Heroes and Villians

The only real difference between heroes and villains in today's America is their politics. Time Magazine already has a story on the murder of abortion doctor George Tillman asking the question how will the murder affect the abortion debate? My questions is "What?!" How stupid do we have to be? One lunatic kills a guy and he represents just exactly what? Every movement has its extremists and radicals. Che Geuvera personally carried out his own executions of political dissidents. Che personally killed more people than the entire antiabortion movement since Roe V Wade became law, but he gets to be a hero and icon, because the people he shot disagreed with the Left, whereas the eight abortion doctors killed in the past 20 years were represent leftist ideology.

If Scott Roeder was a left wing murderer instead of a right wing murderer, he could reasonably expect to become... a professor, a celebrity author, and quite well off. Just ask Bill Ayers, Mumia abu Jamal, and all those other left wing radicals. Environmental extremists can spike trees in the Pacific Northwest, set up trip lines in the Southwest, firebomb, and more, but they aren't dangerous. Time had to go all the way back to 1996 and 1994 to find more such murder. Hell, an Islamic extremists would feel like he wasn't hitting his stride if he hadn't killed four people by noon prayer, but Islam is a religion of peace. Janet Napolitano wants us to worry about those crazy right wing radicals with Pro Life bumper stickers because eight abortion doctors have been killed in the past 20 years! Does Homeland Security know about this? Well, according to that famous report they do...

Nothing represents the moral and intellectual decay of the Establishment more than this. Muslims and environmentalists, commies and crazies, can kill, kill, kill- BUT it's those law abiding right wingers we really have to worry about. The only difference between psychos is their politics. The blood of their victims still runs red. But the only Red the Establishment wants to stop is the political kind. Thank you Homeland Security and Secretary Napolitano. Yes, this does prove your report correct. In another 10 years we may have another crazy right winger kill another doctor.

Update: what about the muslim convert who attacks an army base the day after?

Konami shelves Six Days in Fallujah

I'm not a gamer but follow the culture closely and enjoy gaming, so this post about a game based on the Battle of Fallujah in 2004 is important on a number of levels. First, there is the requisite shock that video games would deal with the subject in the first place, which is why the project has been cancelled. But as an advocate of free markets and a defender of gaming in general I found myself wondering why? Hasn't Hollywood already done this? Why can't video games deal with the war?

The first answer is obvious. Video games are still going through the process of cultural evolution. They have not yet entered mainstream culture or circulated enough for them to be a comfortable reality like movies. The same colleagues who have no problems using movies as instructional aids are balking at using video games instead. I imagine professors back in the 70s and 80s probably reacted the same way when videos were first used in the classroom. At this point gaming has not had enough time as a major player in our culture so it is still foreign and alien. We maintain irrational double standards for gaming and Hollywood, but they will eventually disappear.

However, games are different than any other entertainment medium before them on one critical level. They are immersive and interactive. Even the most powerful and engaging movie does not require the level of active participation a video game requires. Therein lies the question. What does this active participation in violence, sexism, and gore do? Many cultural conservatives would say this is a moot point. It's the violence idiot. Remember Columbine? But I would throw that back at them and remind them that high schools used to have shooting teams and kids would bring rifles to school on a daily basis for practice. Similarly, my grandfather carried an illegal gun all his life, and got into daily fights as a youth, but never woud have dreamed of killing someone except in self defense. I would throw it back at the cultural conservatives and say that they failed to do their jobs and preserve those elements of pre-sixties culture we obviously still need. The question is a complex one, and one that has no obvious answer yet. But I would advise you not to run off blaming video games or be outraged at the concept of an Iraq War video game. We will just have to wait and see.

I want my MTV

Many moons ago a sharp cat named Karl observed that religion was "the opiate of the masses." While being religious, I find that I can still agree with him on many levels. Religion does have a sedative or relieving effect for the believer. It offers a sense of hope beyond the tragedies of history. I have always thought that this explained one of the main differences between Leftists and conservatives. For even conservatives who are atheist still maintain many of the epistemological assumptions about certain transcendent realities that will exist regardless of tragedy or personal failure. Leftists on the other hand acknowledge no secure knowledge of anything transcendent and thus, find themselves forced to create heaven here on earth. This is why their activists are so much more passionate and religious about their politics- it's all they have.

