Sunday, May 25, 2008

Those were the days!

If I see one more television 'emission' or magazine article about the Mai '68 uprisings, I might vomit paving stones! Here's a somewhat bleak op ed about 1968 that I don't entirely agree with, but which makes one big point- most of what we remember as 'radicalism' is basically the same language and ideology as consumer capitalism- that I would agree with. I think westerners just decided that they'd rather voice their belief in freedom and individual choice at the mall than in the streets. Less likely to make way for fascism anyway. You sweep away the residue of the past and the brownshirts, who actually live for street fighting, rush into the void. Like Saul Bellow once said, if you really want to overturn the culture, you need a Nazi Party. I think the greatest danger for the future is not fascism, thank God, or Revolution (same difference usually), but pleasant and empty boredom stretching out to eternity and punctuated only by occasional and meaningless acts of violence. Imagine a human face being groomed- forever.

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