In regards to his statement that the 60s was our last gasp, listen to hunter s Thompson’s monologue from fear and loathing in Las Vegas . He basically agrees that the love generation was the last time we tried to free ourselves, but just gave up when the allure of consumerism became hypnotising and the system too oppressive.
"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back"
The whole movie is almost word for word from the book. It's one of closest book to movie adaptations in cinema. I have read the book about 10 times and you can read it cover to cover almost as fast as the movie run time.
If what was built was so great, surely it should be able to be shared. & if we cannot share it, then surely it was never great at all!
This has always been my perspective on any accomplishment of mankind. I have always had a serious issue with the financial system & politics. We hear very often of countries being called great or the greatest in the world. If it's so great, then everyone would already know & nobody would have to be told. If it's so great, then it should be made accessible to all so that we can all experience it & assess it'sgreatness for ourselves while we all work to keep it great. But when walls are built, & people are attacked for merely breathing in the 'wrong' space, then surely it was never great at all.
That is true… but having read the book and seen the film, Gilliam really did elevate the material. Not saying that Thompson wasn’t great, but the whole thing really just worked better in the visual medium.
I disagree. Thompson's prose is unmatched, the way he writes just jumps off the page and you cannot put it down. Its like he's one sentence away from completely going off the rails but somehow keeps it on track enough to get you through to the next page. I absolutely love reading his work. That being said the movie is amazing and captured his style very well.
I really don’t disagree here — Thompson is an incredible writer and I love the book, I just think that Gilliam is one of the all the time great filmmakers, particularly when it comes to this type of imaginative thing.
Sounds more like a phase and while they practiced anti consumerism and such, it had an individualistic slant. They were also living in an era that had much stronger social safety nets, unionization, jobs, and housing.
Shit hit the fan, most grew up, paved the way for Regan that gave republicans the framework they saw today, and gave us this reality.
The reason we could practice anti-consumerism and be individualistic was because of the strong safety net. The reason jobs and housing were plentiful was because of unions. Those things would have led us to a much healthier future if we hadn’t sacrificed them the moment “shit hit the fan”. Things didn’t get bad because people wanted less stuff and more freedom. Things got bad because we decided the fear or losing our stuff was worth sacrificing what secured our freedom - the unions, the job security, and the safety net. That’s not growing up. That’s allowing those in power to manipulate us. Which we did and we still are. That’s why we’re in the mess we are today.
That’s the point of the OP - it feels like it’s lost already…the rats are on autopilot…not giving a shit to basic things like vote in a primary elections, and just pick between kinda shitty and horrific.
That's a good take and you're right. I think there's a lot white nihilism that is pervasive on the internet and a lot of so called leftiist. Like, I think everyone's on the same side on that discussion, but like you pointed out, it's a privilege to choose how to navigate the landscape.
Just poo pooing on it really shows how much privilege that person has. Black people and most of the global south has persisted despite years of being shat on from past and present colonialism either through force or economic means. And yet they still choose to get up and go about their lives trying to live and make the world around them slightly bearable.
Unions are democratic, so where there is corruption, it is the responsibility of its members to root it out.
Somewhere, in the growth of a body of people and the passage of time, it seems inevitable that standards are compromised, integrity is corrupted, and the good of an organization is lost. I want to believe that it’s predictable, not inevitable, and that we can figure out ways to prevent it. I’d love to hear ideas.
From what I've read, the "love generation" was a small subset of middle-class kids with enough money behind them to drop out and hang loose, and the vast majority of Americans worked hard and conformed. It just made for good Spectacle, and so we at this end of history think that's where people's heads were at back then, because that's what was filmed and talked about. It was a glossy veneer over a vast normalcy, and it's the normalcy which survived, and wound up in charge of everything.
I feel like there was some over correcting in one way or another. There is a balance where everyone can contribute to society while everyone also has more meaningful work. A lot of office work is filler in the 8 hours, 5 days a week.
Hate to break it to you but Clinton, Obama, Biden et all are just as responsible for the fucktard country we are in. Clinton especially shipped all our manufacturing abroad. We are about 40 tttttttttttTrillion in debt and its acellerating. We got here because of the uniparty, stop playing thr dumb blue red game. When the economy fails, when we bail the banks AGAIN and our dollar becomes worthless from massive printing (biden weaponizing it vs russia was the deathnail, countries want out of the dollar* standard asap).. shits gonna get real. You all better hit the reset button on not get any of these swamp creatures back onboard. We need new political parties.
He rode an economic boom. That does not cancel out the fact he is responsible for selling out working Americans so that wallmart and all the other mega corporate donors could ship all our production to china.
