In the fullness of time, the robot historians sifting through the remains of this age will point to the 1970’s as the time when the American empire took a fateful turn. The 1960’s get all the blame for the cultural collapse of America and the West, but that’s not really fair nor is it accurate. Lots of terrible ideas were born in the 60’s, but terrible ideas like the Civil Rights movement started in the 50’s. Women’s rights started in the 20’s. It was the 1970’s when all of these terrible ideas came together to wash away the West.
Look at the disco era, as portrayed by the movie Saturday Night Fever. You have all the things that define this era. There is the reckless personal behavior, the pointlessness of the character’s lives and the denigration of bourgeois values. The main character is basically a bum who works in a hardware store so he can make enough money to party with other degenerates. He treats his girlfriend so poorly, she eventually becomes a whore that his buddies pass around, so she can stay in the group.
Everything about the movie, like the lifestyle it portrayed, was degenerate. The disco era was basically just an effort to take the underground homosexual scene in New York City and vomit it onto Middle America. It largely worked too. While the 1960’s saw bourgeois America stagger, it was the 1970’s when the cultural revolution hit the working and lower classes. All the rules that gave structure to the lower ranks were obliterated. The result was the birth of the white underclass and a drug culture that is still with us.
Again, the terrible ideas that found there way into the lower class in the 70’s were not products of the time. Just as the hippy culture was a result of the beatnik phenomenon, which was an outgrowth of the jazz age, the 70’s were a consequence. The difference though is that the cultural changes that rocketed through the middle and upper classes could be absorbed to a great degree. Money and class provide for a greater margin of error. Rich people can afford sex, drugs and rock and roll.
That’s the real crime of the post-war cultural revolution. The people at the top actually benefited from it, as they were no longer morally responsible for setting a good example and looking after society. They were suddenly free to be indifferent. The upper middle-class could inoculate itself from most of the damage, mostly by moving into enclaves where their kids would not be exposed to the consequences. The proliferation of private schools for the upper middle-classes started in the 1970’s for a reason.
It is the middle and lower classes that have paid the price for what happened in the post war years. To a great degree, middle class America has always been an extension of the working class. The smart and resourceful kids of the working class could make it into office jobs, rather than working in blue collar fields. At the same time, if the children of middle-class people slipped up and fell into the working class, the climb back up was not that far and only required a little help. The gap between middle and the rest was small.
The cultural revolution decimated the working classes, creating a white underclass. The gap between there and the middle-class is now enormous. If the child of school teachers makes mistakes and falls out of the middle class, it’s as if he has fallen down a well. The climb back out of the underclass is enormous. One unmentioned reason for the shrinking white middle-class is the floor underneath them has collapsed. This not only makes them vulnerable, it has made them powerless as a political force.
Another consequence of the cultural revolution was the segregation of the classes, both physically and cognitively. The ruling elites, freed from any moral duty to look out for their inferiors were now entirely divorced from them. The upper-middle, which always looks up for its aesthetic and cultural cues, has now cultivated a hatred of the lower ranks, as part of what defines their class. Those rules, enforced by the upper classes, that provided structure to the lower classes, also provided a connection between the classes.
The physical ugliness of the 1970’s, as presented in the movie Saturday Night Fever, was a glimpse of the spiritual degeneracy to come. The pointless self-indulgence of the characters, their reckless disregard for one another, their families and communities, all of it was waiting for the country as a whole. The physical ugliness of the age has been cleansed by the sterile aesthetic of Silicon Valley, but the spiritual ugliness of the cultural revolution remains. Glass and stainless steel cannot mask it.
That ugliness is what is fueling the populist movements. In Europe and America, the natives, physically and culturally divorced from their rulers, are now looking for alternative sources of authority. The people are recoiling at the ugly world created for them by their rulers, so the slow search for new rulers has begun. No one thinks about it quite like that yet, but in time, that corner will be turned. We’ll move from reform to the idea of starting fresh and leaving the ugliness of left-wing radicalism behind.
This article has a bit of a sad type of serendipity for me. I graduated from a rural high school in 1978. I have said that that was when the world , as i kew it at least , ended. .
Before that my lower middle class blue collar friends had two married parents , went to church , had normal names , and eschewed Drugs. the hippy thing was upper middle class, not us . in 1978 pot use peaked , divorce peaked , The series of short recessions of 73 – 75,79-80, 81-82, absolutely gutted the manufacturing economy. It was also lopsided, small town light manufacturing and farming were Utterly and completely destroyed.larger cities and and service sector were mildly hit. to the economic numbers in no way accurately reflect the destruction that went on in blue collar areas. I tell youngsters that even the African american kids in my elementary and junior high had a dad that worked, a mom at home , and were named tom, Jim and Fred. that is when moral rot began in earnest. It seems to be a combination of “camp of the saints ” and “Idiocracy” witha side helping of “they live” since then.
Thank Saint Ronaldus Magnus and Milton flimflamman for the shareholder value uber alles nonsense that destroyed blue collar America
Look on the bright side! I just read that in Chicago, they’ve finally begun construction on the Museum of Holocaust Museums. It seems that there is such a superabundance of Holocaust Museums, we now need a museum just to document and study them all. It’s being built on public land, of course, and at taxpayer expense. Americans must never be allowed to forget that somehow, THEY are the ones eternally guilty of Holocaust.
Saturday Night Fever was a celebration of hedonism, decadence, and irresponsibility. And now we have Mamma Mia, where a woman tries to figure out which of the many guys her whore of a mom banged might be her father. Now that sounds like fun fun fun!!
Good thing we are so enlightened in this age! Wouldn’t want to be “held back” by all that stuffy Christendom stuff….
Its not that hard to avoid that rot at least. Don’t watch movies or TV, problem abated.
Its not perfectly the Left has its slimy tentacles into a lot of areas but that is our job as reactionaries to create alternatives or just take up crafting, gardening or the like.
Or you could rant online , that’s fun too.
Yeah, it does seem like the poisonous plants sown in the 50s & 60s really smothered society by the mid 70s. It was Boomers hitting their stride, helping elect Carter, then having second thoughts by 1980.
Another film that captures more nuances of this is Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco”. There are reveals & hints of ascendant female hypergamy, the divorce explosion & plummeting fertility, nihilism, & atomisation.
There may have been a slight slowing of 70s trends in the early 80s, but things kept right on degenerating by 1989. Any chance of a return to sanity was snuffed out by Globalism.
