(prologue, Part I, Part II, Conclusion)
A. The secret to U.S. economic exceptionalism
In my travels, I have found that most people have heard of the "American dream” and see the U.S. as a place of wealth and prosperity. But few people seem to understand the circumstances behind what made America wealthy and prosperous. This is true even across America, where most people believe that their country's fortunes are attributable to their American ancestors' sacrifices, the superiority of American ideology or even the abundance of natural resources available domestically. But each conclusion about the source of American wealth glosses over a darker truth, and the lack of transparency on the matter explains why so few people understand what America's continued wealth and prosperity is dependent upon.
The truth is, America's current wealth and prosperity is the consequence of mainly one fact: that, of all the bombs that fell on industrial targets and cities in World War II, the U.S. had been almost exclusively on the delivering end, not the receiving end, and the opposite was true for much of industrialized Europe and Asia; accordingly, whereas America’s production capacity was largely intact after the war, much of industrialized Europe and Asia was reduced to ruins. It is really that simple.
With its industry untouched by the war, the U.S. became the focal point of a global rebuild effort, supplying structural steel and other materials to help bombed-out Europe put itself back together. Aware of this fact, it should not be much of a surprise to learn that American steel production actually increased after the war ended. But it is a fascinating statistic nevertheless, given all the manufacturing of planes, tanks and ships that had taken place in the war-time years, and sheds light on just how active American industry continued to be as Europe remained buried under a pile of rubble.
Europe's condition, and the demand for raw materials that the U.S. was in a good position to supply, meant that the U.S. had abundant work orders and positions of employment to fill. In turn, American combat veterans who were returning from the war had new opportunities to find employment. All of this aided the country's transition from a war-time to a peacetime economy, which is usually a turbulent time due to production decreases.
The U.S. agricultural industry also benefited from the post-war situation. Because Europe's own industry and infrastructure was in ruins, its people became dependent on imported American goods. For the U.S. agricultural industry, this was an opportunity not just to supply, but to claim a foreign market, which created new American jobs in production and export.
The post-war situation of deprivation in Europe was also favorable to the U.S. tobacco industry. Europeans became hooked on American cigarettes, which practically became black market currency. The high demand for such goods was good news for America's 180,000+ tobacco farms - and provided a boost to the U.S. export market that, incidentally, also created new jobs for Americans.
The popularity of American tobacco was attributable to other circumstances, too. In ruins and under the influence of American propaganda, Europe came to associate its own culture with wars and other terrible things, and its people hungered for a new identity. Accordingly, American-based companies, including big tobacco, portrayed their products in connection with the "American way of life" and the "American way of life" as the new "cool". The formula was copied throughout the U.S. export sector with great success. With an eye on capturing the European market, American advertising giant Leo Burnett - the name behind the "Marlboro Man" and major advertisement campaigns by McDonald's, Hallmark and Coca-Cola - set up his first offices in Europe.
Leo Burnett's decision to expand to Europe was a profit-driven, company decision. But the path to that conclusion was littered with incentives laid out by the U.S. government under the Marshall Plan, which guaranteed American companies a return on capital invested in Europe. The U.S. government knew as well as anyone that capturing the emerging European market and taking part in all aspects of the rebuild - including the cultural - would be extremely lucrative and beneficial to the American economy.
Of course, overseas investment and expansion was just one way the post-war situation contributed to the growth of America's post-war economy. In another example, directly the outcome of the war, the U.S. had seized German intellectual property valued at around $10 billion and managed to smuggle the best and brightest German scientists and inventors out of Europe and put them to work in various research and technology development projects. At the same time, the U.S. obtained the secrets to build rockets and manufacture commercial jet airplanes, which Germany had only uncovered years earlier. The theft of German industrial secrets and personnel also contributed to new discoveries in the fields of aeronautics, space medicine, guidance systems, satellites and biological weapons, which helped another major producer and employer in the post-war era: the American defense industry.
During the war, the American defense industry, backed by government contracts, had expanded rapidly to meet production demands. Accordingly, major American companies like Lockheed, Martin, Boeing, Northrop and Grumman got the chance to flex their muscles. Given the post-war situation - where the U.S. military needed the latest and greatest technology to help maintain its new, global position - the government continued to rely on these companies and their research and development programs. Not surprisingly, the industry remained a major target of government investment and came to be seen as a job-creating, economy-driving power, attracting supporters and investors who understood this. These same investors also understood that aggressive international policy, including policing the globe and isolated combat, was a way to maximize invested returns and keep production demand at a premium. Lobby groups began to take shape, and the American military industrial complex, a fundamental element in Washington politics, was born.
To finance and power the motor of the military industrial complex, the U.S. government began borrowing excessively. Nevertheless, the growing deficit from this borrowing was kept somewhat in check, for many years, by the booming U.S. economy. Another contributing factor, in connection with the post-war situation, was that the U.S. started collecting on the debt that Britain had incurred over the course of at least five years of the Second World War while buying American weapons and materials on credit. Similarly, Germany and Japan began making reparations payments to the Americans. It was yet another way that the outcome of the war contributed to America's post-war wealth.
Perhaps the most important development amidst that accumulation of wealth was how it flowed back to the people. For example, through the G.I. Bill, the government funded a program that gave American war veterans and their families supplementary financing to start businesses and access education or job training. Arguably, this also made Americans more productive and helped contribute to the growth of the American economy.
B. The rise of the "American dream" as a consequence of the economy
In connection with the booming economy and increased personal wealth, ordinary Americans had opportunities to make upgrades and invest, contributing to the rise of a strong, comfortably-living and financially-stable American middle class. With the rise of the American middle class, U.S. manufacturers sought to cash in; initially, they focused on selling middle-class America on a one-size-fits-all idealization of suburban family life, complete with an endless line of the latest labor-saving devices and material comforts, packaged together as a concept that became known as the "American dream." The concept built upon a long-existing notion, going back to colonial times, that America offered endless possibility, and one must only work hard to tame the land and prosper; in fact, it was somewhat of a reiteration of the same promise, implying that all one had to do to succeed was work hard, because opportunity was abound.
Of course, it had been years since this vision had been a part of the American public's conception of reality; the Second World War, for instance, was a time when the American public would have been more familiar with shortages and rationing than surplus, and fully incapable of making substantial purchases or upgrades. Turning the clock back further, the same would have been true during the Great Depression. But these events would have only made the sudden change in wealth and fortune, and the opportunity for abundance, all the more impactive. What is more, technology had evolved rapidly and drastically over the course of the Second World War, making new, more powerful and reliable electronics and appliances possible once the economy had shifted to peacetime manufacture. A new world of possibilities opened up for consumers once they had the means to upgrade and make large-scale purchases. Pushed to do so by the "American Dream", the demand for wide-scale production flourished and the economy surged forward.
