-S as well. They have reached a level of success, and their egos will hide behind that. That’s what Carter is doing.)
I’m trying to remember if I wanted to be cool in school. Pretty sure there were two groups, those who knew they were heading to college, and those who expected to relive their last year of high school ad infinitum. And I thought they were both a pack of anal orifices.
My departed dad once said that he knew I’d be okay as I didn’t give a flip what anyone else thought, I’d make up my own mind. As an official wannabe babykiller I convinced my dad to sign the papers that marched me off to the big green machine in ’74 and all my petty, trivial classmates be damned.
So far, so good.
Don’t encourage libertarians to think that they’re cool!
Cool is fine in other parts of life, but politics should be boring. The urge to be admired and/or dramatic in public life is responsible for more bad legislation, counterproductive regulation, and plain old human misery than anything other than pure naked power lust. Come to think of it, they’re not that different.
Be boring. Your society will thank you, even if it won’t necessarily invite you to all of the best dinner parties.
Yeah, Mitt is real cool, and so is Ralphie Reed and Grover Norquist. Give me Obama and Biden any day. Come to think of it, I’d rather go out with the hotties on MSNBC like Alex Wagner (woo-woo!), Crystal Ball (yowza!) and butch bombshell (sigh!) Rachel Maddow than any of the conservative (or, um, libertarian) Stepford Wives that read the teleprompters over at Fox News. Obama has been giving medals to Bob Dylan — I can only imagine the type of musicians that Mitt would be honoring if he gets into the White House. The dude looks like he still listens to Pat Boone and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Yes, gramps, liberals are square. But not everyone can be a hep-cat like you.
What is “cool” is knowing your own mind and basing your opinions on sound logic. Most liberals lack both of these, instead choosing to follow the crowd. In this case, off a cliff, but so be it. Their choice–which a lot of them have never been held responsible for in their lives.
I have also noticed that a lot of my friends (I am 47 now) who like to call themselves liberals are the most CONSERVATIVE people I have ever known when it comes to spending their own money. LOL I love them, but not for their brains.
LOL. Good one Roger, and true.
There’s nothing cool about liberals. They have surpassed “old fashioned” conservatives as tight-assed, purse-lipped, po-faced moralizers, priggish sermonizers, invasive do-gooders, incessant improvers, ethical nit-pickers, officious nose-pokers, incorigible tongue-cluckers – they are Mrs. Grundy’s psycho offspring. Some of their parameters are different from those of the old-fashioned prig: they aren’t bunged up about sex, drugs, or filthy language. But for sheer disapproval of everything and everyone else, there’s simply no who can compete with the modern liberal.
I don’t know, they don’t take too kindly to men on the Outlaw Right (Libertarians). A lot of us are chauvinistic, smart drug using, free loving (of their wives and girlfriends), marriage avoidant, tax cheating villains(their word). We care not for their laws and only obey the convenient ones.
Leftists- “Progressives” like to think they are more righteous than conservatives, but they are nothing but the modern self-justifying Pharisees. They put heavy burdens on others (taxes) and do not lift a finger themselves (rich ones live like Caligula, poor ones do nothing.) Their plans to “help” the poor (with other peoples’ money) only create devastation and misery. “Helping” the poor get housing created the housing boom and financial collapse of 2008. “Helping” the poor get housing in the 60′s resulted in those high-rise public housing nests of crime, drugs and inhuman degradation where they had to be razed in the 80′s. “Helping” the poor for millions of poor has only created devastating family distintigration, irresponsability, moral decay, and attitudes of entitlement. Like the Pharisees, the modern Prog is a “whitewashed tomb, filled with dead mens’ bones,” “straining at gnats while swallowing camels.”
“Oh, yes, that’s a word for conservatives who wanted to get girls at parties.” So, they’re aren’t any heterosexual female Libertarians?