We can’t change the past and the idea of learning lessons from the past is a fairy tale; habits get locked in early in life and either they help you survive or not. Out of the muck, the fittest will once again arise and bring forth new skill sets necessary to survive in this modern environment of abominable affluence and it’s handmaiden of hardship extinction. It used to be that plagues could be relied upon to reset the fitness dynamic, but not anymore. Like the forest management policies that brought forth the recent California firestorm, the deadfall of societal degeneracy is building up.
I think you’re spot on here Z. Can’t wait to make that turn.
The past is another country, I won’t go back there again.
I was recently watching Season 4 of “Black Mirror” now run by Netflix and taking a more American slant.
It’s shot through with transhumanist download your consciousness bullshit. Science is the new religion and the modern educated elite have no idea to begin to understand what it is to be human.
“They Live” is a documentary.
Exhibit A in support of the accelerating degeneracy of our “urban elites”: https://www.theawl.com/2012/07/the-40-year-old-reversion/
At least once each day I am reminded of Goering’s bon mot, and feel the need to unholster my pistol.
That’s foul. I actually had a client recently who had boob repair surgery or something and I saw her shortly after her and ask her how she was doing and she immediately said do you want to see them. I responded no and it’s weird that you want to show them to me. We’re both pretty surprised. She was probably surprised that I thought it was weird. These people are so removed from truth and Beauty they can’t tell the difference between right and wrong anymore.. I was surprised I said it I mean she is a client after all but when someone’s trying to poison your mind you have to act fast.
There was a comment on a previous article here talking about how the elites couldn’t be blamed completely, and that normal people needed to take half the blame for their own degradation. I disagreed. The whole point is that the elite leads whereas the ‘people’ cannot – being an elite is not just a title, it’s the power to influence and control regardless of whether the possessors of that power are competent or worthy of it.
There’s a persistent democratic bias where by many think normal citizens have more self-determination than they do, and that they collectively make their own fashions, movements and trends. Behind every social movement there were individuals who provided the impetus and direction.
Hence, all social degradation is the sole responsibility of the elites. If they are corrupt their people will inevitably become corrupt, and if they were noble their people would inevitably mirror that positive character.
The populist uprisings are unlikely to achieve any real change because they are those collective eruptions of the lower classes rather than some organised movement involving strong leaders.
However, all is hardly lost since these corrupt elites are continuously undermining their own order. Eventually a new proto-elite will emerge from the lower and middle classes – the elite is not a meritocracy, those that become members are selected for particular qualities (as opposes to mere talent) and there are always potential, unrealised proto-elites in the rest of the population who could seize the day under the right circumstances. Most likely the moment will come when some existing elites break away in disgust at the world they’ve wrought.
Some of us are already there. We are waiting for everyone else to catch up.
Z mentioned Lefty “morality” a few times recently and it captured my attention, the results of that morality are partially fleshed out in today’s post.
I started wondering how they hold the obvious falsehood, in the face of the consequences, in their minds. An initial idea is projection; externalizing the object of their morality onto something/someone who has no bearing on their own outcome. If I “care” about (fill in the blank) I’m a good person, whether I am personally a rotton shidtbag.
This post reminds me of a terrible almost 70’s movie which was saved by its happy ending.
Goiter guy FTW!
https://youtu.be/QLAYw0vM-bw
Saturday Night Fever also set the stage for the present dystopian world because it was a fake story made up by a Jew and used by Hollywood to push degeneracy.
https://www.eonline.com/news/35597/writer-admits-faking-saturday-night-fever-story
Ah, yes: whenever I hear the word “gritty” I reach for my gun…
I do think that our biggest problem is our elites. The contrast in the pop culture from the 70s to now is ridiculous. Compare Black American music. Now it’s basically Dindugeld, we done be oppressed up in this mofugga, think of the singers of the 60s. Sam Cooke. Look at what we have now. Twisting The night away is a great working class song. You’ve started out in the World. First job, trying to impress a girl with your first job and first car, there’s a relatable aspect to it. Anyone of us who’s grown up with moderate circumstances can relate to it
It wasn’t long ago that all normal Americans, black or white, enjoyed good music, Even now, when I feel blue on a cloudy morning, I will sometimes crank up via Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’. In fact I listen to it now, as I write. Bless Jackie and bless this recording.
Merry Christmas – and listen to Jackie, while you still can.
Joan Osborne’s rendition of “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”, done in 2002, turned out to be an elegy for Motown and for Detroit, just as things were starting to really burn down up there. It will lift you up and rip you apart, all in one.
In fairness and with a few exceptions, the 1970s were the last period in which American writers and poets produced work that was a least somewhat engaging and competent.
The ’70’s gave us “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” a film that went completely over the heads of the conformist Left.
After all, we went from Paul Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb’ (1968) to Christopher Lasch’s ‘The Culture of Narcissism’ (1979).
The 1980s still offered widely-known (what were known as “important”) books such as Allan Bloom’s ‘The Closing of the American Mind” (1987) and Paul Kennedy’s “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” (same year, if memory serves). It was an era when you could walk into any number of well-stocked bookstores and find just about anything you wanted or maybe you didn’t want but thought too cool pass up. A favorite store of mine, now gone, had everything, from the anti-Catholic tracts of the KKK to the autobiography of Leonid Brezhnev and Stalin’s ‘Foundations of Leninism’, from yellowing paperbacks of classics like Tolstoy to Ortega y Gasset for whatever price the cover said, sometimes 50 cents.
God I loved that bookshop, with its papers in 20 languages, its hard-core porn, its 25 cent coffee. All gone now. The 70s? Say what you will about them but I don’t recall my liberty being challenged even during the Carter years.
Human experience, to the young mind, divides into
(a) early Man, from tens of thousands of years ago, to roughly 1995;
(b) them.
Where’s the middle position? Good luck finding it.