Incidentally, the high demand for material items contributed to the growth of the U.S. economy by providing employment opportunities, increasing national production and incentivizing the inventiveness that would help make America the global leader when it came to manufactured products. Few industries were transformed by the post- war circumstances more abruptly than automobile industry, which became a booming source of production, wealth and economic power, not to mention employment. Entire communities sprouted up from in and around the "motor city" of Detroit, the hub of American automobile-manufacturing power. It was not long before the country was flooded in home appliances, electronic accessories and cars, each from a company trying to one-up the other with "the next greatest thing" and capture the power of the market, capitalizing on American consumer wealth and maximizing profit from sale.
With its high output and material wealth, the U.S. quickly became the envy of the world. Just as importantly, America's greatest rival, the Soviet Union, offering a government-planned economic model, could only respond by insisting that one day, its rival system would "bury" America's production achievements in a time when the results showed otherwise.
Under the circumstances, Americans had a powerful argument to turn the world away from embracing the Soviets and the Soviet system. This was critical because the Americans and Soviets were competing for trade partners and access to resources and markets around the world which, perhaps more than anything else, influenced America's potential for economic growth and prosperity. Likewise, with the world exposed to the less glamorous results of the Soviet system, the U.S. was gifted a reason to justify its encroachment abroad as a simple measure to prevent those who had adopted the same model as the Soviets from taking over or moving in.
Linked to prosperity and perceived superiority over the Soviets and the Soviet system, the U.S. economic model became a point of pride. Associated with freedom and opportunity, it also became a fixed part of national identity, placing a feel-good, patriotic value on consumerism and materialism, which only encouraged further investment and consumer spending, subsequently powering the economy and reinforcing America's faith in its system. Under the circumstances, the "American dream" did more than just encourage Americans to utilize their newly-found wealth to upgrade homes, cars and appliances; it also gave rise to an economy and a culture based on materialism. Correspondingly, a way of life took root based on surplus, financial possibility and selling whatever the public wanted - and whatever would sell.
C. The "American dream" evolves: an economy of consumerism
Alongside the booming consumer economy, the television broadcasting industry quickly attained an important role in American society, offering manufacturers an opportunity to advertise products and instantly reach an audience coast to coast using a powerful, new medium.
Some advertisements registered on a personal level and played to feelings that existed due to social norms and culture. For example, the first commercial in television history tried to sell viewers on a wristwatch by marketing the item in association with busy men in the business world. The public had a variety of reasons to be interested in such an item. But to understand one of the motivations, perhaps a bit of background is in order.
In early history, women trusted in strong, virile men to lead, protect and provide whatever was necessary to survive. Over time, this preference became hardwired in female psychology. The same embracement continued to prevail in civilization after civilization because of the importance of the same traits in men on the battlefield, farm field or in other stations of life. With religion and cultural understandings tweaking the model only slightly, the status quo remained largely unchanged up into the age of mass consumerism and television - especially as most women still relied on men as their primary source of income, and strong, ambitious men had every appearance of being the ones most capable of providing.
Aware of this background, it is hardly surprising that advertisers targeted women with commercials that touted expensive things as a "necessary" addition to life, and the expectation was that men would compete with one another to satisfy women by providing those things. Nature did much of the work to push the model along; but, helping it, commercials - and the culture, in general - presented what was essentially a constant reminder that women were pleased by expensive things (e.g. "diamonds are a girl's best friend": 1, 2):
Other ideas appeared in commercials and the culture and pushed the model along just the same; for example, companionship with pleased females was presented in connection with a man's happiness. Men were also bombarded with messages encouraging competition for a certain kind of woman, and making them want to settle down and raise a family with her. Women, likewise, were presented with a message that - in advertisements and through the culture, in general - suggested a link between products and happiness and glorified men who could provide.
Using that same all-expansive model, advertisers sought to a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjqGripHWTs&feature=youtu.be">market
clothing, makeup and accessories like jewelry to women as something that could enhance beauty and attract the sort of men they wished to attract. Some fashions and styles were even priced to demonstrate value, meaning they could tap into primal tendencies such as a woman's desire to signal that she had a desirable, high-value man - i.e. that she had won the game - or signal that she would settle for nothing less.A. The secret to U.S. economic exceptionalism
In my travels, I have found that most people have heard of the "American dream” and see the U.S. as a place of wealth and prosperity. But few people seem to understand the circumstances behind what made America wealthy and prosperous. This is true even across America, where most people believe that their country's fortunes are attributable to their American ancestors' sacrifices, the superiority of American ideology or even the abundance of natural resources available domestically. But each conclusion about the source of American wealth glosses over a darker truth, and the lack of transparency on the matter explains why so few people understand what America's continued wealth and prosperity is dependent upon.
The truth is, America's current wealth and prosperity is the consequence of mainly one fact: that, of all the bombs that fell on industrial targets and cities in World War II, the U.S. had been almost exclusively on the delivering end, not the receiving end, and the opposite was true for much of industrialized Europe and Asia; accordingly, whereas America’s production capacity was largely intact after the war, much of industrialized Europe and Asia was reduced to ruins. It is really that simple.
With its industry untouched by the war, the U.S. became the focal point of a global rebuild effort, supplying structural steel and other materials to help bombed-out Europe put itself back together. Aware of this fact, it should not be much of a surprise to learn that American steel production actually increased after the war ended. But it is a fascinating statistic nevertheless, given all the manufacturing of planes, tanks and ships that had taken place in the war-time years, and sheds light on just how active American industry continued to be as Europe remained buried under a pile of rubble.
Europe's condition, and the demand for raw materials that the U.S. was in a good position to supply, meant that the U.S. had abundant work orders and positions of employment to fill. In turn, American combat veterans who were returning from the war had new opportunities to find employment. All of this aided the country's transition from a war-time to a peacetime economy, which is usually a turbulent time due to production decreases.
The U.S. agricultural industry also benefited from the post-war situation. Because Europe's own industry and infrastructure was in ruins, its people became dependent on imported American goods. For the U.S. agricultural industry, this was an opportunity not just to supply, but to claim a foreign market, which created new American jobs in production and export.
The post-war situation of deprivation in Europe was also favorable to the U.S. tobacco industry. Europeans became hooked on American cigarettes, which practically became black market currency. The high demand for such goods was good news for America's 180,000+ tobacco farms - and provided a boost to the U.S. export market that, incidentally, also created new jobs for Americans.