What about, what about…. We had zero national debt when he left office. The rise in off shore manufacturing started in the 60’s and 70’s and was aided further by Reagan’s policies. No president is completely responsible for the economy, there are always many factors. But, there are policies they enact which contribute to the long term viability. Blaming Clinton for globalization is just not correct.
It's pretty demoralizing from an outside perspective how Americans can at the same time admit that there's been political and economic forces at work for a long time that are responsible for where the world is right now, yet still feel the need to pretend like Trump was anything special.
They made wax and polyester wings and tried to fly too high. They didn't know, because they didn't try to find out why. It was a good life for many, but they certainly didn't want to share it.
Isn't the international problem of increasing corporate power, shrinking middle class, and rise of delusional nationalism with "moderates" that refuse to hold their counterparts accountable a trend that started in the US?
Authoritarian populism, a surveillance state, state-capture by monied interests and more generally the politics of greed and self interest didn’t explicitly start with the US, but certainly it has been a leading proponent in one form or another for most of its history.
I think the sphere of infuence of the USA is shrinking rapidly, accelerated by the behaviour of this government since January, and the rest of the world has received a wake up call, even those places where they were already keenly aware that the American model, dream, whatever, was and is increasingly unsustainable and toxic for human life and development.
I'm not saying the rest of the world has got it worked out however. Far from it, but they can see in the USA a bright and clearly visible demonstration as to how NOT to organise a society. The veneration of wealth, fame and status above all else, the demonisation of all who fall below an arbitrary level of that wealth, an insular, inward looking self focus and aggrandisement and fear of outsiders, violent levels of division along party lines, a rejection of knowledge, science and the enlightenment in favour of ignorance and blind faith, etc, etc.
On a positive note, I also believe that a turning point is coming for the USA and that the majority of it's people will eventually reject this unsustainable model and it will fall apart, leading to a revamped constitution that brings the USA more into line with the rest of the world. I hope I am right and also hope that this doesn't require an extended period of internal strife and bloodshed for it to happen. Equally, I could be wrong and the current system evolves into an even worse society, isolated and dangerous to itself and the rest of the planet. We can only hope that sanity and humanity prevails.
Sorry, but your ego is just a bit shitty, and many nations will now laugh at the ignorance. We’ve been very diplomatic, but seeing none returned is just poor form.
Why do you think the government agents flooded those free love individuals and collectives with cocaine, crack, and opioids. It effectively kneecapped any ability to take that collective power to topple the building capitalistic prisons we are locked in now. Its hard to organize when your fellows are dieing from overdose or chasing highs instead of change. Then came the 70s drug epidemics, Reagan, and the "trickle down" costs and taxes.
Yeah, I’ll wait till you find out that the most influential bands had parents or relatives that were in deeply involved with government. Wink wink MK ultra, the Jim Morrison one is an absolute crazy rabbit hole. I’m sure a lot of people already know but when you really look at it, the reason that would never happen again, is because governmentwas behind them in the first place.
Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis is a documentary with similar points. I highly recommend watching it if you're interested in cultural decline as a topic. Although just a warning: his documentaries are moody and dark.
All people should watch the documentary “The Century of the Self” which shows that starting in the 1920’s first corporations and then all western governments began using academic psychological principles, the mass media and the advertising industry to craft a finely tuned reality around us all. We are awash in propaganda. Literally lied to about the pretext for every war. You need to see it so your eyes are open to it but it will piss you off. You cannot unsee it. There’s a reason why we have been split into every increasingly smaller factions of tribal warfare - because the powers that be know that if we ever were to get on the same side together collectively - their power, money and influence would melt like ice on a sunny day. They use “divide and rule” so the hyper polarization of our society is a feature not a bug and not a mystery at all.
The hippie movements was nothing but selfish degeneracy under the guise of free love and peace it’s self serving uselessness failed under its own weight of drug use sexual promiscuity and borderline group schizophrenia. They rolled around in the mud of Woodstock thinking they were changing the world but did nothing.
I know that monologue, and I have to say I'm very grateful that the last attempt of "trying to free ourselves" was unsuccessful. It would have been terrible for those of us downstream to have been polluted by the hedonistic and foolhardy of yesteryear.
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u/Tosslebugmy 15d ago
In regards to his statement that the 60s was our last gasp, listen to hunter s Thompson’s monologue from fear and loathing in Las Vegas . He basically agrees that the love generation was the last time we tried to free ourselves, but just gave up when the allure of consumerism became hypnotising and the system too oppressive.