There's a new counterculture in town

Post #1

For a few years now, the idea of what constitutes a counterculture in post-1960’s America has intrigued me. I say the 60’s because though one could find counterculture movements prior to that period, it was the counterculture of the late 1960’s that has had the biggest, most lasting impact on today’s America.

When the anti-smoking movement was in full-swing in the mid-1990’s thanks to Rob Reiner, failed-actor-turned-social-activist, it had demonized smokers so quickly and completely that it left me (I was an ardent smoker) and millions of others, dazed, confused, angry, and out by the dumpster – the only place left to smoke in peace because if we lit up in a commercial space people looked at us like we’d just set off a dirty bomb.  By 1999, I’d entertained the notion that smokers might now be considered a counterculture. But what constituted a counterculture? What were it’s characteristics? The first question was easily answered – a counterculture is that which runs counter to the dominant culture. Yes, smokers  fell into that broad definition. But more specifically, what attributes did all countercultures share? I concluded that first, the group in question needs to be reviled, or an object of derision by the mainstream. Second, the dominant culture must see the group as dangerous. And finally, the group must face discrimination. Smokers, in my view met all of these criteria. But something was missing from the equation – politics. A counterculture’s roots were political and smokers didn’t have a political agenda, they just wanted to be left alone, much like the Amish that surround my farm. I didn’t give the idea any more thought - probably because I’d finally managed to quit smoking – until I saw a blogger’s article in 2009 about countercultures claiming that the Punk/emo movement was a true counterculture.[i]  I disagreed with his definition of counterculture, stating that smokers and the then-new Tea Party movement were the only bona fide counterculture movements.

I then put the idea aside again until the arrival of the 2020 election where after much thought, concluded that Trump supporters were the new American counterculture. Of course, this notion will have virtually every liberal seething behind their mandated mask, but nevertheless it’s true.

Trump supporters –and every other group that the dominant culture lumps in with them – militias, 2nd Amendment groups, Young Americans for Liberty, the list goes on ad nauseum – meet all the requisite criteria for definition as counterculture. Except for being Left, or at the very least, Liberal. See, the Left, and their Director of Communications, the American media, own the concept of counterculture. “Preposterous!,” they will try to say. “We are the politics of rebellion and anti-authority – everyone knows that.”

Yeah. Everyone except you. Conservatives concede that they lost the Culture war. So the Left owns the American Culture. Everyone knows that the Left overwhelmingly dominates every aspect of media, (except possibly billboards and I’m delving into that) and has become the de facto mouthpiece for all things Leftist. They now control the White House, Congress, and the Senate. Come to think of it, they control everything so they can take their sneering dismissal of the MAGA crowd as the New Counterculture and– well, as we used to say – “Up against the wall, motherfuckers.”

All your Jefferson Airplane are belong to us.

As a Trump supporter since 2015, I think most all Trump supporters would agree with the following:

We are reviled and are objects of derision by the Dominant culture.

The Dominant culture sees us as dangerous.

We are discriminated against and physically attacked for our beliefs.

I don’t believe there’s anything that I’ve put forth that is untrue. And I’ll go one further. I will freely admit that the liberal/left has done a remarkable job in selling America the vision that they represent all that is Underdog. It was simple at first. Liberal Hollywood, in their movies, only had to portray the long-haired dude as the sensitive, moral one and the short-haired, preppy type as the date raping asshole. That worked for about thirty years until Americans started noticing that guys with long hair were killing and raping as much as anyone else. Then the internet came about which suddenly let people read news and see pictures they’d never seen before because the media couldn’t squelch it fast enough - until the last few years when Big Tech – again, run by lefties, started censoring us so fast that they couldn’t possibly keep up with their attempts to hide their efforts. I could go on and on with the machinations of the Left’s efforts at portraying themselves as the moral highgounders but it’s not necessary anymore.

We all see through it.

What we on the Right need to see, to understand, is that we are the new counterculture. We are the minority and we are the underdogs. That’s our status. And you may say to your self, “Yeah, Okay, I get it”, but now you need to own it.

Quit thinking you’re going to be able to “vote” yourself to a better life because unless something drastically changes, that’ll never happen again.

“Look what’s happening out in the streets, got a revolution, got a revolution”