The popularity of American tobacco was attributable to other circumstances, too. In ruins and under the influence of American propaganda, Europe came to associate its own culture with wars and other terrible things, and its people hungered for a new identity. Accordingly, American-based companies, including big tobacco, portrayed their products in connection with the "American way of life" and the "American way of life" as the new "cool". The formula was copied throughout the U.S. export sector with great success. With an eye on capturing the European market, American advertising giant Leo Burnett - the name behind the "Marlboro Man" and major advertisement campaigns by McDonald's, Hallmark and Coca-Cola - set up his first offices in Europe.
Leo Burnett's decision to expand to Europe was a profit-driven, company decision. But the path to that conclusion was littered with incentives laid out by the U.S. government under the Marshall Plan, which guaranteed American companies a return on capital invested in Europe. The U.S. government knew as well as anyone that capturing the emerging European market and taking part in all aspects of the rebuild - including the cultural - would be extremely lucrative and beneficial to the American economy.
Of course, overseas investment and expansion was just one way the post-war situation contributed to the growth of America's post-war economy. In another example, directly the outcome of the war, the U.S. had seized German intellectual property valued at around $10 billion and managed to smuggle the best and brightest German scientists and inventors out of Europe and put them to work in various research and technology development projects. At the same time, the U.S. obtained the secrets to build rockets and manufacture commercial jet airplanes, which Germany had only uncovered years earlier. The theft of German industrial secrets and personnel also contributed to new discoveries in the fields of aeronautics, space medicine, guidance systems, satellites and biological weapons, which helped another major producer and employer in the post-war era: the American defense industry.
During the war, the American defense industry, backed by government contracts, had expanded rapidly to meet production demands. Accordingly, major American companies like Lockheed, Martin, Boeing, Northrop and Grumman got the chance to flex their muscles. Given the post-war situation - where the U.S. military needed the latest and greatest technology to help maintain its new, global position - the government continued to rely on these companies and their research and development programs. Not surprisingly, the industry remained a major target of government investment and came to be seen as a job-creating, economy-driving power, attracting supporters and investors who understood this. These same investors also understood that aggressive international policy, including policing the globe and isolated combat, was a way to maximize invested returns and keep production demand at a premium. Lobby groups began to take shape, and the American military industrial complex, a fundamental element in Washington politics, was born.To finance and power the motor of the military industrial complex, the U.S. government began borrowing excessively. Nevertheless, the growing deficit from this borrowing was kept somewhat in check, for many years, by the booming U.S. economy. Another contributing factor, in connection with the post-war situation, was that the U.S. started collecting on the debt that Britain had incurred over the course of at least five years of the Second World War while buying American weapons and materials on credit. Similarly, Germany and Japan began making reparations payments to the Americans. It was yet another way that the outcome of the war contributed to America's post-war wealth.
Perhaps the most important development amidst that accumulation of wealth was how it flowed back to the people. For example, through the G.I. Bill, the government funded a program that gave American war veterans and their families supplementary financing to start businesses and access education or job training. Arguably, this also made Americans more productive and helped contribute to the growth of the American economy.
B. The rise of the "American dream" as a consequence of the economy
In connection with the booming economy and increased personal wealth, ordinary Americans had opportunities to make upgrades and invest, contributing to the rise of a strong, comfortably-living and financially-stable American middle class. With the rise of the American middle class, U.S. manufacturers sought to cash in; initially, they focused on selling middle-class America on a one-size-fits-all idealization of suburban family life, complete with an endless line of the latest labor-saving devices and material comforts, packaged together as a concept that became known as the "American dream." The concept built upon a long-existing notion, going back to colonial times, that America offered endless possibility, and one must only work hard to tame the land and prosper; in fact, it was somewhat of a reiteration of the same promise, implying that all one had to do to succeed was work hard, because opportunity was abound.
Of course, it had been years since this vision had been a part of the American public's conception of reality; the Second World War, for instance, was a time when the American public would have been more familiar with shortages and rationing than surplus, and fully incapable of making substantial purchases or upgrades. Turning the clock back further, the same would have been true during the Great Depression. But these events would have only made the sudden change in wealth and fortune, and the opportunity for abundance, all the more impactive. What is more, technology had evolved rapidly and drastically over the course of the Second World War, making new, more powerful and reliable electronics and appliances possible once the economy had shifted to peacetime manufacture. A new world of possibilities opened up for consumers once they had the means to upgrade and make large-scale purchases. Pushed to do so by the "American Dream", the demand for wide-scale production flourished and the economy surged forward.
Incidentally, the high demand for material items contributed to the growth of the U.S. economy by providing employment opportunities, increasing national production and incentivizing the inventiveness that would help make America the global leader when it came to manufactured products. Few industries were transformed by the post- war circumstances more abruptly than automobile industry, which became a booming source of production, wealth and economic power, not to mention employment. Entire communities sprouted up from in and around the "motor city" of Detroit, the hub of American automobile-manufacturing power. It was not long before the country was flooded in home appliances, electronic accessories and cars, each from a company trying to one-up the other with "the next greatest thing" and capture the power of the market, capitalizing on American consumer wealth and maximizing profit from sale.
With its high output and material wealth, the U.S. quickly became the envy of the world. Just as importantly, America's greatest rival, the Soviet Union, offering a government-planned economic model, could only respond by insisting that one day, its rival system would "bury" America's production achievements in a time when the results showed otherwise.
Under the circumstances, Americans had a powerful argument to turn the world away from embracing the Soviets and the Soviet system. This was critical because the Americans and Soviets were competing for trade partners and access to resources and markets around the world which, perhaps more than anything else, influenced America's potential for economic growth and prosperity. Likewise, with the world exposed to the less glamorous results of the Soviet system, the U.S. was gifted a reason to justify its encroachment abroad as a simple measure to prevent those who had adopted the same model as the Soviets from taking over or moving in.
Linked to prosperity and perceived superiority over the Soviets and the Soviet system, the U.S. economic model became a point of pride. Associated with freedom and opportunity, it also became a fixed part of national identity, placing a feel-good, patriotic value on consumerism and materialism, which only encouraged further investment and consumer spending, subsequently powering the economy and reinforcing America's faith in its system. Under the circumstances, the "American dream" did more than just encourage Americans to utilize their newly-found wealth to upgrade homes, cars and appliances; it also gave rise to an economy and a culture based on materialism. Correspondingly, a way of life took root based on surplus, financial possibility and selling whatever the public wanted - and whatever would sell.
C. The "American dream" evolves: an economy of consumerism
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| Quintessential 1950s American suburbia, practically mirroring my father's hometown |
Some advertisements registered on a personal level and played to feelings that existed due to social norms and culture. For example, the first commercial in television history tried to sell viewers on a wristwatch by marketing the item in association with busy men in the business world. The public had a variety of reasons to be interested in such an item. But to understand one of the motivations, perhaps a bit of background is in order.