Mu husband was the coolest hippest guy in the Haight Ashbury in the 60s (from 1966 on), he was born in 1942 and is an artist. Yes, he questioned the Vietnam draft but intellectually … a patriotic and intellectual objector to a small part of the overall program who even then knew and avoided the crazylefties like Bill Ayers and Huey Newton who seemed too ignorant atthe timeto have much influence …however never did we think that returning vets like John Kerry should have persuaded the military to withdraw leaving vulnerable victims who were on our side. It was as if they were mocking us. Hippies in the 60s were just kids trying to be artists like us (it seemed to us)but not being artists or being intellectual and creative many who took drugs just thought all their egotist impulses were important. We have been fighting their mockery of everything we are ever since.
I too was born in 42 but had much the same feelings. I remember being shocked and saddened when a high school classmate who had graduated from West Point told me he wouldn’t wear his uniform in public because of the opposition to the war. Your statement that your husband opposed the war intellectually was exactly how I though of my own position – and I used that very word to describe myself at the time. I wasn’t simply hiding behind the word because I knew that emotionally I supported the troops and admired their courage which clearly exceeded my own. . I also still happily patronize Vietnamese businesses and am never concerned if I pay a bit extra simply because of the fact that my country left them in the lurch and they had to take to boats to survive. Do I feel guilty? I suppose so, but my dominant emotion is pride to be associated with and do business with people of such courage.
Your story just brought back a sharp and painful memory long forgotten. A few years younger than your husband, I must have been 19 or 20 — still studying and part of the early 60′s arts community in the West(& East) Village … not sure yet about whether the war was right or not … but definately against the draft ….
one day, walking near Union Square Park I came across a group on soap boxes collecting money for the North Vietnamese National Front … I think I went into a kind of shock … and was heart-broken. I never had before, nor ever expected or even imagined to see such a thing. Our brothers over there fighting, and these fools collecting money to help kill them. I think I started to scream at them … and then ran all the way home. Thinking this must be illegal … I called the police, crying, who told me there was nothing they could do ….
Great observation, Roger. I think you should continue to elaborate. You’ve got a book here!
Wow, I have been thinking this for a while. My hyperlibral NY friends, gods bless them, are dorks who live in an echo chamber of the oh-so-enlightened, subscribing to Marxist newspapers (apparently recycled for years since they don’t change) and ranting about rich bitches spending so much on shoes. Sadly, they are never particularly successful, which they cannot reconcile with their self-image of superiority.
And I live in the Village (still a great location), but yes, it is Baby Gap city.
And yes, I too was One Of Them, so I know whereof I speak.
Please kill me now.
I know we’re the hot side of the debate. I’ve seen plenty of posts from very attractive acquaintances indicating that they are in fact on our side of the debate.
What do the sensitive modern progressive men get? War pigs. 300lb childless fatties. What’s worse is that the rate of cuckoldry is much higher for progressive men who are with slimmer women.
The stance of the Progressive man is one that announces to the world his desire to shirk some of his oldest and most sacred responsibilities as a man. He does not get the quality women as a result, and the ones he does wind up with won’t stay around for long.
When women interpret your stance to be “I can’t sack up and actually defend you or our future offspring, but can I still put it in you?” they don’t stick around if they don’t have to.
We already get the women, the gorgeous women, WE ARE THE COOL SIDE. Our values, that define us as men, make us more desirable to women.
Freud asked, “What do women want ?”
Legion, you badass genius, you figured it out!
Hi Mr. Simon. The problem with the Left is that whereas its’ proponents used to rail against “The Man” – and that was cool – that’s very much who they’ve become. Hate – or even a simple overriding self-identification with a body politic – will do that to people if they let it; it’s human nature.
As for Dylan, while some seem to believe he kept whatever conservative leanings he felt (mostly) to himself as a brilliant marketing ploy, I tend to think it’s more that he was always, and always did, his own damned thing. IMHO, that’s damned right.
Bob Miller is exactly right. I once heard Wynton Marsalis (or was it Branford? Whatever, it was quite a while ago) define “cool” as “having a very limited range of emotional response.” I don’t want any part of my fate in the hands of someone whose main concern is looking as if nothing can ruffle him.
Supposedly women go crazy for the “bad boys” because they’re “cool.” Exactly why I avoid them as if they’re tar pits; such creatures rarely love anyone but themselves. Give me someone who is passionate in a noble cause any day! Interestingly, when I try to picture men who are “cool” in the sense of charismatic or appealing, what comes up is: Michael Totten. Gary Sinise. And especially the late Andrew Breitbart. That sort. Heat, the sign of life, trumps cool any day.