But I digress. Sometime during the 20th century a new opiate made its way to the center of western civilization. An opiate even more numbing and desensitizing than previous ones: Hollywood. It has often occurred to me that the Right is wrong in thinking that the Left has no plan for defeating Radical Islam. The Left has the greatest and most culturally devastating weapon of mass destruction produced in the 20th Century. George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Brangelina, and company can wreak more havoc on an indigenous culture than any Special Forces operation. Just let em loose and you have complete and total cultural decay faster than a Sean Penn oscar acceptance speech. Sex, drugs, and rock n roll, baby. It's all you need to bring a culture down.

"Money for nothing and chicks for free." There is no greater opiate, no stronger narcotic than Hollywood. Millions of Americans care less about the recent election than they do about seeing the Dark Knight catch the Joker. Timothy Leary would be proud of our current culture with its ability turn on, tune in, and drop out. It also explains why so many Americans would vote for a man with no experience and little more than an astounding ability to read from a teleprompter. He is a new politician. He is Hollywood. Welcome to the new opiate of the masses. As long as they keep us entertained they can do whatever they want, consequences be damned. Because of this "celebrity politics" Obama may not be held accountable just like the rest of his colleagues in Hollywood. He can make or break any promises provided he just keeps us entertained. In essence, Obama is more Hollywood than Reagan or Schwarz. He lives in the same elite bubble and channels the same celebrity indulgences. We can forgive him everything as long as he keeps us entertained. Welcome the new opiate of the masses. Rock on.

A Tale of Two Mexicans

Both of my grandfathers were proud Tejano (Texas Mexicans) Catholics. Each came to the states for different reasons, but they both loved America and were grateful to live here. They were also on opposite ends of the political spectrum. One was a democrat and the other was a republican. Back then that didn't matter much though, because they were fundamentally the same. This is because they had broader cultural connections through their ethnicity and their religion. Essentially they had shared values and beliefs in spite of their political differences.

In their simple, patriotic lives they encapsulate everything that has changed since the 60s. Prior to the 60s republicans and democrats were from the same culture, shared the same values. But the 60s brought a radical shift to "liberals" as they stopped being liberals and became Leftists. Millions of Americans have yet to understand this, and our current dialog does not help as we tend to use the word "liberal" instead of the more accurate "leftist." Why is this important? Well, for one thing millions of Americans still think of the democrats as liberals when in fact they are leftists. Why is this important?

Because a leftist is radically different from a liberal. I have written about this in my post "If 6 was 9" analyzing the fundamental dissonance between "liberals" who adore a Marxist thug like Che Guevera and liberals like JFK who would have opposed Che. This difference is extremely critical on an intellectual level because it explains the activism that has replaced scholarship in our universities. Leftists built a brave new world on a foundation laid by a number of important 20th century scholars like Thomas Kuhn, Michele Foucalt and a number of other important thinkers we can label under the broad term "postmodern." Bear with me because this obscure academic discussion has world changing implications for America and American culture.

Kuhn argued that even science was biased because it was filtered through subjective human beings. Complementing this argument Foucalt argued that things like "knowledge" and "truth" don't exist and all that really matters is power, and who has power. Think Nietsche. Truth does not matter, power does. This philosophy led to Stanley Fish and deconstructionism, which argues that meaning and truth are "deconstructed" into every text and every situation by a person's cultural norms and beliefs, but that those deconstructed interpretations have no real validity. Enter all these new fields of scholarship like ethnic studies, women's studies, and a host of other "disciplines" that function more like religions than disciplines.