In early history, women trusted in strong, virile men to lead, protect and provide whatever was necessary to survive. Over time, this preference became hardwired in female psychology. The same embracement continued to prevail in civilization after civilization because of the importance of the same traits in men on the battlefield, farm field or in other stations of life. With religion and cultural understandings tweaking the model only slightly, the status quo remained largely unchanged up into the age of mass consumerism and television - especially as most women still relied on men as their primary source of income, and strong, ambitious men had every appearance of being the ones most capable of providing.
Aware of this background, it is hardly surprising that advertisers targeted women with commercials that touted expensive things as a "necessary" addition to life, and the expectation was that men would compete with one another to satisfy women by providing those things. Nature did much of the work to push the model along; but, helping it, commercials - and the culture, in general - presented what was essentially a constant reminder that women were pleased by expensive things (e.g. "diamonds are a girl's best friend": 1, 2):
Other ideas appeared in commercials and the culture and pushed the model along just the same; for example, companionship with pleased females was presented in connection with a man's happiness. Men were also bombarded with messages encouraging competition for a certain kind of woman, and making them want to settle down and raise a family with her. Women, likewise, were presented with a message that - in advertisements and through the culture, in general - suggested a link between products and happiness and glorified men who could provide.
Using that same all-expansive model, advertisers sought to a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjqGripHWTs&feature=youtu.be">market
With these patterns of consumer behavior overlapping and reinforced by social behavior, product development and market research were incentivized to find the next big thing and generate profit. The products kept coming, the purchases kept flowing and people, taking social cues and eager to outperform one another with their possessions, kept competing. In this way, the consumerist social model had consequences that fueled the economy beyond simple economic purchases, because men were motivated to work hard and strive to be the best so as to be able to provide. In other words, men had incentives to aim for a high-profile career - which was supposed to bring them the women they desired, because women understood the correlation with a man's success and being able to have things, which was put at high value.
The model also had the effect of encouraging couples to pair off based on the acquisition of wealth and prosperity. Ultimately, it followed from the model that these would be the types of folks bringing children into the world, and that the families these children were raised in could be self-sufficient. Helping the model along, the culture pushed boys to want to become fathers, and girls to become mothers. Coupled with great financial security due to the prosperity of the era and the excitement of the post-war era, the conditions were ripe for the 'baby boom', which gave America its largest generation ever.
D. Making boomers into consumers: selling what could only sell best
The new generation, appropriately called the 'boomers', became an instant market priority. Early on, companies used gimmicks like catchy jingles and extra sugar to sell their products to the young boomer audience. As the boomers became teens, however, the focus shifted to exploiting basic primal drives. Nowhere was this clearer than in the entertainment industry, where hip-shaking singer Elvis Presley and fast-living actor James Dean were thrust at young girls on live television. The objective was to, on the one hand, tap into the female biological drive for a virile, strong-minded successful male who every other girl was excited about and, on the other, to capitalize on a puerile, adolescent-wide fascination with pushing boundaries to find adventure and have fun. Spliced together, the two ends of the gimmick turned elusive, sexual and rebellious men into icons and helped sell tickets, filling concert halls and movie theaters with squealing teen girls who dug into their fathers' pockets. Meanwhile, advertisers jumped at the opportunity to have their products associated with such acts, making investors in the entertainment industry, and promoters, a fortune - and helping advertisers sell their products.
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On paper, it was a win-win situation. But it also pushed young girls to thirst for the sort of "bad boys" that sparked a fire in their loins which organized society had long since tried to extinguish and replace with culturally-reinforced excitement for community values and family. At the same time, young men could observe the appeal that "bad boys" had and see all the reasons to disregard community and family values to begin acting like "bad boys" themselves. Accordingly, the young boomer generation was pushed in a mildly anti-Christian, anti-social and anti-community direction. Reflecting on this transition, by the mid 1950s, "don't be square" had become the ultimate expression to discourage boring, timid and old-fashioned behavior. Just one generation earlier, the term "square" had meant "to be honest, traditional and loyal" - traits once presented as good things.
Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood starlet in the video several paragraphs up, was part of the cultural transformation. Her flirtatious demeanor and attitude was uncharacteristic of women in the film industry, and helped to carve out her legacy as "one of the most popular sex symbols [...][,] emblematic of the era's changing attitudes towards sexuality." But that is only part of the story; Monroe actually became Hollywood's chosen fosterling for those very reasons, because the film industry was looking for a prototype that would make men as excited to go to the movies as young women and help boost ticket sales. The film industry was banking on the average male being especially attracted to Monroe because her working class background and flirtatious behavior made her appear within reach; Monroe's petite and curvaceous frame was part of the same equation, standing in contrast to the long-legged and proper elegance associated with untouchable upper-class exclusivity and, thus, prudish behavior. Having already posed nude in 1949, Monroe was just the type for the role; given her recognizability, she was also the type that Playboy was looking to feature in the nude to help launch its adult-risque magazine in 1953 and maximize circulation.
Young girls, in turn, saw men drooling in print and literally falling over Monroe on screen. The starlet achieved wealth and power as her reputation grew, ending up in the arms of popular athlete Joe DiMaggio and even U.S. President John F. Kennedy. If this had any effect at all, it was that young girls came to understand Monroe was the kind with opportunity, wealth and power, whose behavior should be emulated if they wanted the same.
In 1961, Cosmopolitan magazine debuted. The Sun followed shortly thereafter, and Vogue got a makeover. Each publication subsequently became famous for featuring all of the latest celebrity relationship drama and gossip, which was turned into front-page news. It was the beginning of the in-your-face coverage of Hollywood celebrity culture and the non-stop focus on the scandalous and famous - a ongoing cocktail of consumerism, materialism, sex, drama and the excitement of boundary-pushing.
One would have to be pretty naive to think that the new culture did not bear influence the minds of youth, or did not mold the rising generation to believe that what was being presented before them was a reflection of how people behaved and what life was supposed to be like. Multiplying that effect, earlier sources of influence, such as local religious institutions and religious community leaders, were losing increasingly more influence in the public sphere.
Whatever the case, by 1961, one million women were on the birth control pill, even with mass resistance from Christian groups and fears of dangerous side effects standing in the way. Accordingly, a barrier that had prevented youth from modelling the same scandalous behavior of their idols came crashing to the ground. There fear of pregnancy had largely evaporated. From that point forward, young women also had less of a reason to turn away the "bad boys" who pursued them, especially with the culture grooming young women to crave such a thing, rather than instructing young women to run away to save themselves. Sure, those men might have been merely looking for fun and wild times, but so were increasingly more and more young women - after all, the new culture was telling them to want such a thing.