To go off on a little bit of a tangent, but this essay, which is excellent, is reflective of a lot of what unites the disparate elements of the Dissedent Right, a sense of something wrong, a break in the moral fabric, a terrible ordering of society. Eunomia the Ancient Greek’s called it.To give The Spence some credit, the NPI speech on Trumps victory in 2016 touched on a lot of these topics. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved=2ahUKEwjmj5qb27TfAhWrXRUIHUhCBb4QwqsBMAF6BAgMEAU&usg=AOvVaw0VTJzWxrN8ZFOD4xbU2nov It’s worth a view if you can dig it out, bar when he cocked it up by appealing to the Stormer crowd with the hail shit. In hindsight if he had interjected ‘here’s to’ it would have been more blue blood but thats irrelevent. I do think, despite his flaws, that Spencer is right in his perception that this is something the West is unfortunatly going to have to go through. What emerges is debateable. The Visigoths took back their homelands, but as the Spanish. America.org can be given to musing but one interesting article they had was about ritual suicide. http://www.amerika.org/politics/why-the-revived-west-will-have-a-culture-of-ritual-suicide/. It is a simplistic notion but from my own perspective rewards and consequences have been the main drivers of human behaviour throughout our history. Derbs Ice people and Sun people a fair example. Talebs skin in the game. Ted Kazynski’s Landed Aristocracy as opposed to fighting Aristocracy. From Irish history post Civil War there were frequent mentions of Mohair suit Man, basically an amoral yuppie. After the Revolution, restructoring, and post World War 2 eventually Séan Lemass came to power. Very much Irelands Lee Kwan Yu. As Taoiseach (Prime Minister) he did a phenomenal job in aiding the economy, developing domestic infrastructure and industry. Not bad from a former hit man. Skin in the game 😉 Yet his daughter married a pretty corrupt cunt on the make https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey.
Assuming we get through this in any kind of shape robust shape, it’s something we’ll have to bear in mind.
I’d be a little skeptical about using “Saturday Night Fever” as a symptom for social decline. Most people at the time found it unintentionally funny. Travolta was thought of as a “sweat hog” from “Welcome Back Kotter” and NOT a serious actor. For the rest of the country, NYC was an alien landscape, and Hollywood was thought to be full of oddballs, leftists, and degenerates.
But I agree that culturally the 70s were the pits. TV went from “Dick Van Dyke” to “One Day at a Time”. Movies went from “A man for all seasons” to “Kramer vs. Kramer”. Broadway and Serious novels imploded. We went from Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day to Jane Fonda and Babs Steisand.
Dick Van Dyke to Dick is a Dike!
The 70’s were the era of the “rural purge” from TV. The “cosmopolitan elites” in Pedowood were tired of the wholesome, rural shows of the 1960’s. They replaced them with degenerate urban-based garbage. When there was a call for a family hour they flew into a rage over muh 1A. (Public airwaves, much?) F**k (((Hollywood)))!
About 1971, the networks canceled all the “folksy” series like “Family Affair”, “ Green Acres”, “F Troop”, “Bewitched”, “I Dream of Jeanne”, etc & replaced it with more “urban” (read “woke”) sources of entertainment: “All in the Family”, “Emergency”, “Love American Style”, “Good Times”, “Sanford & Son” etc.
It was a deliberate act.
“The upper middle-class could inoculate itself from most of the damage, mostly by moving into enclaves where their kids would not be exposed to the consequences.”
The corollary to this is that when a kid fell through they were (are) disowned, or at least shunned.
“The ruling elites, freed from any moral duty to look out for their inferiors were now entirely divorced from them.”
And because of the above corollary, the upper classes are more comfortable with “the other” as their under class, because “the other” don’t remind them of their kith and kin that they have cast into the darkness..
You can’t talk about the 70s without talking about busing and crime. Average people were Pissed Off that the liberal elite forced busing on everyone and blocked tough crime measures – while sending *their* elite kids to (then) lilly-white private schools and insulating themselves from crime. Eventually of course, middle class and working class whites just fled the cities to the suburbs. Which was probably the elite plan all along.
Since we are talking about the 70’s, what is Z’s (and other people’s) take on Apocolypse Now?
‘Apocalypse Now’ is almost certainly the 2nd best movie I have never seen, right behind ‘Blade Runner’.
Over-rated nihilistic crap. I think the bull de-capitation may have been real, adding to my disgust. I thought this was a great, meaningful film a couple decades ago. My, how things change.
Merry Christmas to Ursula and all the nice people here at the Z-blog. As to movies, I plan to watch the best film ever made in Communist China, for the 4th time, “To Live” (1994).
Yes. I can’t believe that movie got made but I’m glad it did. Everyone should see “To Live.”
Having talked to a couple of Vietnam combat vets about the movie on separate occasions, they were taken with the river scenes. “We were petrified, and we knew they would come after us. We just didn’t know when, how, or from which direction”. They simply wanted to get out in one piece, so the Col. Kurtz stuff was just irrelevant to them.
This hits close to the heart, Z man, as one who graduated from high school the year that ‘Saturday Night Fever’ hit the theaters. A year or two later we were subjected to the film version of ‘Grease’ – again with Travolta – degrading our adolescent sweetheart Olivia Newton-John as a sex whore.
It was an era that put the full-press on decency, even the idea of decency.
That said, I’m glad I grew up then. People still said what they thought, and goodness knows I got an earful of this thought from people who had lived in stark times.
They are all gone now, and that’s a problem.
Belloc observed – in the way back – that the rich benefit from chaos. The rich have resources, including usually being smarter than average, that others don’t have. Importantly, they can solve problems through their own & borrowed resources.
Everybody else needs the benefits of the cultural solutions to help them solve their problems. They don’t have five generations of stable families and their families’ expectations about how to live and their families’ ability to provide social and job help; they need broader cultural rules.
The evil genius of our age is that it has liberated the rich from their moral responsibilities to everyone else and allowed them to feel morally superior for doing so.
I was talking to the old man about working class vs white collar. I have some nephews and nieces (the old man’s oldest grandkids) beginning their college / training. The boys have the brains for college STEM, particularly the family business, engineering, but not the stamina. They HATE the prerequisite course work, and can’t keep their mouth shut. How to you make an A in differentials and an F in U.S. History. Easy, “I got sick of listening to her mouth, so I stopped going to class”. The girl, of course is eating it up like slop in a hog house.
Why is it that the trades, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and others can make so much money, and have nothing to show for it. I have friends that are making easy six figures in the trades, but spend it faster than they get it. My white collar friends, some of whom, make less, have more to show for their efforts. It’s like the old saying about pipe-fitters: “Pipe fitters drive a Cadillac, but with bald tires”.
I do a lot of work settling estates and directing the inheritances to the next generation. It is always 50/50, even within families. It goes to four kids, and two will save it while the other two will spend it all in a year, every time.
I suspect the horror stories you hear about people quickly blowing their lottery winnings reflect about 50% of that population pool as well.
I don’t know how much is hardwired and how much is socialization, but it is interesting how siblings almost always go in opposite directions. Maybe hardwired with randomization of how it gets passed along to the next generation. Or maybe there is something to that “older sibling” versus “younger sibling” thing.