In essence, truth becomes relative to the observer or the culture. So who cares? Well, how does one be a "patriot" in such a mindset? How can one country, one culture, one way of thinking be worthy of anything we call patriotism? On an intellectual level Leftists have no reason for such a thing as patriotism because it is an irrational concept within their frame of mind. There is no good reason to decry a leftists lack of patriotism, because they are being rationally consistent and intellectual honest. The "truth" behind patriotism is nonexistent. This explains why revisionism of western history is so important, because western culture must be proven to be no morally or culturally better than any other culture if Leftists assumptions are correct. In spite of the fact that major developments in the history of human rights, let alone the concept of "human rights" itself, came out of western culture. Such things must be proven to be accidents of history and not a result of the intellectual foundation of Greek and Judeo-Christian thought.

This is why we have abandoned Martin Luther King's ideas. His core principles were founded on western thought, western thinking and Christianity. Our government and our schools honor him once a year, and then spend the rest of the year actively undermining everything he valued in their focus on skin color and culture rather than character and ethics. We can even imagine a time when he will no longer be read in American schools because of the religious content of his
thought and arguments. This is why our high schools no longer teach "history" and instead teach something called "social studies." Social studies falls in line with postmodern thinking about ethnicity and history- less facts, more theory.

Ultimately, this is why our cultural institutions have abandoned the Founding Fathers. They do not agree with them. Their understanding of justice, and government are distinctly different because they are based on a completely different worldview than the Fathers. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, they could be right, but they are also extremely deceptive about these differences because they know that the vast majority of Americans still agree with the Fathers and not them. The answer for those with power, the postmodernists, is to undermine American culture before they discover the bait and switch that has been played. Don't teach history while simultaneously revising it to create an America and that is dirty, ugly, and imperialistic.

Ironically, my conservative grandfather sensed this years ago. He had a sixth grade Mexican education, but read a lot, and rose through the ranks before the days of slobbering multicultural obeisance to actually help draft real estate law and teach real estate at Texas Universities. Maybe that is where he sensed the inherent imperialism and deception of postmodern leftists. I can remember being fairly young and hearing him warm me about the deception of the new white man. I never really understood what he was talking about at the time, but his vivid descriptions of the Faustian deals he saw postmodern leftists striking with minorities across America eventually came back to memory when I saw them being enacted out in college.

My other grandfather, a committed FDR democrat never saw this and continued to vote for FDR well into the 90s in spite of the fact that the only similarity between democrats today and FDR is their love of failed government spending programs... Why is this important? Well, think of Rome, which failed not so much because of external defeat, but because of internal cultural decay. but more importantly, a democracy needs real transparency and honesty for the people to make informed decisions. Instead we find ourselves voting for a man who on one side of the country goes bowling and has a beer with the common folk before jetting off to a champagne San Francisco fund raiser and mocks those little people for clinging to their thundersticks and sky god. The same man who channeled voters frustration with Bush's spending, and then promptly spent more than Bush in his first two months in office.

Those are the immediate issues. But those are not the most important. What really matters are the long term cultural affects of such a situation. For a democracy to be healthy the people, the voters, need to be in the loop. Democrats and republicans no longer come to the table with the same culture and values. The broader and deeper connections my grandfathers had no longer exists, as the Left has adopted an entirely new and fresh way of thinking about humanity, the world, government and culture. Ironically, they are the preachers of multiculturalism and tolerance, but fail to act this out every time they call people on the Right intolerant, racist, bigot, homophobe, sexist, etc. Much of their cultural power relies on not acknowledging the cultural differences between them and the Right, because once they do, they have to be genuinely tolerant. In academia I have found this argument to be ab extremely successful wedge issue, because most honest Leftists will admit that we should think of the Left and Right as separate cultures, which has immediate implications about the incredible lack of real diversity on campus among other things... Maybe we can also learn to understand and dialogue about those differences better when we consciously accept the cultural differences. My students have told me that this revelation really made it easier to understand the other side of the political spectrum and not immediately dismiss the other side. We need to expand this to ther rest of the nation.