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| 1960s: born from excess materialism and the commercialization of base individualism |
Meanwhile, a UK-based musical quartet known as the Beatles, featuring lyrics and a sound said to arouse "feelings of aggression replete with sexual stimuli", were making their own promoters a fortune. Although banned in Israel, the Beatles had "invaded" the U.S. and continental Europe and played sold-out show after show, attracting hordes of young, screaming females who were under their spell. The success of the Beatles encouraged the music industry to try its luck with similar bands, such as the Kinks and Animals, which were part of the same "virile, successful, strong-minded and exotically-foreign male" gimmick. It was just like the other gimmicks, except it tapped into the "foreign" attribute. The same scheme was used to promote the Rolling Stones in addition to the previously-mentioned acts. But the Stones were important for another reason: namely, the band had a rugged-edged style and reputation that emphasized the "bad boy who plays by his own rules" bit that traditional Christian communities had long since tried to keep their daughters away from.
Of course, with the sort of hands-off entertainment that music provided, the greatest dangers brought on by the "bad boy" - sexual disease, unwanted pregnancy, heartbreak, bitterness and spoiled innocence - were kept at bay. But through it all, young women were nonetheless primed for the "bad boys" who could really get their motor going, creating a yearning and obsession that could only be satiated by those who gave off the "right" vibrations because, just like the "bad boys" on stage, they were out of bounds and did not care because they were self-guided and made their own rules.
E. The byproduct of being sold rebellion and doing whatever 'feels good': rebellion and doing whatever 'feels good'
Tempted by what was out of bounds and accustomed to their individual urges being exploited rather than restrained, the boomers came of age with beliefs that were largely incompatible with the rigid conformity and utilitarianism of 1950s American society. The hedonism and individualism they embraced no longer existed no longer existed within the solid framework of economic values, which had been the case for the previous generation. Moreover, of the hedonism and individualism there had been in the previous generation's culture, none of it had ever been a substitute for advancing to the next stage of life, such as marriage, career, household or family. But by the 1960s, an increasing number of young men understood the advantages of being a "bad boy" thanks to the culture and did not want to graduate from that just to work hard to provide like their fathers. Similarly, an increasing number of young female boomers sought out and preferred freedom, fun and adventure and did not want to live like their mothers, staying at home and raising children. Sure, it may have been childish and irresponsible. But the reality of the commercialized 1950s material lifestyle, gender roles and the flaws of this composite were something many boomers had live through, and found to be nothing like what the culture had projected. Fortunately for the boomers, their kind were in number to bring about any changes they wished to see and demand a world more in in line with their expectations. Incidentally, tensions boiled over when their generation was pushed to fight in a war that had little to do with their emerging ideals.
In the meantime, a counterculture emerged that called into question accepted boundaries, limits and norms. Under the influence of that culture, women began throwing away their feminine garments. They also stopped shaving and became more and more focused on their own interests. Young men stopped shaving as well. Some grew their hair out and wore sandals. Casual and formal wear, traditional attire designed to impress and conform, lost favor and was traded in for psychedelic colors and expression.
Part of the new mode of expression focused on exploring ideas that diverged from European traditions. For instance, when it came to art and spirituality, the counterculture drew inspiration from traditional Native American or Asian cultures (Taoist, Buddhist, gypsies, etc). Europe, as well as its traditions and folklore, took a backseat. The movement also embraced sensory exploration through psychedelics and marijuana, not to mention consensual sexual experimentation. Demonstrating the changes that were at hand, the counterculture made it cool to travel to meditate and smoke opium in Tibet. Praying in the Alps sober as a nun was out.
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| Irony: the day the counterculture adopted an old symbol that means volk death |
The movement namely consisted of European-descended peoples. But these people typically despised racism, and proudly viewed what few episodes of cross-ethnic interaction occurred at countercultural events as evidence enough to discredit any theory about ethnic group incompatibilities in society - or any danger posed by non-Europeans, in general. Relishing those experiences, perhaps boomers came to see skepticism in this regard as an attack on the authenticity of their bonding experience with all event participants, and an attack on countercultural ideals indirectly. It is certainly something to consider.
At any rate, by 1965, the Beatles were on board with the counterculture, having grown their hair out and begun experimenting with "foreign" instruments, psychedelics and marijuana. Given the status and influence of the band, it is hardly surprising that their conversion was followed by the conversion of their fan base, too. The same had happened with folk musician Bob Dylan (two members of the Beatles, incidentally, reported that Dylan had inspired them to use drugs). But Dylan was an important figure in the movement for another reason: his drug, anti-racism and anti-war anthems ("Everybody must get stoned", "Hurricane" and "Blowin' in the Wind", respectively, among others) helped to sew the anti-war, anti-racist and substance-friendly causes together as one and expand their reach.
To the same end, Timothy Leary, a former Harvard University psychologist and anti-war activist, was another key player. His opposition to the war and the government intersected with support from the Weathermen, a radical, anti-war and pro-black group that, incidentally, took its name from one of Dylan's songs. Demonstrating intersectionality, the Beatles wrote a song ("Come Together") for Leary's bid to become the governor of California - yes, that place again - which may have very well influenced the election had it not been for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intervening to take Leary down on drug charges.
Prior to the takedown, Leary had advised youth to drop out of school to examine nature and take drugs instead of enlisting to fight in Vietnam. Furthermore, at a counterculture event in California called a "Be-In", he had addressed at least 30,000 young boomers with his message. The event glorified personal empowerment, cultural and political revolution, communal living and attaining a higher consciousness through drugs while rejecting America's 1950s economic and middle-class morality. Hordes of young men and women flocked to California to see what the commotion was all about.
Leary's decision to target California was hardly a surprise; San Francisco's disaffected student population and beat generation poets and hipsters were all open to his messages. More importantly, thanks to "everything Hollywood" and the Beach Boys, the state had long since been seen as the focal point of youthful freedom and liberation. Ironically, by the late 1960s, the Beach Boys were "square" - Rolling Stone Magazine would later call them "Eurocentric" - and fans of the counterculture increasingly considered the band to be commercial, materialistic and cleanly boring. In reality, one of the Beach Boys' own writers, John Phillips, co-wrote "California Dreamin", the 1965 Mamas and the Papas hit that injected the counterculture's own brand of California lore and lure into the mainstream. In fact, Phillips was a member of that band. He also wrote "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" which, in 1967, Philip Wallach Blondheim III performed under his less-rigidly European stage name, "Scott McKenzie". The new rendition became the quintessential anthem of the counterculture. In 1967, Phillips, as well as Beatles' publicist Derek Taylor (the "sixth Beatle") and "Jew Lou" Adler (the Mamas and the Papas' producer and brains behind Cheech & Chong and the Rocky Horror Picture Show), organized the Monterrey Pop Festival, a major countercultural event which the Beach Boys were even originally billed for.