The guys in the trades were never taught home-economics and money management which should be mandatory in trade school. So when the money comes rushing in, they go stupid. Some learn the hard way and some never do. But the same can be applied to STEM workers as well. I used to buy, repair and sell salvaged autos and make decent money as side job while working for the DoD. Yet I had more money in my bank account and in my wallet than senior engineers
Look at the Google, FB engineers, they make six figures yet most live like inner city chumps because these firms are located in expensive urban hives which negate their salary. By the time they’ve paid their taxes, room and board, they have squat.
One thing I learned is that working for others often sucks and working hard for them rarely pays off in terms of benefits when you factor the time and energy you sacrifice. Employee of the month or quarter doesn’t pay the bill’s it’s one foot above a kick in the ass.
I know may of these trades people and you are truly way off. Possibly near you but nothing from my experience.
You want ugly? Just look at what passes for “fashionable” these days.
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W8G-uabSnTg/VUc-hxkU9PI/AAAAAAAABBQ/Mu_rukCwIxQ/s1600/ugly-fag.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/12/20/05/7646956-6514751-image-a-55_1545282093476.jpg
I think I just felt my testicles retracting into my body at the sight of that. The second one that you just added, as well.
Burn them all, burn this spawn of satan.
One transgender woman and one woman who is not a former first lady.
Gross! That ugly ape-browed, fat-assed, bow-legged gorilla. And the white guy is not much better, feeling a Mad Max vibe.
Once seen, a thing cannot be unseen.
And don’t forget that pornography was also unleashed on the public on a never-before-seen scale during the seventies. It has really become toxic.
It makes me furious that the Supreme Court accepted that pornography is protected by the 1A, as if the Founders fought so that sexual depravity could be freely available. It’s so obviously false. I wonder what organizations advanced those arguments.
I’m not into porn and tend to avoid it being a bit of a prude. However its not false and is very good jurisprudence
The 1st amendment reads thusly
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Porn is protected as speech and the press unless you want to argue that photos are neither speech nor the press,
In addition the 9th which is the ain’t nobodies business if you do clause reads
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
So just because you don’t have a listed right to sexually explicit material doesn’t mean you don’t
The closest argument for that is the 10th which reads
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people
You could argue States have the right to regulate porn but if this is the case they also have the right to ban all arms, search without warrants and violate any other part of the Constitution they like at will as a States Right
Even if this was true which it isn’t the 14th changed that.
It reads in section one
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
States can’t abridge the Constitution period or should not be allowed to.
The other argument was the general illegality of adultery and public display of sex. Broadly though there was no explicit statements in the Constitution on the matter , it was expected that adultery could be made illegal
However written porn goes under neither of those categories and even photo porn while it might be adultery in some cases , is not precisely a public display
Its also utterly futile as adultery is not in any way a criminal matter and the Internet is not precisely public.
Plus its a multi billion dollar industry with wide public use. Ban would not pass muster
Now the entirety of the document especially the 2nd has been ignored at one point or another or interpreted via fancy dancing to whatever a political hack thinks it should mean. This certainly includes the entire concept of obscenity.
And note the reason we don’t allow some kinds is that its harmful to those people and it is allowed to stop harm. Broadly though all legal porn with 18 and ups at least falls under the “actions that are broadly permissible and can be consented too” keeping in mind that blood sports were perfectly legal too
The Constitution is not a puritan document or a minimalist one and largely the concept of society at large isn’t in it. You have people/State but not “the good of the whole” which was assumed to be handled by private sector voluntary church attendance
Your response assumes the Historic American Nation lacks common sense. And that is nonsense.
Like common sense gun control or common sense emergency search powers ? F the Constitution is that what you mean ?
The document either means something or it does not and while it been common practice for people to make shit up, its still wrong whether its denying guns to freedmen or telling people what they can drink or read
In any case the H.A.N. never existed in my lifetime (Gen X here) though the US as White nation still existed till around 2000
Those old nostrums simply are no longer valid
Also as for porn specifically. The reduction in rape seems to be a worthwhile trade off. YMMV
In any case do you want the government censoring the Internet because that is the only way you can reduce the supply . The days of seedy back alley are long gone as we all know. My local city could shut down the two adult shops here, both clean well run legal establishments mostly selling sex toys to couple if they wished but this would do nothing.
If our social models can’t handle modernity, urbanization and mass communication than we either get new models or we allow society to reduce its complexity to a level we can handle
The later isn’t pleasant but maybe future USA with a homogeneous religious population and no Internet won’t want or have distribution of much porn
I guess given relative birth rates the Amish and other zealots who will be the bulk of the population if stats hole (they won’t but still) will be able to make that choices
Right now though, the US is not there and as Reagan said paraphrased “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” are the scariest words in the English language
Currently as a society we can’t trust anyone to regulate fairly and effectively as nearly everyone is either corrupt or nutter. I’d rather do less than more under these circumstances and if this means ugly shit gets sold, oh well.
The unappreciated genius of Ayn Rand was to include everywhere the asthetic as the first indicaions of cancer.
The benign tumor of disco became Rap. Note how popular Schoenberg’s atonality was in 1930;s Germany.
Beauty is the canary in the coal mine.
I can;t recall a single article of Rothbard (or Hoppe, Woods, Murphy, Block) on the Aesthetic.
Beauty is upstream from the good which is upstream from the Truth.
Ugly is the first sign of some severe and potentially terminal sickness.
“Beauty is upstream from the good which is upstream from the Truth.” Well said. I found myself hurrying through Walmart the other day, behind two White girls (late teens/early 20s?). Both had blue hair, were grossly obese, and were wearing pajama bottoms. One had on some sort of top that almost completely exposed her bra, barely visible amongst the rolls of fat on her back.
I was both repulsed and fascinated. What could possibly drive someone to this ugliness and self negation? My family was hardly close or storybook-version loving, but it was functional enough – and I was/am strong willed enough – that I instinctively knew what to avoid and what to aspire to. Those who consciously worked to destroy the foundations of the nuclear family – and thus Christendom/Western civilization – must be made to pay with their lives, and the lives of their kin.
These are fruits of the great experimental Zionist petri dish, known as the U.S.A. Products of our 24/7 taught-and-reinforced feminism and toxic anti-men and anti-Truth/Goodness/Beauty mentality. A celebration of turning our backs to our Creator and His teachings.