Both of my grandfathers liked each other and even went on hunting and fishing trips together, but that was because they were still from the same culture. Such is not the case anymore. Political difference amount to much more than a simple difference in preference- I like Coke but you like Pepsi kind of difference. They now reflect something more like the difference between an atheist and a theist. They are vast and huge and we need to explore them for the sake of the democracy.

Nation of Cowards

Eric Holder was right, but it took a chimp to prove it. No, I am not calling Holder a chimp. Because of the "cowards" running our social and cultural institutions no one can say anything that could be remotely construed as racial. Travis the now cold dead, Xanax (the owner now denies giving him Xanax) popping chimp didn't exactly choose to go all gansta in order to garner publicity as some of his other colleagues in Hollywood often do in order to salvage a lagging career. No, his Hollywood rage-athon seems to have come quite naturally.

Thus, some clever cartoonist sees an opportunity to mock a stimulus package most of the nation dislikes, and the cowards come out in droves. I thought we were post racialist? Can't someone make jokes about chimps running the country? Heck, in California they would probably be better off letting the inhabitants of the Sacramento Zoo run the state. At least chimps understand the fiscal impact of a banana shortage... You can't really blame Al Sharpton. At this point in his life his responses are completely pavlovian and involuntary. Someone puts blackened catfish on the menu and old Al is on the case.

This highlights a generational problem. For Al, racism really was peeking around every corner. For today's youth, it isn't. But the cowards are running the zoo, and keep promoting the Ward Churchills of the world to positions of power. The cowardice stems from our elites inability to see that they actually won the battle and can move on. Instead, dozens of faculty members at Duke sign their name to a full page newspaper ad condemning the Lacrosse team before the police have finished the investigation. The New York Times removes their first reporter on the case because his investigations aren't getting the a priori Jayson Blair storyline. Well, put someone in who will write the story we know must be true. Facts?! We dont need no stinking facts!

Holder was right. Academia is a place of abject racial cowardice. So too is the media, the entertainment industry, the publishing industry, and every other cultural center of power. No matter how many times they are wrong, they keep the same race baiting game going because their power over us, and over minorities in particular, depends on it. Travis- the racial martyr. All hail post-racial America.

Free your Mind

One of the most fascinating realities of human nature is our blind faith in individualism and human autonomy. The truth is we tend to make very few decisions based on facts, knowledge, and critical thinking. I was talking about this with a student/friend who has been slowly awakened the reality that he lives in a Left wing establishment in spite of all the anti-establishment talk and posturing from that same establishment. This has been slow for him because young Americans especially have a hard time "seeing" or realizing the reality they live in and continue to think exactly what our cultural establishment "tells" them to think.

In this regard, they are no different from their elders, because this is human nature. This is why people on the Left who vote democrat continue to insist in spite of the mountain of evidence against them that the republicans are more corrupt than the democrats. Why multiculturalism is good even though it is destroying Black America and now Hispanic America. In order to break out of this, they need to have an "ah ha!" moment that forces them to see something as it really is and forces them to understand their own humanity a little better.

I have discovered that a great way to get students and people turning this direction is to have them think about racism or slavery in American history. In my lectures on ontology and critical thinking I ask students to think about how many people were racists before the Civil Rights Movement. We talk about how a majority of people simply believed or ignored the truth of segregation and racism even though it was right in front of them every day of their lives. Rather than move on to the typical and predictable discussion 12 years of Establishment Left Wing Education has prepared them for, I then force them to confront their own humanity: "Given this reality, looking around the room of 20-30 people in it, our friends, fellow students, professor, is it not reasonable to conclude that if we were to time warp all of us back to the 50s that a majority of us would in fact be racists?" I then ask them if there is any way they can deny this. It ignites a great discussion and a lot of productive thinking. I ask them if there is any way any of them can guarantee that they would not have simply believed what their culture taught them to believe? No one ever raises their hand because the doubt is too clear, too obvious.