Demonstrating overlap, the festival at Monterey even recycled the same "young, exotically-foreign" gimmick from earlier in the decade, using it to promote not only the British band The Who, but also Jimi Hendrix who, despite being a child of America, had surrounded himself with bandmates from Britain. Around 90,000 young boomers attended the event.
In 1969, two years after the event at Monterey, a counterculture concert event came to rural New York, not far from a town called Woodstock. The event, known as Woodstock, generated widespread attention. It also turned the counterculture into a mainstream obsession almost overnight, which had tremendous consequences.
F. Consequences of the culture based on sex, rebellion and doing whatever feels good
By all accounts, the young boomers who came to festivals like Woodstock either craved excitement, rejected the rigidity of conformity or simply grew up understanding that America was about freedom and sought to find it. Some took refuge in California and pursued community living based on sexual experimentation, alternative spirituality and mind-altering drugs. Others merely dabbled in the counterculture experience, and took its ideas about social freedom back home with them, infesting small-town USA.
Unfortunately, the ideas that were spread through the counterculture wrought a certain danger. Some experienced the effects more quickly than others; for example, in less than a year, several musicians who had been present at Woodstock had died from drug overdoses, specifically the heroin. Most communes failed, torn asunder by a wide range for factors, from money problems to unwanted pregnancy, disease and drug addiction. Even the Beatles had run into the pitfalls of the counterculture, specifically with regards to heroin addiction.
From the post-naive legacy of the counterculture, there emerged a growing consensus that perhaps limits were good and personal boundaries were in order, even if the individual should have the agency to decide them. On its face, the conclusion made sense, because it showed adaptation amidst a changing state of awareness. But note where the new conclusion stopped, and thus in effect crossed out the need for a debate as to whether culture should actually guide the individual, and not just feed whatever could pique interest. To be fair, the conclusion about the power of individuals and individual agency made sense, because the majority of boomers could reflect on their personal lives and see that whatever limits they had set for themselves had been respected well enough that nothing catastrophic had taken place. Drugs such as heroin, for example, had been widely considered "dangerous" and were avoided by most who had dabbled in the counterculture. Furthermore, regardless what had taken place due to the choices that were made by anyone under the influence of the counterculture, America's place in the world remained unchanged; nothing was out there to suggest that an America retreating from traditionalism (and embracing individual choice amidst a culture of boundary-pushing) could not be just as productive or workable as any previous version of America. Finally, after years of free market patriotism and counterculture as a "true meaning of America" (see: the 1969 boomer film Easy Rider), choice and individual agency were a part of the national conscious and could not just be rolled back.
Interestingly enough, the story of Woodstock was retold in a way that was entirely consistent with the above considerations, and based on how boomers would have liked to remember the event. Future generations learned that Woodstock was a great American cultural happening of "peace", where the attendees respected one another and their self-imposed limits. But countering the idea that Woodstock's attendees had respected their limits, during just that three-day event, there were a whopping 797 drug-related incidents requiring medical treatment and at least two drug-related deaths. Not surprisingly, the deaths are also seldom spoken of and, when mentioned, the deaths are often reduced to a humorous aside or brushed aside as accidental. It has even been suggested that "only" a certain number of people died at Woodstock. By contrast, other concert events with deaths have been wholly characterized as "tragedies".
Peeling back the layers, one finds additional details that were carefully removed from the choice characterization of Woodstock. For instance, it is often said that Woodstock was free for the public to attend and that the public streamed in at rates beyond all expectations, creating all sorts of problems that the attendees overcame together. But what is seldom explained is that Woodstock's organizers purposely concealed the number of attendees they expected to show up to get the landowner's approval to host the event, and to avoid having to pay more for more land to accommodate a larger-sized venue. With their misrepresentations, the organizers were also able to cut back on the amount of medical personnel and food they had to supply to get a permit for the event. With these facts in mind, the organizers probably could have had the book thrown at at them and been liable for manslaughter. But none of this is ever mentioned.
With the truth whitewashed, Woodstock was remembered in a way that conveyed very few lessons that could have been shown from the truth. Drug culture lore was romanticized instead of diabolized and nothing was conveyed about the danger of it. Nothing was revealed about the exploitative nature of profits-first marketing, including its consequences for individuals and the community.
Few - except those who had perhaps sat out the counterculture altogether or were inoculated with traditionally-minded beliefs - protested as the culture pushed farther and farther in the direction of the uninhibited and even the demented to catch the next level of rebellious lure that had yet to be explored. Helping to move things along, of course, was the fact that staunch conservatives were unable to produce entertainment with even half the allurement. As the years passed by, it became clear that they could only claim a certain wing of the country music genre, or the soft rock culture led by acts like The Carpenters.
Arguably, there was a lack of urgency on the part of conservatives to compete for the prominence of their ideas because, hearkening back to the whitewashing of Woodstock and the counterculture, it was presupposed that people could find their way regardless what the culture put out to sample. Individual choice and expressive empowerment was the foundation of generational identity, and nothing existed anywhere to challenge these reinforced ideas, especially because nothing had affected America's overall health as a nation or economy - yet.
But as the 1960s drew on, the cultural landscape began to shift. Changing social attitudes took away some of the pressure that women felt to stay in relationships. Fewer people got married, and the divorce rate skyrocketed.
As part of that same transformation, no-fault divorce laws were introduced to California in 1970, which made divorce proceedings easier to initiate, allowing women to walk away from their husbands with half the family assets without cause. The idea of no-fault divorce was gradually adopted throughout America, and became the rule rather than the exception. There was also a spike in abortions and out-of-wedlock births. On all of these levels, society was changing, no matter what the trigger was.
For clean-cut boomers who had married young, sat out during the counterculture and birthed multiple children, this was probably quite alarming. At most, they had incorporated the 1950s individualist materialism alongside their beliefs and accepted the counterculture as an expression of freedom that somebody else might want, sealing that person's own fate. But there was only a modicum of vocal protest. Perhaps this was, again, because of the ideas about freedom that had evolved in connection with American identity, and the continued belief that one could simply look away, and the wealth and prosperity of the nation itself would not be transformed by anything that took place.
In the meantime, a new challenge to the rubber-stamped optimism about unguided culture, pushed boundaries and the health of the country appeared in the form of white powder: cocaine. Between the 1970s and 1980s, cocaine's use as a party drug spiked upwards. The drug's highly addictive properties and link to cardiac problems did not mix well with counterculture-reinforced ideology of fun with self-discovered limits. And, through its resale in a cheaper, processed form called "crack", the drug brought great destruction to communities - specifically, the poor urban neighborhoods, exacerbating long-existing problems of poverty, crime and homelessness. At the same time, a highly-lucrative drug trade exploded, triggering gang wars for control of operations. The city of Miami became a murder capital and, between 1970 and 1989, the murder rate in Los Angeles jumped 209%. As if that were not bad enough, the U.S. was shelling out a minimum of forty-one billion dollars annually at one point (1988) to support its addiction, and this flushed America's wealth out of the country and into the hands of the foreign drug cartels that were at the product's source. The only consolation was that the drug's cognitive and energizing effects contributed to its popularity on Wall Street, which may have helped to energize the U.S. economy in more ways than one.