Disco is very good example how 4th gen warfare works. If you only listen, it is good, When you watch it, you want vomit. Then your minds get confused. Ears give your brain one signal, eyes give your brain another signal. In the aviation, this is called spacial disorientation. This effect caused many crashes, pilots do not understand, do they fly up or down.
Yes. The Village People’s video to their song “YMCA” was partially shot outside the Ramrod, New York City’s most infamous Gay bar at the time. That one nightclub likely was more responsible for the spread of AIDS than anywhere else in America by the end of the 70s.
“Young man, there’s a place you can go…” hint hint it wasn’t the YMCA.
I recall, at the time, that the Village People, gays dressed as manly workers, was the most in your face “up yours, straight people” thing I had ever seen. Then, seeing elementary school kids doing the YMCA dance, in organized fashion in school sponsored music and dance shows, really put the cultural writing on the wall. We have been going downhill for a long time.
Schools for the upper classes’ children were abundant ‘before the change’, but for the most part were (male) military academies with stress on self-discipline, cooperation and team dynamics, respect for tradition, etc etc. All on top of a top-flight, classical liberal education. Women’s ‘finishing schools’ had similar aims with different emphasis.
Most of these folded in reaction to the 60s-70s anti-war movement and their educational core died in the era of “do your own thang”.
Here in Lagos, if you look at the history of the parochial schools, they went from serving working class kids in the 50’s and 60’s to servicing upper middle class kids in the 70’s and 80’s. I noticed something similar in New England.
To this day, that ‘s true. Now the Catholic and private schools are actively recruiting minorities (1). We’ll see what happens.
((1) “minorities” are now the foreign adoptees of the Boomers with their trophy wives.))
A private/”independent day school” that my family has been involved with for nearly a century has recently hired Diversity Directors, one for each of the three campuses. Our annual giving to this institution will reflect our opinion of this reality shortly!
This isn’t just a class issue. Economic and social mobility are worst in crowded, urbanized areas. Probably a combination of diversity, overpopulation, and crumbling infrastructure.
It probably sounds counterintuitive to a lot of whites, but if you’re struggling to move up in the world, one of the best things you can do is move OUT of the city.
Traditional white America understood viscerally that the promotion of disco was an attempt to supplant them culturally with homosexuals/blacks. “Sweet Home Alabama” was replaced by “Shake Your Groove Thing.”
This understanding was expressed in a huge “Disco sucks!” movement that culminated in the “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1979 (search Wiki).
“White Sox officials had hoped for a crowd of 20,000, about 5,000 more than usual. Instead, at least 50,000 packed the stadium. After Dahl blew up the collected records, thousands of fans stormed the field and remained there until dispersed by riot police.”
A Midwest reaction to something L.A./San Fancisco/NYC that was being forced upon them. The clouds/dirts thing before we could easily identify it as such.
I feel compelled to add that I like lots of disco. We fight the fire while we feed the flames.
The unrelenting promotion of disco to an initially hostile middle America was mirrored by the promotion of rap/hip hop starting in the 1990s.
I liked dancing, and disco did make dancing fun again like it was in the early 60s with Motown.
And who promoted rap/hip hop on MTV?
I’ll give you one guess.
Traditional white America understood viscerally that the promotion of disco was an attempt to culturally supplant them with homosexuals/blacks.
And didn’t the attempt work. Today’s popular culture is almost completely pozzed. The hipster vibe is the unholier-than-thou, snarky attitude of homos’ “camp” that makes fun of real emotions felt by straight people.
As for blacks — deliver me. In shopping malls stores play hip-hop loud enough to be heard several doors away, and the offenders aren’t just merchants of teenage kit. The upper-middle class Valhalla, Trader Joe’s, incentivizes shoppers to spend more by pumping the air with shouting negroes. This year even the acceptable standard Christmas songs (the ones that don’t mention Christmas) are mostly cover versions in a Motown arrangement.
Hey, white America, what’s that sound. Everybody look what’s going down.
Z-Man,
Another one out of the park!
“We’ll move from reform to the idea of starting fresh and leaving the ugliness of left-wing radicalism behind.”
And the cycle will begin again…
I am a car guy with garages full of the things. The ’70s were the worst cars imaginable, the styling, the add-on pollution controls and bumpers, the cheap plastics. Oddly, I am attracted to the things, and I have personally pegged ’73-’74 as the changeover to automotive oblivion. Strangely, the mid-late ’70s cars have a lot of interest at the Saturday morning coffee klatches, as fewer are around and everyone looking at them has hellacious stories to tell… The mid-late ’70s stuff was horrible, but it was what was forced onto everyone. The British and American stuff was the worst, the Japanese and Germans a bit less bad. I find it interesting now to work on these cars and navigate the obvious engineering, assembly quality, and styling combination of trying to get by and not giving a f**k, which seemed to be the motivation of the day back when. I think these cars were a microcosm of the bigger culture of the day. Remember, too, cars mattered much more back then. When all you got was crap, with a Trans-Am, an SL Mercedes, or a 911 as the only reasonably decent (and pricey, when everyone was broke) choices in a sea of dreck, it was testament to the end of something. Those were the days of Detroit stories of smoking up in the parking lot at lunch or before your shift, and throwing loose pieces and parts into the fender wells and doors of the cars as they went down the production line, just to screw with the system.
The older I get the more I believe the sexual revolution was the United States’ greatest catastrophe (so far).
Yup. The birth control pill let untold demons out of their cages. You night say it was Pandora’s Box (pun intended) opened wide again.
Nope. Giving women the vote.
Uncle Pat called the pill “the suicide pill of the West.”
yes
“We’ll move from reform to the idea of starting fresh and leaving the ugliness of left-wing radicalism behind.”
We’ll move only after buckets of blood have been shed. Same as it ever was.
The Media Class are not going to leave quietly.
I disagree. Modern suppressors are surprisingly efficient, if you go subsonic.
Ackchually, they seem to be doing exactly that. A lot of media outlets, most of them awful, have either closed down or have been doing significant amounts of layoffs. Many of these disposable and interchangeable anti-white clickbait journalists are lost in the ether. Some of them probably turn into “freelance writers” between their Starbucks and Lyft gigs. Others probably swallow their pride and work for a local rag somewhere, dealing with the dirt people/untermenschen.
If you want to have fun with them, tell them to learn how to code when they get their pink slip. I guess that advice only applies to coal miners in West Virginia, not journalists who went to elite universities.