This is a great lecture, because it forces them to relate themselves to their "racists ancestors" in a way that is totally unpredicted and way too uncomfortable. It forces them to see just how easily deceived they can be by the cultural establishment. They realize that one of the great sorrows of human evil is that very often it is not intentional, it's just that we don't like seeing it, so we reinterpret it and create straw men to attack instead. It's Bush's fault, or it's a reaction to years of colonial imperialism. Some clever students even begin relating it to their immediate culture. "Are you saying that we have most of our values and beliefs installed in our minds in such way that we never know about it" Very disturbing and very enlightening. I have asked many of my students what this means for the world around them. Are they being fair when they interpret radical Muslims as neo-marxists who will suddenly not hate us when we give them their lands back and recognize their humanity? If it's understandable that the Palestinians hate and kill Israelis because Israel took their land would it be understandable if Native Americans suddenly started a terrorist campaign right here and now? (I have Native blood). How about if I decided to kill them? What if the Jews started blowing up targets all across Europe in response to thousands of years of anti-semitism? And here is the kicker- this was our last lecture last semester- what if the Iraq War turns Iraq into a stable democracy and and in turn destablizes Islamic radicalism and Arab despotism? One of my students who is a hard leftist, but has been thinking very honestly and openly, laughed. He said it would be traumatic, because Bush would end up being a great leader and visionary. He said what seems amazing is that it seems very possible...

There are a million directions such enlightening moments can take. I would advise letting the person take it where they need to take it. Because if real critical thinking has happened they are suddenly open to "seeing" reality for the first time. This can be painful and deeply disturbing as many of my students have told me. Doubt sets in on all sides. And that is good. Because the Left Wing Establishment has made it impossible for an open mind not to see their hypocrisy and corruption. Moreoever, the last thing we want to do is make the same failures my left wing colleagues have made and inadvertently indoctrinate our students and friends. If we are right, and people learn to think honestly, then as their minds are pried open they should begin to turn Right. If not, well, then they can help us correct our thinking. Free minds- that's what I aim for. it may seem contradictory given my opening argument, but I am not arguing for Utopia, just a little awareness. Those moments do happen. The Civil Rights Movement proves it.

Google Shutdown

Dont know if you noticed the Google failure Saturday, but it has generated a lot of discussion in the tech world. One of the general fears is a type of Matrix centralization of control and power. Ironically, Google is the company aiming for that. Rumor has it they are anticipating a future where every computer is linked to a fulltime global internet. Not a far fetched idea. Google's response to that is to think of their system, their apps, as your one stop shop. They envision a completely online Operating System, document management system etc. No hard drive needed because nothing is stored locally. They have it all. Your computer operates through their servers, apps, and software.

Tech people tend to be instinctive leftists- primarily for reasons I have covered in other posts. But they also have a strong commitment to the free market, especially competition, because they have so much positive experience with competition producing better products. What we all worry about is a web monoculture that emulates Microsoft's 90s dominance of the software market- generally considered a bad time for innovation. But what happens if someone hacks that network or if it shuts down? Y2k all over again or nothing to worry about?

Johhny Ramone on True Punk

Johhny Ramone:
JOHNNY: Yeah, that’s all hippies. Same thing as was going on in the late sixties. To me, I think punk should be right wing. That’s how I see it. The left wing is trying to destroy America by giving handouts to everyone and making everyone dependent on them. They only care about the voter base. They don’t really care about anything else. They don’t care about anyone. If they can get illegal aliens to become able to vote by motor registration, they will. They’re illegal aliens! They don’t even belong in the country, let alone voting. It’s just to keep their base of voters. Is it best for America? It’s not best for America.
Original interview here. Politics start towards the bottom.
Hat Tip to Joe Lima at Big Hollywood for posting the original link from this great post.

This is the essence of the punk movement and why I started this blog. Punk as a culture and a philosophy is skeptical, to say the least, of grandiose promises. Johhny's conservatism just as easily sees the con in televangelists and messianic Leftists. I only wish he were alive today to see Obama's impossible promises and cult like popularity. Johhny cuts to the chase: it's all about voting- meaning, it's all about Power. This is the essence of the punk movement, speaking truth to power and identifying the corrupt nature of government and humanity. Punk and conservatism both lack the starry eyed idealism and faith in humanity that has become so popular and cliche in western society, which is why neither wants the government to have so much power. We know they will abuse it.