But the U.S. government's decision to gradually intervene to address the country's cocaine epidemic spoke volumes about the state of affairs and its dreaded spill-over effects. In 1983, a major, school-wide, government-funded anti-drug program began and, in 1986, the U.S. President delivered a major 'Speech to the Nation' about the danger of drugs. A huge crackdown ensued, filling the prisons with those convicted of drug possession offenses.
Amidst these developments, depictions of cocaine use - through blockbuster films like Scarface (1983) - did well to glamorize the lifestyle associated with the drug, regardless of intention. More importantly, the music industry shrugged its shoulders at whatever the rock stars brought along from their party scene, as profit-first, freedom-first and lessons from the counterculture and boundary-pushing philosophies collided, resulted in all sorts of ideas being transmitted to youth. Meanwhile, the culture continued to provide a constant act of boundary-pushing and emphasis on personal interest and impulse-driven expression, i.e. anti-traditional, rebellious ideas aimed at men and women:
To nobody's surprise, the number of marriages continued to decline, and more and more children were born out of wedlock. Furthermore, broken homes were becoming increasingly common, torn apart by greed, narcissism, infidelity and irresponsibility.
Changes to the U.S. economy also began to transform American society. The dependence on foreign oil, for example, triggered a crisis in the late 1970s that threatened to slow down the U.S. economy and change the balance of global wealth and, indirectly, power. Just as importantly, the U.S. had begun to lose its edge in terms of global manufacturing and export. To recall, the U.S. had maintained a near-monopoly on trade and export since the end of the Second World War, in large part because the Allied bombing during the conflict had decimated industrial capacity in a good part of Europe and Asia (see: Part 1). Inevitably, though, manufacturing had returned to these areas, challenging the market domination of American corporations no matter where they did business.
Critically, instead of innovating to stay ahead of the competition, American corporations were slow to react and eager to cut corners at the expense of the consumer. Nowhere was this clearer than in the American automotive industry, specifically with the Ford Motor Company. At a time when the public was concerned about rising gas prices and had turned to cheap, small-frame cars coming out of Japan and other Asian countries, Ford's executive leadership refused to risk loss by changing its ways. Finally adapting to the market, Ford churned out a "budget" model that was produced so cheaply, it actually became dangerous to drive. It was just one example where American manufacture had gone from enjoying a near-monopoly to barely being able to compete.
Meanwhile, eager to maximize profit, some American companies began to outsource labor to foreign countries, putting millions of Americans out of work. Others moved entire production sites abroad, leaving the communities they abandoned to become post-industrial ghost towns (see: Part 1). Exacerbating the trend, powerful corporations sponsored lobbyists and Congressmen to challenge ideas about borders, abolish tariffs, adopt common currencies and, crucially, demand an open gate to flood the U.S. labor pool, drive up competition for jobs and keep wages the same in spite of inflation. In this manner, corporations gained access to a labor force that gradually displaced American workers.
Of course, it was quite some time until the results were felt in full force. But these changes were in motion, which would ultimately change the workforce forever. In the meantime, there were some transformations that otherwise changed the workforce: the rise of work-ready women. Over the years, the prospect of a job and education had been increasingly dangled in young girls' faces. It was called "women's liberation", and projected as a way towards income independence and self-actualization. But what it really did was increase the labor pool and drive up productivity, and surely corporate America was aware of this. Women in the workforce was also a secret band-aid for the economy, as the dual-earning household model hid the fact that actual earnings, adjusted for inflation, were dramatically shrinking. Had the truth been recognized, it would have pointed to where things were heading for the American worker.
G. America's decline: the end of the American dream?
By the mid 1980s, certain parts of the U.S. which had prospered under post-war conditions and productivity were devastated by a loss of wealth and economic opportunity. At the forefront was Michigan, but especially the city of Detroit, which had been ground zero during America's reign as an automobile-manufacturing juggernaut:
In 1989, another city in Michigan, Flint, became the focus of the Michael Moore film Roger & Me. The film showed the decline of America's industrial empire in raw detail.
But Michigan was not alone in its transformation; Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois had all played a role in the country's growth, contributing the products, coal, steel or iron that America was built on. Once the epicenter of American production, they became a rust belt as production went overseas, particularly to China and Mexico.
Rainy Seattle and the nearby logging towns of the Pacific Northwest fell on hard times, too. By the mid-1980s, unemployment in Washington State had climbed above 12% for the first time and heroin epidemic had crept into the depressed region. It all bore influence on the local underground music scene, where bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains (1, 2, 3) pioneered a sound later called grunge, which featured raspy vocals and heavy drum lines mixed with self-effacing or apathetic lyrics. The music took the underground by storm and spread across the country like wildfire.
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| 90's grunge band "Nirvana" |
Eager to cash in, corporate America shamelessly promoted grunge, even though it was essentially promoting a critique of itself. The fashion industry jumped on the grunge bandwagon too, selling the kind of thrift-store clothes that the bands had worn while strapped for cash and had continued to wear - which had become associated with grunge, in general. In this manner, anti-fashion became fashion, mirroring an idea that had already breached the mainstream through the popularization - and gradual commercialization - of the underground punk scene many years earlier. The fashion industry also sold a look, associated with grunge, linked to what even the counterculture had decided to say no to: heroin. It was indeed a new frontier in terms of marketed rebellion. But, as the coming years would show, there were still more boundaries to be crossed.
Already, rock was getting promoted that featured the same pessimism and anger as grunge and, with increasing frequency, pushing the limits beyond where grunge had stopped in terms of "edginess" and boundary-pushing. This was especially the case when it came to the grotesque and decadent (1,2), but also with increasingly more attacks on the nation's heritage, especially Christianity, with a loud, expletive-filled rage that had never been heard before (1,2,3,4). Finally, the music became so dark and angry (1,2) that, after a spate of school shootings, the boomers were finally compelled to protest the open market nature of the culture which many of their generation had once embraced (1,2,3). It remains to be seen what the long-term effect of a full decade of music featuring self-hatred, anger and pessimism. But, notably, many who were connected enough to write what they did have since killed themselves or died of heroin overdoses.