Corporate media is concentrated in the hands of an elite few. The money and influence they wield is simply awesome. They can easily afford to lose some ground. But they won’t go away without a fight. Now that they understand that the internet is where their enemies reside, you can expect far more activity on their part than what you’ve seen recently. This thing is just getting started.
Why did the upper middle class develop a hatred for the white middle and lower classes? Is it merely a coincidence that during this same time period, a certain insular, tribal ethnic group largely took over the American cultural and political elite? Whites respond very strongly to social pressures, and if their path to upward mobility is explicit anti-White ideology, you’ll start to see exactly this phenomena.
Hopefully commenter SebastianX from the other days post response will help. So good, I saved it:
Middle class insecurity is what fuels the anti-white working class ire of the New Class of non-elites. By using the term “elite,” a word used in this context only in late-stage sociology, you’re making things worse. Elite means the best or top-shelf, period. Our problem is that we do not have an elite but a class of mediocre usurpers who have their positions precisely because they are NOT elite. No, they are insecure, aspirational Americans who are petrified of their won class status. That is the opposite of an elite.
David_Wright, re. our garbage elite:
“An ordinary person still maintains some cultural traditions; it is almost impossible to find a “pure proletarian”. But the modern capitalist elites, who have no aristocratism in their senses, are greedy for power, position and comfort. At the same time, more and more marginal types began to penetrate into the “new elite”, people not from peripheral groups, but from minority groups — ethnic, cultural, religious (often sectarians) and sexual — became dominant among them. It is this perverted rabble, according to Christopher Lasch, that forms the basis of the modern globalist elite, which destroys the foundations of civilization.”
— Alexander Dugin
http://www.4pt.su/en/content/anatomy-populism-and-challenge-matrix
I thought he put it well.
They are referred to in some circles as “the new class”. They were primarily the creature of the wealthy media class which arose post WWII. This media class pushed a very radical agenda which included all the things we saw become law in the 1960s, and then burst into public view during the seventies cultural revolution. During the seventies and eighties, this “new class” came to prominence as a result of media class political promotion (affirmative action) and government employment. They were primarily black, but included other minorities. They practically became wealthy overnight. The New Class got not only instant media prestige, but were actively promoted in all areas of sports and entertainment. By the nineties, they were a powerful interest group. They are on the cusp of dominating the Democrat Party today. I saw the emergence of this New Class with my own eyes. The old, conservative establishment is standing around either thunderstruck or in denial.
The fruits of Mr. Flowerman’s media campaign purposefully undertaken in the 1940’s to turn white people against whites and make whites embrace and even prefer peoples of color. A spectacular success. This short two-part article describes this massive mass-media endeavor.
“Modify the standards of the in-group”: On Jews and Mass Communications — Part One of Two
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/09/23/modify-the-standards-of-the-in-group-on-jews-and-mass-communications-part-one-of-two/
Dear Mr. Pinochet,
Been meaning to ask you, When will you start giving helicopter rides? We’re all getting anxious out here, waiting. Start with Mueller, perhaps.
Boat rides to the Levant first, helicopter rides later.
Then the boats capsize somewhere in the Atlantic…in Minecraft
Then “mistake” the ships for enemy vessels and send in the fighter jets.
Noblesse oblige is for gentiles. Our new (((masters))) have no such compunctions.
There are coincidences and there are cohencidences.
I have the pleasure of knowing several anti-white families and couples. Most of them are utterly disconnected from the white working class. They grew up wealthy, they went to private schools, private universities, and landed good jobs that were created entirely due to nepotism. They’ve never had to wonder if they could make rent or dealing with a family member who is slipping into an opiate addiction and doesn’t have $10,000 a month to send them to a rehab facility that emphasizes “sustainability.”
Then there are the shameless social climbers who know what things to say. Although a couple beers and knowing them well enough to get them to lower their guard usually belies their real feelings, which are more in our camp. It’s those who are disconnected who are the true believers because they know of nothing else.
Interesting. I know that Derb loved SNF. Yet the Z man loathes it. It’s odd when two writers I respect so much disagree so deeply. Guess I need to make time and watch that movie already . . .
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/Considerations/saturdaynightfever.html
I grew up poor. I saw first hand what happened when the 1960’s values made their way to my part of town. Broken homes, drugs, crime, the break down of community. The one thing about me is I’ll never forgive the upper classes for allowing that to happen. When the time comes to toss their corpses down a mine shaft, I’ll be there.
You grab the arms, I’ll take the legs and together we’ll pitch them down. We have a lot in common apparently.
On a cheerier note, Merry Christmas. Thank you for the many gifts you’ve shared here, Z.
Saturday Night Fever is a great, if depressing movie. It’s actually a tragedy, though I admit I’m not sure if that’s what the filmmakers intended. SNF chronicles the cultural decline that Zman describes. Travolta’s character Tony Manero is the last generation of the old white working-class urban neighborhoods. His Italian parents are observant Catholics, and for them, a lifetime job in a paint shop would probaby have been a decent way to make a living, start a family, etc.
But Tony, along with his failed seminarian brother and friends, has been corrupted by the cultural upheaval of the 70s. Being one year younger than Zman, I vividly remember the confusion and ugliness of those years. All the old rules were gone, all sources of moral authority had collapsed or capitulated (see: Vatican II), and the result was a wasteland, a free-for-all.
So while I agree with the essay, I differ slightly about the degeneracy of SNF. When I watched it a few years ago, I found it tremendously sad, like an artifact of a lost age.
I taught at a private school in New York in the 80’s, and was shocked by the prevalence of divorce and other indicators of social disfunction. I remember thinking at the time how the rich could insulate themselves from the results of these bad decisions- but the poor not so much. Anthony Daniels’ observation that we now have a society in which the rich ape the manners of the lower orders rather than the other way around seems apt.
I know there’s not a lot of love for the Civil Rights movement on this site (justifiably, I think) but when you look at the pictures of the marchers back 50 some years ago the contrast is striking- I personally think the end of freedom of association was a bad thing, but those people were dressed like bourgeois Americans- with the expectation they’d be taken seriously. Not so today.
A lot of interesting perspectives here, especially from us Gen Xers. We came of age in the 70s and 80s and got to see the consequences of adults selfishly throwing the rules that had maintained civilization so they could act like children.
Luckily, the area that I grew up in was somewhat behind the times. Most families still went to church (mine didn’t) and most parent stayed married (mine didn’t). The kids impacted by the cultural decline remained surrounded intact families, so we saw up close how much better it was, how to act and what it took to maintain that world.