God Bless you Johhny
RIP

Art as Religion

As one of the great mass of unwashed "heathen" out there, I am never surprised by the highly moralistic and preachy nature of contemporary art. Since the 90s we seem to have entered a new Medieval period where art for art's sake is forgotten in lieu of art for the sake of the cause, the oppressed, the marginalized, the hungry, black left-handed midgets, vertically challenged basketball players, et al. Historically, there is nothing wrong with this as primitive art was undeniably a method of communicating and reaffirming primitive culture and identity, usually in the form of religion. Art has always, to some extent, served this purpose. But that was in a culture that was relatively static and void of real diversity.

Fast forward to the present and you find something quite different. Art and the Arts continue to be dominated and ruled by a small group of likeminded elitists who all share the same values, beliefs, and culture. But the rest of the world has grown far more diverse. Neandertal man lived in a relatively static universe. When he encountered "the Other" it was usually in the form of a saber tooth or a mastedon. And therer was usually little doubt as to what their intentions were... But today we have Buddhists, atheists, Mormons, Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, Asians and more all mixing- each with their own unique universe based on their culture.

However, anytime "accepted" art depicts diversity or the Other it is stale and predictable. This came up recently talking with one of my students about art and why I dont care for it anymore. He volunteers at the local Museam of Contemporary Art and was telling me how he finally discovered what a certain piece "meant." Predictably the piece, which is beautiful in a technical and mechanical level, was about environmental degradation. Really? Am I supposed to be surprised. My student was surprised when I told him that I knew that already, because art is so boring and cliche, because it is enslaved to the leftwing establishment. He was mystified and perplexed, because art is so avante garde and transgressive!

Really? You mean you can't tell the whole story the second you know that the protagonist is gay, black, Muslim? We talked about it and he started seeing the Con pretty quickly. We talked about how Art has become church for the secular Left. It is a place to go and have all your values and beliefs reaffirmed. Theatre and concert goers hear predictable and stale messages about the same things over and over again. The music and cinematography may be beautiful and arresting, but far too often, the message is not. If you strip it away, there really ins't much difference between modern art and televangelists. One Con is just a little more slick than the other. but they are both soaking their gullible audiences for millions of dollars to present the same canned, boring message.

Given the wealth of western society, it is invariable that with so many "artists" out there that we should still have some great art, incredible music, and beautiful movies being crafted every year. And there are still some artists, even in the establishment, who give reign to their artistic nature more than their politics, but that is only because there are so many. The less practicioners of any art and the more you will notice its decay. Take theater and poetry for example. The drastic decline in these two art forms is due less to the barbarian appetites of the dirty masses who cannot appreciate the sublime intricacies of the current offerings. Rather it is that there are just so many "artists" whose work has all the depth and sensitivity of a jackhammer that the great ones like Billy Collins can't make up for all the really bad egocentric melodrama out there. These are the bad preachers who still attract followings, but lack the mass appeal that their more restrained colleagues offer.

More importantly, art has devolved into mere technical tricks and developments. The medium and the message are less important because the Art establishment has placed the same limitations on art as the Medieval Church. Iconography produced some beautiful works, in spite of the same predictable message much like our Arts today. But this situation does not allow Art to flourish as it should. We need another reformation.

Art should be free. And it has had some pretty amazing moments in the past. But right now it is enslaved to hypermoralism. A bad thing, especially in so diverse a culture.

If 6 was 9

Jimi Hendrix's poetical bent ran head on into the coffee shop pseudo-philosophers of the 60s when he gave such a mysterious title to another guitar masterpiece that ends up simply being a reference to the song's 6/9 chords. Heavy Man. Millions of drug supported "deep" debates about the consequences of 6 being 9 were inspired by a guitarist with a poetical bent. I remember some hippie friends at Humboldt arguing that 6 must be 6 because otherwise the entire world of numbers would be deceived! Well, how about if liberal were leftist? We tend to think of them as the same thing when we should separate them. What's the difference? Well, think of war, lower taxes, and nationalism. All three were easily supported by liberal presidents of the past without any betrayal of their party or its ideals. But liberals today have serious philosophical problems with all three. The liberals and democrats of the past were still nationalists. Today, they are globalists. Yesterday, they believed in assimilation. Today, multiculturalism. Two completely different animals. If 6 was 9...

