Backlash

I read a very encouraging article about how the stagnant state of popular music was actually a good thing. The author cited examples of periods dominated by truly insipid music (read: disco) that gave way to a backlash of great music (like early 1980's punk). Each time, the terrible state of mainstream music disgusted people so much that they started searching for something, anything different, thus creating a small window for alternative forms to creep in and take hold. He predicted that the over-produced, vapid, mind-numbing music scene was on the brink of giving way to a fabulous rennaissance any day.

I'm hoping this political era plays out something like that. Maybe all these terrible things happening in politics right now are a blessing in disguise, priming us for a backlash. Maybe increasing government powers, particularly executive ones, are going to incite people to forcefully defend their freedoms, instead of compromising and letting them slip slowly away, one by one. Maybe we will remember what it takes to be good citizens because of adversity. The moralizing, conformity and Communist-hunting of the fifties gave way to the socially liberal and politically active sixties. I know that the events of the last three years have made me sit up and start paying attention. I didn't even vote in the last election. Because I couldn't choose between the two candidates (please, don't tell anyone. My friends would lynch me). And now that person I was then, the one who thought that maybe Al Gore did claim to have invented the Internet, seems as alien to me as, well, the truth is to the Bush administration.

Or maybe I'm just a blind optimist who can't believe that things are really going to continue in this direction. That government surveillance is going to invade every aspect of our lives, that labor protections will disappear, that we will sell out all the resources of our world for quick profit, etc. Maybe I just need to believe that Americans will wake up one day and realize...that just because it's really scary and maybe smacks a little of conspiracy theory, doesn't mean it's not true that our government is lying to us all the time and acting mainly for the personal profit of a few.

I would really like to be right about this. History moves in cycles, right? But I have my doubts...that article I read predicting imminent backlash against silly pop music was written at least five years ago. I guess it goes without saying that I'm still waiting.