Gradually, the system started promoting something else (1,2), called nu metal. Though as loud and aggressive as the rock of the 1990s, nu metal was infused with hip-hop, a genre that had largely been associated with "minorities" and even "minority" politics up to that time. In all likelihood, the music industry was content to connect the two genres to broaden potential market reach. This would have been particularly important at the time to counter the impact of .mp3 file sharing, which the music industry had not yet discovered how to regulate with maximal profit, like we see today with iTunes or YouTube licensing. There were also the advantages of making the whole "minority" thing cool to the rock crowd (1,2), because hip-hop music is much easier to take a chance on, since the videos are less complex/expensive, and star power/promotion can much more easily guide a successful release than a rock album can. Whatever the case, the music industry began to promote hip-hop in earnest and with priority. But the new product scraped at the very bottom of the barrel of hyper-individualism and degeneracy, with simple lyrics promoting the most backwards and criminal behavior imaginable. It is unclear what effect this has, or will have, on American society. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that a society rewarding such standards will end up more advanced and productive than a society that encouraged men to work hard to become high-profile individuals and attract a desirable wife, a la 1950.
Another reason the boomers may be "ok" with everything goes back to observations from responses to the increasingly stronger agitation against white Americans in television and film, beginning around 1990. It seemed to me that boomers generally excused everything based on their conclusion that the goal was for "minorities" to feel like their stories were finally being told, and for the rest of the population to feel sympathetic, bringing everyone together. But this unity is not taking place; the focus shift from America the great and diverse to America the oppressor has left nothing to unite anyone. Some people feel angry about being stereotyped by association of ethnicity to things they had no part in; others feel anger towards people who they otherwise would not have felt anger towards. Thus, instead of designing a recipe for togetherness, the culture promoters had come up with a concoction for strife, anguish and division that has hyper-racialized the public.
Meanwhile, the open door border policy is exacerbating these tensions and putting the ideas of the boomers - whether countercultural Kumbaya, ethnic-nihilist optimistic individualist - on trial. In both cases, it is becoming clear that those who migrated from the Latino world generally block vote to allow "their own kind" to enter the U.S. illegally or legally. The result is a border rush that is weighing down social services in America, triggering rapid demographic transformation and culture clash throughout the country. At the same time, the border has become a human trafficking red zone, and drug gangs have also taken advantage of the situation.
Between 2007 and 2008, a major economic fallout occurred in connection with a financial crisis and dealt a major blow to the U.S. economy. The crisis was linked to problems in the housing market, where unqualified persons were nevertheless given hefty mortgages, initiating a multi-level fail that goes back to long-developing consequences of the entire post-war ideology. First, there is the exploitation of the promotion of the American dream to consider; those wanting more - but not able to pay for it - were nevertheless serviced with loans, with the lenders knowing full well that repayment plan trouble meant more interest on debt and extra fees, which fine - until the wave of mass defaults and foreclosures collapsed the system. Then, there was the problem of open border globalism, since many unqualified recipients were Latino migrants who could not afford anything, and some probably could not even read what they were signing. Finally, the merit of a population guided by raw consumerism and materialism is put into question, since the consequence appears to be people insisting on spending more than their means. Regardless how one looks at the situation, it was the end of the inflated American dream and, to some degree, the crisis offered a red pill on the fallacy of America's current status, built entirely on credit-fueled lies.
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| Fifties ideology meets post-feminism |
It is important to be aware of where the movement's leadership has taken us and what the results are. From Madonna to Pink to Miley Cyrus, the feminist movement has guided women to be "bad boys" rather than chase any number of them, or settle for something wholesome. In this way, the movement has pushed women to adopt the worst behaviors of the worst men. Thanks to the movement, when it comes to relationships, women are also constantly fighting for power and control, having been pumped full of ideas that lead them to see compromise as gendered submission. More than ever before, women feel entitled to slut around their entire lives, expect not be judged negatively for it (see: Slutwalk), and demand that society pay for their birth control; they insist on a society that never stops considering them beautiful - regardless of aging, unhealthful weight or a refusal to change out of their pajamas - all so they can forever determine that everyone, except the modern equivalent of yesterday's tribe leader, is out of their league - until they also get tired of him, because there is surely something still better out there to swipe on. The result is a society where a woman is not fit to be a compliment to anything other than herself and most men are stung by this reality.
Indeed, rather than living la vida loca, seizing the night and having the same fun as the womenfolk, most men are made to feel hated, unwanted and useless. As such, the men who embraced sexual liberation and expected a happy-go-lucky female cornacopia are increasingly realizing that they were sold an illusion; the results are simply not what the culture had said would happen. Once again, the boomer culture, and counterculture in particular, distorted the reality of what was being built.
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| Debunking boomer fun-for-all fantasies, this is the reality of Tinder, Bumble and similar hookup sites. |
Perhaps even worse, we live in a world where, under the weight of female determinations, criticism of that society has been labelled, stigmatized and effectively censored. Much like the situation with the boomers who are afraid of being called "racist", language and the fear of language is key, as is the reaction to it, tied directly to repercussions in terms of one's education and career. The only way to avoid being singled out for wrongthink is to practice silence - and this, despite the impression that our culture is an open forum because, regardless of the consequences, one can praise the most degenerate repulsiveness and spit venom at American heritage and Christianity.
Trapped under the weight of all of these developments, both economic and social, it is hardly a surprise that men are losing it. The American male suicide rate has skyrocketed:
The number of men offing themselves, however, is something nobody seems to be talking about; instead, we discuss ad nauseam whether it is fair that women earn several cents less on every dollar (although there is some debate whether this is even really true).
If you are looking for another signpost indicating how far things have fallen, consider the spike in mass shootings on American soil. But, instead of being seen as a symptom of how broken the system has become, the statistics are foolishly processed by the feminist-led mainstream as a need to fix "toxic masculinity" or disarm everyone.
Another indication of the direction we are headed could be that American men are being put on medication in record numbers. But, as we now know, part of the medical industry has been a subscription pill mill for the pharmaceutical corporations which feed it. As a consequence, we now have an addiction crisis to deal with, sparked by "legal heroin" - and perhaps even the nineties culture which glamorized the real heroin that addicts are incidentally switching to, because it is cheaper. We must really begin to think about what to do, considering what happened to China under similar circumstances. In any case, given the other problems that have emerged, it is much easier to understand how it happened. The pill industry is just another wing of the consumer-based economy, fueled by the greed of corporations - and perhaps a culture that got away with thinly glorifying drugs.
Having seen the flawed ideals and extremes in the ruling culture ideology, people are wanting to push back and finding that they cannot because of resistance from those in control, and the hard-wiring of concepts that, fed to the boomers, and fueling their revolution, are what has, with each passing generation, become practically mandatory to believe in. It is no small wonder that people who see and understand all of this are anxious about the future in a way not known, or seen, for at least half a century, because something has to give (click here for the Conclusion).