Why is it important? Because millions of people are like my grandfather, who kept on voting for FDR well into the nineties. He thought leftwing progressivism was the liberal progressivism of the past. But the left today is postmodern instead of classical liberal, socialist instead of big government. Leftists today have made a hero out of communist revolutionary Che Guevera, a man liberal heroes like Kennedy and Roosevelt would have opposed. The difference is profound and we need to clarify it and drag it out into the light so Americans can begin to see for themselves the dissonance and hypocrisies of the ruling elite. It is important because younger generations have zero understanding of America's founding values. They do believe that Health Care is a right, but can't explain why. They believe that Global Warming is a serious threat, but have never immersed their minds in Washington's farewell address. It is important for the same reason it is important to know and identify the enemy in the War on Terror. By facing reality we can at least discuss and think about it honestly.

Russell Kirk famously declared that he was a conservative because he was a liberal. The tragedy is that this poignant observation of American society was lost to all but a few intellectuals when it needed to enter into the popular mind. If this happens our new generations will at least be able to question where their ideas come from and see that there are alternatives. As things stand, they are all becoming "liberals" because 6 is 9.

Skateboarding then and now

Skateboarding has paralleled broader American culture in many ways. When it first went "big" in the late 80s it was still small and guys who rode were still considered misfits and outcasts, definitely anti-establishment. Like the greater establishment culture of today they still project an image of rebel outcast while making millions of dollars telling the rest of the culture to be just like them. Bam Margera presents the rebel image on MTV, but he dutifully believes and absorbs whatever the establishment tells him. In essence, it's all an act, and American youth are buying it big time. The dissonance can be hilarious and perfectly reflects the discontinuity of broader American culture. All of the entertainment industry supported Obama and they won big, but in their minds they still like to think of themselves as hip anti-establishment types fighting against the entrenched ruling order of America. Which would be... middle class Christians from Kansas? Skateboarders supported Obama with the same type of goofy "fight the power" attitude, even though a majority of youth wear their clothes, buy their shoes, worship at their altar. Skateboarding is the fastest growing sport in America and a billion dollar industry. The two videos I have posted below perfectly mirror this change.

Disclaimer: I may be nostalgic, and I am posting a "legendary" video of Ray Barbee, one of my favorite skaters in the world. But I believe even with my preferences the diference between the two is obvious. The first is a work of art in its simplicity. Both in filming and videography. The whole thing was probably filmed over the course of a few days in Los Angeles. He is wearing the same clothes in the entire video. Nothing fancy, just a guy skateboarding. In contrast, the second video of Chris Cole, took at least 6 months to film, and was shot all over the world: China, Barcelona, etc... Yet if you analyze the "image" and "attitude" presented in both you get a stronger sense of rebel punk from Cole's video, even if he is anything but that. Barbee's outfit was intentionally crafted to not have logos and brands prominently displayed, but Cole's entire ensemble, from the torn jeans, to the tattoos and wrist bands is a carefully crafted image designed to sell product and a lifestyle. In fact, when he first broke into the scene the manager and owner of his company had a quiet sit down with him to explain that his image wouldn't work. Skaters today, in spite of the rebel image, are actually meek peddlers of merchandise. When a skater gets sponsored they are not allowed to wear any clothing but their sponsors'. You only need to watch a few minutes of each video to see the contrast. The amazing irony is that skateboarding has built a corporate empire peddling its anti-corporate, anti-establishment roots.
Just like the rest of the entertainment big business fat cats, skaters live in a alternate reality where they protest the corruption of "big business." It's an elaborate mythology grown out of 60s counterculture that has yet to be honest with itself.