It might not be used the way you used it but “COOL” is still cool. In fact it is not just cool, it is ubiquitous. It is like “like. ” My grandkids use it constantly. The expert who came to work on my computer used it in every second sentence. Anything that pleases this generation is still cool. For those who like Obama, he’s cool. For those who like Romney, they are cool with him.
The coolest of the cool for liberals right now is the Occupy Group. Some of my elderly friends who are cool with Obama talk like, “Wouldn’t it be cool to go down to give those kids some support?”
Hip is dead but hep is still cool.
I think “cool” was square when I was growing up (and seeing the idiot youth of the 60′s, my elders in high school and college, I definitely wanted to be square), but the term was revived by “Happy Dsys”, along with words like “nerd”. It’s been there ever since; here in Israel “cool” only has one meaning, and it isn’t termperature.
Cool, square, how about f&#* All y’all (that’d be the inclusive plural form)?
Nothing is cooler than a big, ominpotent State. Individual liberty is Nowheresville, daddio. You pro-freedom squares need to get hep.
Lenin was a nerd.
Nerds on steroids are extremely dangerous.
It’s the anger and resentment. Roger is right about that. He’s just too nice a guy to lay the truth out in stark detail.
Imagine what Barney Franks would do to you if he thought he could get away with it.
The other element of this is that there is a category of people, we’ll call them liberals for shorthand, who, if they are fortunate enough to get a bit of success, go ape-shit. That alone explains a lot about what is wrong with America today. People in the Greatest Generation were ladies and gentlement. They were appreciative. Their children are, for the most part, barbarians. And eduction levels don’t impact that in any way. As a matter of fact, education levels exacerbate the phenomenon.
The late Michael Kelly:
“The new cool man that Sinatra defined was a very different creature. Cool said the old values were for suckers. Cool was looking out for number one always. Cool didn’t get mad; it got even. Cool didn’t go to war: Saps went to war, and anyway, cool had no beliefs it was willing to die for. Cool never, ever, got in a fight it might lose; cool had friends who could take care of that sort of thing. Cool was a cad and boastful about it; in cool’s philosophy, the lady was always a tramp, and to be treated accordingly. Cool was not on the side of the law; cool made its own laws. Cool was not knowing but still essentially idealistic; cool was nihilistic. Cool was not virtuous; it reveled in vice. Before cool, being good was still hip; after cool, only being bad was.”
Dear Roger,
This was a great thread. I don’t know if I like your post or the delightful comments better. Maybe your post was “sophomoric,” as that one grumpy commenter stated, but it touched the sophomore in me.
Just for the fun of it, I would like to remind you of something I’m sure you already know: the roots of the New Left were heavily influenced by libertarian thought. Ginsberg and Kerouac were libertarians of a sort, much influenced by Murray Rothbard. Carl Oglesby, who was president of the SDS in the late-1960s was also a Rothbardian. Oglesby famously dismissed socialism as “a way to bury social problems under a federal bureaucracy.” In 1968, Eldridge Cleaver asked Oglesby to be his running mate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. For almost a dozen years, beginning in 1969, libertarian Lowell Ponte hosted a talk show on the otherwise nauseatingly liberal/authoritarian KPFK, right there in L.A. And then, of course, there was Jerry Rubin and his evolving, increasingly libertarian beliefs. It was Rubin who argued that the abuse of private property by the counter-culture was itself “scary.” What a shame that the modern left has modeled itself after Hoffman and not Rubin.
And surely you remember Fred Neil’s “That’s the Bag I’m In”? The “bag you are in” metaphor was the classic hippie deconstruction of human action. Everybody had their own bag and that was cool. It was a view of human action that was quintessentially libertarian and wonderfully non-judgmental.
Unfortunately, this libertarian bent within liberal circles was purged in the early 1970s. But now you are here to help me – I think I’m the only old hippie/libertarian left – resurrect leftist libertarianism. I couldn’t be happier.
