I think Nietzsche nailed it — but I will get to that in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the nineteen-fifties a Beat Generation began to disobey the status quo in America. We know the rest of the story: the angry young men (and women) grew wise and invited their little brothers and sisters to wage a revolution against the establishment. The new kids spurned anger in favor of love (and sex and drugs and rock and roll).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hippies may have appeared immature, and flower power was certainly shocking to the suburban sense of decorum, but love as an ideology has certain, undeniable traditions informing it. Setting aside the obvious religious influences, there is also an age old romantic defiance to it, an undercurrent which powers all notions of freedom, liberty, individualism, and happiness, which we might call the “Romeo and Juliet” effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alas, like the Shakespearian romance, the sixties came to an end, but the lovers lived on. Liberal ideology moved from the streets to the halls of power, maturing all the time, fighting “the good fight.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Decades passed and a new, silent majority stood by watching the new liberalism, wishing for a leader to champion the old, traditional American values. Leaders came and went, but the conservative culture war was losing ground. The flag-waving, amen-praying, soldiers on the ground saw the end coming, and fought all the harder in angry righteousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then a savior suddenly appeared, a Trump to trump all woke progress, to make America Great Again. The Evangelical troops rallied, voted, and God crowned the “unconditional commander” victorious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And here we see, in contrast to the anger turned to love, the anger turned to hate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are decades of maturity behind the liberal righteousness, while the conservative rebellion has all the immaturity of the angry young beat generation before they grew wise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And here is where Nietzsche comes in. For the Beat Generation were, not just young and angry, but disobedient, while the Trumpers come from a long tradition of obedience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Says the Philosopher with the Defiant Mustache: “nothing has been exercised and cultivated better and longer among men than obedience.” And he continues — “it may fairly be assumed that the need for it is now innate in the average man.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump’s appearance struck the obedient average American as “an immense comfort and salvation from a gradually intolerable pressure.” Yes, the pressure of ignorance is intolerable, like being adrift on a boat without an oar, like trying to read without glasses, like a child wanting cake instead of peas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The obedient discovered the spirit of revolution. But sadly, in their immaturity, they venerate guns instead of flowers. Perhaps they will restrain their faith in guns and violence and teach their younger brothers and sisters about love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think Nietzsche nailed it — but I will get to that in a moment. In the nineteen-fifties a Beat Generation began to disobey the status quo in America. We know the rest of the story: the angry young men (and women) grew wise and invited their little brothers andContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-qualiens","post-1291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-qualiasphere"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9QShd-kP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4603,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions\/4603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}