#Political #Liberalism is Dying—and Uncool is the New Cool…
When the world is in chaos, normalcy is hip. For many decades now, we’ve worshipped the ‘adventurer’ out on the edge, bold and daring, whether in sports or art or literature or music: the wild man, the risk-taker, the bad boy, and all too often: the degenerate, drinker, drug abuser, and sexual deviant…
That was all well and good in the British uptight Victorian era and its American 20th century post-war equivalent, during which we were sitting on top of the world—and our asses, all the while having fun fun fun while bombing the Hell out of Vietnam, the lady of the house staying home all day, taking care of the kids, with a little help from a hired colored hand, from the other side of town, from the other side of life, from the other side of the world, long time coming long time gone…
And morals, officially at least, were tighter than the legs that refused to spread for just any Harry, Dick or Tom, without a formal proposal and a bank-book to back it. Church attendance was a Sunday staple and the Bible was required reading. White was white and black was black, and any other color was just plain weird…
The long-haired pot-smoking hippie radical was a breath of fresh air back in those days, tied to neither job nor post, family nor religion, free as a bird and poor as one, too, by circumstance if not design, ready to catch the cheap flight to Europe on a moment’s notice, and maybe continue on to Kathmandu if the mood were to strike…
Cannabis was currency and experimentation was the norm, whether with mind-altering substances or body-altering disciplines, such as yoga or meditation or Rolfing or EST or Polarity or Eckankar or you name it. But mostly it was about R & R, rock-and-roll, the soundtrack to our lives and the inspiration for peace…
It’s hard to underestimate the power of pop music on the human psyche, its ability to get inside the mind, so to speak, and drive the narrative, as if the human brain needed more narratives. But music has the great capability to simultaneously inspire and placate, a fact certainly not lost on the Christian religion, which relies on hymns as much as fiery sermons to move the masses to move their asses, to get up off their seats and donate, ha! (And do some good, too, in all fairness)…
But all that’s changed now. That quasi-degenerate wild child is far too common now, out on a whim and out on a limb, can’t hold a job, still smoking hash and talking trash at age 59 and counting, hasn’t saved a penny in all these years and doesn’t plan to, either, since it’s almost too late now, better move to a cannabis state and start supplying the dispensaries, before it really IS too late, since no government really wants to support his flaky ass any more than the dozen GFF’s who rejected him…
It’s a sign of the times, like it or not, for better or worse, through thick and thin. The times are trending conservative, for one reason or another, subliminally because the world is getting crowded, thus smaller, I suspect. Liberalism is dying, if not dead already. That ideal is basically founded on the concept of noblesse oblige, in which a country’s wealthy supposedly feel an obligation to help the poor…
There’s no guarantee of that, of course, unless based in law and backed by force, as we now see in America. And our modern liberalism often comes from a corporate old-fashioned economic laissez-faire liberalism, that quickly becomes conservatism when the going gets tough. It’s easy to be liberal when you’re the hottest ticket in town—digital media. You don’t see many liberals coming from the coal mines these days, or the oil fields. They know their time is limited, and they don’t intend to go down gently…
In the absence of political liberalism—rich people voluntarily helping the poor—there is no other option than for the poor to help themselves, to everything those rich people have, and that is exactly what is happening, all over the world. And so those rich must ever fortify themselves more resolutely, to which the creative poor respond with ever-increasing aptitude, mostly online hacking…
Thus our great hope is our likely downfall, with ever-greater percussions and repercussions, the Digital Age of the Industrial Revolution now mostly spent and wasted, like youth on Saturday night, lying in gutters and begging for mercy, and money, our best efforts gone to seed before their time…
But you and I know better than that, still conscious past our prime, and still afraid of wasting time. There is no pastime better than good old fashioned work, and only that will save our precious species. If you have a garden, then you have a job—that’s my motto. And that purely and simply is my sustainable vision of the future…
streaming consciousness... 
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