Yours truly,
ThOR
Bret Stephens referred to them as “post-liberals” in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. I like that term, since, in my opinion, I’m a liberal and the so-called liberals are just free-loaders on that term. It doesn’t fit them at all.
Every other generation rebels against their parents (the “conservatives”). The rebellions carry over for another generation playing out its tail. Now, the conservatives are the Progressives and the Democratic Party. They are fighting change (the very “Change” (sic) Barack Promoted) and desperately clinging to union monopolies, handouts to Americans and legislation promoting class action law suits. Finally some of the true liberals (Tea Party Liberals and even some in the Republican Party) are standing up and pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left: clinging to the status quo while announcing “Hope and Change”. Tea Party liberals and Libertarians need to yell louder that business is beneficial (the “democracy of commerce”), that spending needs to be reined in (to “sustainable spending”) and the the Democrat conservatives are simply doing anything they can — legal or illegal, with the president and U. S. Department of Justice (sic) supporting — to retain their power. And that’s the truth: to the Left whatever they say, it is about retaining power, raw power over the rest of us. That’s the bottom line that even Tea Parties, Libertarians and certainly not the Republican Party are not saying. Do not keep it quiet; the American People are smart and get it. Tell them. And the kids will help throw over the Democratic/Union-boss/trial lawyer/old Hollywood billionaires, civil rights bureaucrat conservatives like we did in the ’60′s.
Liberals have no sense of humor and are boring.
And don’t forget the Right stands for freedom; the Left for chains on individual liberty.
I remember a movie I saw once where a kid had a step father who was a hippie poser, who was a controlling and abusive drug dealer. The kid finally told the guy that “hip isn’t hip anymore”. I think that fits the dems.
I also agree that the only really cool idealogy left is libertarianism, although compared with the dems, even straight repubs are cooler, probably because they have at least partly embraced libertarian economics, while todays dems haven’t embraced libertarian anything. Even on non-economic issues like drugs and regulating our personal lives, with the lone exception of supporting individual choice on abortion (which really isn’t very hip), most of todays dems are unlibertarian, and unhip.
…that’s the girl who was standing in the corner at the sixth grade cotillion and you said, “Oh, no. Do I have to dance with her?”
LOL. My town’s version of the “sixth grade cotillion” was a commercial enterprise called Hobby Hall that snagged us in grammar school and held on to us all the way through high school. Our parents believed their sons should be as well practiced in the social graces as their daughters so everybody went to Hobby Hall and there was always a good male/female mix, but the senior boys’ parents would get deep discounts if their sons would agree to attend lower grade dances and make sure the Debbies didn’t get left standing against a wall. You never know when a Debbie might blossom, though. Or not. Some Debbies stay Debbie all their lives (which does not mean they can’t be highly successful–witness our Debbie).
To anyone interested in a good sampling of Dylan’s style, I highly recommend the Scorsese-directed documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (currently available on Netflix stream). He’s an interesting guy. I get him, I think.
“Cool” is a nebulous, eye-of-the-beholder kind of thing. It’s not something one confers on oneself. People tell me I’m “cool” (among other things)–means different things to different people. (With the exception of several year’s foray into down and dirty strict libertarianism, I’ve been a conservative all my life. Maybe there’s a correlation?)
I’ve got two hippie step-siblings who both assured me that their lifestyle was based on nonconformity. They both dressed exactly alike (i.e. second-hand shabby), thought exactly alike, smelled exactly alike (i.e. rank), ate exactly alike (i.e. no meat but lots of herb), hated exactly alike … you get the picture. I just didn’t have the heart to tell them that their nonconformity was more conformist than my conformity. What’s more, I was cool and they weren’t because I was unique in ways most people appreciate while they were merely different in ways only they could appreciate. I didn’t try to explain this to them, either.
You can’t convince a lefty that there’s nothing cool about being a lefty because that’s how they and their peers define cool. They’ve created a constricted universe for themselves that’s merely different from the one the rest of us inhabit – the one that advantages unique attributes but disadvantages self-imposed, hermetic differentiation.
No, I don’t think Debbie is “hip”, but she does appear to be a bit nutty.