But when I think about the kids that I knew who fell throw the cracks and ended up living pretty shitty lives (and occasionally going to prison), they were almost always working class kids. The middle and upper middle class kids who parents followed the cultural decline usually made it if they had friends whose parents rejected the new rules.
I can’t imagine what would happen in a thoroughly working class area where a majority of the parents started splitting up. Actually, I can because I’ve read Coming Apart. It led to a total fucking disaster.
How many lives were ruined by the upper classes selfishness?
Read pretty much any book by Theodore Dalrymple about the underclass in Britain. Same things happening here and it’s a horror show
Know a few mine shafts near Belmont, Nevada!
Forget mine shafts! Hang them up by their heels like Mussolini!
Many of us did. Or even if we didn’t we grew up with our parents’ sensibilities. Thanks for opening up Z-man. We’re all in this together (as the guys at Possum Lodge used to say.)
Z. It wasn’t them that did this to us. It was us. We did it to ourselves. Everything in life right up to and including slavery – is a choice. I grew up in a wealthy prog family and saw the same things you did. When I saw them and refused to shut up about it, I got banished into the void. Once I was gone the family left behind started going after each other. One thing I noticed about them as their family disintegrated is that none of it was ever THEIR fault. It’s always the man’s fault because all women must be believed/it’s all whitey’s fault because blacks can’t succeed/queers and degenerates have terrible lives because it’s all the fault of straights/moslems are violent and stupid because joooooos etc ad nauseum. Nobody forced us to take drugs, nobody forced us to let women wear the pants in our families, and whites submit to predatory black thugs by choice as well.
We knew it was bullchit, but we went along anyways beause we didn’t want to fight. The important thing is that now we are reacting because we are having our noses rubbed in the social consequences of all that. The ruling wealthy elites are naturally insulated from most of it but it is starting to catch up with them too – we need to expedite that and magnify it.
Assigning blame is difficult. If you leave the keys in your car and someone steals it, who is at fault? Similarly, whites, especially in an affluent society, have a predisposition towards pathological compassion. If an outside group who controls all narratives manipulates that predisposition, who is at fault for what ensues? I say both.
LOL.
Are you seriously confused as to who is at fault when somebody gets into a vehicle *that is not theirs* and drives off with it?
If so – then you’re an almost perfect example of how badly the poz corruption has seeped into the minds of people.
I’ve seen the term “high trust society” thrown around quite a bit in right wing circles when talking about how the wheels have come off because of immigration and the seepage of “black culture” into all levels of society.
Well when people somehow think that there is even a debate to be had as to who is at fault when somebody drives off with your vehicle – I’d say that’s a really good spot to stop and and think about the shit that’s swirling around inside your head.
My father said the same thing back in the eighties. He knew the lower class whites would be eviscerated by the drug and sex culture. And my father was not an educated man…merely a very observant one.
Great essay Z. There’s a lot to think about. One thing I find unusual on this side of the Atlantic is how Eastern Europe and Russia seem to have innoculated themselves against the poz. Does Economic marxism make you immune to the cultural variant?
I would speculate that the difference is wealth. We have a LOT of it spreading through the middle class and even lower-middle; the eastern Euros/Russkis do not. BTW, I think that ‘wealth’ thing also explains the drop in church attendance here since the ’50’s.
Funny you should mention it. I’ve made a point recently of watching films that I was too young to see when they were playing in the Cinema. Cabaret? I get that the performances were good, but every character except for the rich girl and the crowd at the beer-garden were loathsome degenerates. SNF? Same thing, I’m not a city person anyway, but some of the outer-borough culture was just dispiriting. Of course I am from that much maligned Puritan stock, so maybe it’s genetic? Best wishes to all who post here this Christmas. Especially, you, Mr. Z!
That’s why Star Wars was like suddenly opening a window in a room filled with carbon monoxide. It was CLEAN. A clean story about clean things – heroism, bravery, self-sacrifice, idealism. And it was beautiful. We were choking to death on moping glumness, and Star Wars told us that wasn’t all there was to life.
And “American Grafitti”, also George Lucas, which was a rather sad movie, but it ennobled the old early ’60s small town high school social habits of what we now call dirt people. The movie memorialized the breaking out of unsupervised teenaged risk taking of all sorts, all basically in the name of getting laid, or at least in getting to third base. All that stuff was a gateway to the ’60s and ’70s, so Lucas basically bracketed both ends of it all. The front end as mostly reality, and the back end as outright fantasy.
That’s on my list. I have seen the TV show.
BestGuest, don’t get your hopes up. (Sorry, Dutch.)
Ursula, the movie hasn’t aged well. But in the drecky ’70s, it touched a nerve. What was supposed to be inspirational and touching is really just sad, because the dead-endedness of the characters’ lives and the small-time anarchy of their behavior turned out to be exactly what the boomers ran from, without really running to anything else that had meaning. Note how the movie’s characters seem to have no families, no human relationships other than with each other, and no identifiable ethos. Those are dirt people stripped of the family, community, church, and history parts of their culture. They are creating their own socially post-apocalyptic culture, like the couple wandering through the junkyard late in the movie. Exactly what a California boomer cloud person rejecting his dirt roots, like George Lucas did, would have to say about himself. He was way too autobiographical on that one.
Dutch, Well, you’ve put way more meaning in that unwatchable film than I ever got from it! Thank you! I tried to watch it several times over the years but never could get in to it — it’s just so shallow, empty but with lovely shots of old classic cars and vintage clothing. Money for production, but nothing for the brain. That film made me think Lucas should stick with Sci-Fi.
“Money for production, but nothing for the brain.”
Welcome to Hollywood.
“American Graffiti’ is one of the those cultural productions that belong with ‘Saturday Night Fever’ as one of the V-2s that landed on our world in the 1970s.
The best movie I’ve ever seen that seems to get things “right” about 70’s high school age kids – is “Dazed and Confused”. I got out of HS in 82, and this movie is set a few years earlier and in a different part of the country (things do change as the years roll by and are different area to area and even town to town) – but overall it definitely rings pretty accurate overall based on my experiences back then.
Star Wars was the last film that I remember seeing with my entire family. Mum, Dad, siblings.
A year before ‘Saturday Night Fever’. Does this damage the theme of Z man’s post?
I don’t think so. Lucas – that billionaire bastard – saw there was money in promoting ‘Debby Boone’ attitudes, but that they had no place here, on Earth, where we actually live.
Cartoons are what people do when demoted to the status of children. The Japanese lead the way here.
Cabaret is just soft porn dressed up as art and culture. Garbage.
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. I’ve never seen the movie – but the Weimar Republic era – especially in Berlin, was supposedly full of all forms of debauchery. This is one of those little historical nuggets that everybody conveniently forgets – especially when they’re trying to sell you on the funding for the next Holocaust museum. But just like how there’s a definite presence of people of Jewish extraction in the modern day porn industry – much of the social craziness in Weimar Berlin – had a heavy presence of Jews.
The Nazis didn’t just make their biases up out of whole cloth. There was some actual basis in reality there.
So the question I think you’ve got to ask about a movie like Cabaret is: how historically accurate is it?
I think the 1970s were a very chill decade. The peace and love sanctimony of the 60s was gone and people actually started looking at the united states through a mature lens. The “we can do anything” attitude of the 60s was replaced by “america is fallible and we are in an era of limits” attitude.
The music of the 70s also had a more introspective and you could say humility to it. Instead of “Get Together” by the youngbloods you had stuff like “From the Beginning” by ELP.
Yet the best bands America could produce in the 70s were CCR, The Eagles and Kiss. I think this backs up Z’s point.
The muscle shoals sound and bands would probably be my pick for peak American white pop music. From there the africanization of pop culture just accelerated.
There is this parallel universe of modern pop music, which is what country has turned into. Taylor Swift, Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean, and so on. Not really country by any traditional measure, but it’s white boy music and they do sing it with regional accents. It fills the radio airwaves away from the big cities. The Eagles/Jackson Browne/Warren Zevon sound could be seen as a bit of a precursor to that sort of thing.
At a guess, all the “country” artists you mention probably wouldn’t know Hank Snow from Hank Aaron. The decay of country music is just another indication that we’re fkd, as a people and as a nation.
The sound of country music in recent decades has expanded to include elements from almost all the other music genres. One of my neighbors occasionally cranks up some country music and I have to say I like his taste (he’s a good singer too, when he sings along). I don’t know who the artists are, will ask him one day at the right moment, but it does not sound at all like the old Hank Williams I knew as proper country music growing up. My impression is that country music became big-money music when they sort of revived the genre, what, back in the 90s?, with the incorporation of new sounds and artists. But I’m not close enough to it to know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I do know that Rap and Hip Hop are scummy; though some of the music may actually have a melody of sorts that is appealing, the lyrics are always foul, the videos even fouler.
She’s probably an sjw’s but credit where it’s due Gillian Welsh is pretty good. Back Baby is the
Family or friends get together song in the background. He’ll of a chorous ‘peaches in the summer time apples in the fall’
Your observation backs up shit. A goatherd in eastern Turkey knows more about music than you do.
Hunh.
Zappa. Steely Dan. Van Halen. Allman Bros, Climax Blues Band, Return to Forever. Pat Metheny Group, Weather Report. Heart (rock or acoustic), Journey (pre or post Perry), Grand Funk, Charlie Daniels, Marshall Tucker, Outlaws (Florida) or what the hell, Outlaws (Texas) Skynyrd, 2nd Chapter of Acts (believe it!) Phil Keagy, Boston, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Buckingham-Nicks et al. Jackson Brown-Warren Zevon mentioned elsewhere, Marti Jones and her husband, Talking Heads, Chicago, Alice Cooper, Mahavishnu Orchestra (formed in NY, lots of Americans), The Cars, Dan Fogelberg, Rikki Lee Jones, Stanley Jordan, ZZ Top, CSNY et al. (partially Canadian and English, but oh well) Johnny Winter, Joe Walsh, The Tubes, Pat Travers, Thin Lizzy, Steve Miller, Montrose, Tom Petty, the first 6 or 7 REO Speedwagon albums, Lou Reed and Velvet, New York Dolls, Stooges, DEVO, Santana, Cat Stevens, Kansas, Foreigner (the first couple, at least! Formed in NY), Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Poco…
OK, I’m tired. But I’m nowhere near done. That’s from my vinal. Maybe I could look at my CD collection…
Little Feat, Grahm Parsons, The Dead did lots of albums in the ’70s, are they better than KISS? dunno.
The Eagles and CCR don’t belong in the same class as Kiss though. They are American Classics, whereas KISS was a cartoonish, dress-up show with some admittedly catchy toons – something my whole seventh grade class were caught up with. I don’t think anyone was really digging CCR or the Eagles, but now I could definitely listen to them. KISS – maybe one song….
I think this ‘decade’ broad-brush is a meaningless way of looking at the past. Especially if our criterion is the thought-world of popular music. The “cock-rockers” Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Ted Nugent, et al, were hardly introspective. Meanwhile, back in the 60s, there was little ‘peace and love’ in the music of Bob Dylan – he was roiling up trouble with his often bitter and divisive “vibe”.
CSNY’s “Ohio” is on the bridge between one decade and another. By chronology a 70s song, it bares the fangs of all those “peace and love” miscreants at Woodstock, inviting young people (not themselves) to march and chant slogans. It’s a great tune, written by an asshole.
My point being merely that in contemplating decades, we’ve got to (a) abandon the silly notion that “the seventies” begin on January 1 1970 and end on December 31 1979, and/or (b) choose those salient events that mark important changes between one ‘decade’ and another… for instance, one might claim the the 70s started in 1968; one might claim they began in 1973; me, I claim they started in August 1974 when Nixon resigned, and ended in November 1980 when Reagan was elected.
Others might argue that Debbie Boone’s hit “You Light Up My Life” was the dawn of a new decade. Which would support the Z man’s theme here, that the “70s” brought ugliness to the forefront of culture.
Boone’s hit wasn’t ugly, but – I believe – a song written in the USSR and presented to a clueless producer to demonstrate that American taste had become so insipid that it deserved to be wiped out.
well what I mean is that you had a new sort of music in the 70s that was super relaxing but it wasn’t as bubblegum pop as the fifth dimension or the mamas and the papas. Think Firefall, Jefferson Starship, Paul Davis, Al Stewart etc.
Counterpoint: Sid and Marty Krofft
bravo, i’ve had the same noticings for a long time. the only thing missing is the 60s-70s slide accelerated with the divisions cast in concrete by the unholy vietnam war. no one could remain indifferent. i’m a kid from a military family, and the questions i had seeing cronkite lie daily, seeing kent state, made a division in our family that we’ve only been able to heal lately.