Brendangerous

Also a link to Reason’s blog of it
http://www.reason.com/blog/#135065

Whoda thunk drawing arbitrary legal lines in the sand was a bad idea?

Oh how I love my political party

dontcookbilly:

kinochestvo:

dontcookbilly:

pragmatism:

notthatkindagay:

absurdlakefront: think4yourself: azspot:

But where does this deep reservoir of sarcasm come from? Why does it saturate my generation the way a strong work ethic once saturated the Greatest Generation or the way free-thinking saturated the Boomers? Here’s my best guess: I think our sarcasm is a socially acceptable way for us to vent the mountain of anger we feel.

We are the first generation born after the passage of no-fault-divorce. We come from broken homes.

We are the first generation born after Vietnam and Watergate. We live with a broken government.

We are the first generation raised on cable television and 24 hour advertising. We are suspicious of marketing and spin.

We are the first generation to fight a war on drugs. We are over-medicated and under-achieving.

The anger we carry under the surface can’t stay there. It must find a release. Some of us find very destructive ways to alleviate that pressure. The rest of us let it out by laughing about things previous generations took seriously—government, work, family, relationship, the future. We are a generation that believes nothing is sacred. And if nothing is sacred everything becomes profane.

An interesting take on things to be sure.

but sarcasm isnt anything new.  The previous generations were just as sarcastic, and were angry at the same amount of things.

Every fucking sentence in this enrages me since it’s all so wrong, so I’ll try to pick this apart in a spirit of good comradeship and gtfo-ism.

“Why does it saturate my generation the way a strong work ethic once saturated the Greatest Generation or the way free-thinking saturated the Boomers?”

Believe it or not, the stupid myth of the American work ethic is a half-truth, based on the fact that the English Dissenters were barred from positions of governmental and social power, and were essentially forced into industry and trade as an outlet.  Yes, the Puritans/lesser religous zealots (Quakers) came over and believed that idleness is sin.  And it is.  Especially if you have to grow your own crops, or else you’ll fucking starve to death.  So, uh, they created the industrial revolution. I’d assume you’re in favor of this since you’re writing this claptrap on a fucking computer. And as far as the free-thinking of the Boomers, never in history has such a worthless social movement come into being.  Enough free thinking to like the same bands for the dumbest of reasons, ruin the entire thing with the same inability to handle their drugs, start the insipid New Left (which couldn’t even get terrorism right or end Vietnam), and, best of all, get Richard M Nixon re-elected in a landslide. 

“We are a generation that believes nothing is sacred.”

This is also flat out wrong, although yes, we do have a more irreverent sensibility about previously untouchable subjects, namely religion.  While nothing should be sacred- we have a tendency to idolize the more inane parts of our lives- i.e., consumerism- one very large thing remains largely unequivocal.  The concept of American exceptional ism- that America is not the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire, that democracy is the best for of government (despite the fact that we are a republic), that wars should involve as little killing as possible, that America should support representative governments, etc., etc. is largely unassailable.

“I think our sarcasm is a socially acceptable way for us to vent the mountain of anger we feel.”

CRAAAWLING IN MY SKIIIIIIN THESE WOUUUUUNDS THEEEEY WILLL NOT HEEEEAL

You know what a mountain of anger is?  Being sent on the People’s Crusade by some maniac preacher who might have ergot poisoning and being slaughtered by the Turks the second you cross the border from Byzantium.  Or, for something more contemporary, living in North Korea and eating grass to live.  Just saying.

” We are the first generation to fight a war on drugs.”

You must not have heard of the rather significant Opium War(s).  Oh, wait, you must mean the prohibition of drugs (so yeah, the Opium War[s]).  I’d have to agree with you there, a situation made so much more ironic given that the American colonies were reliant on drugs to become profitable- tobacco and whiskey.  WHISKEY REBELLION 2009!

“We are the first generation born after Vietnam and Watergate. We live with a broken government.”

We are only a few generations removed from the Mexican American War, The Indian Wars, the Spanish American War… As well as the Teapot Dome scandal, FDR’s packing of the Supreme Court…

“The anger we carry under the surface can’t stay there. It must find a release. Some of us find very destructive ways to alleviate that pressure. The rest of us let it out by laughing about things previous generations took seriously—government, work, family, relationship, the future.”

Travail, famille, patrie!!!

“We are a generation that believes nothing is sacred. And if nothing is sacred everything becomes profane.”
You have the least excuse to be sarcastic.  Yes, our government is broken, yes, 24/7 cable news is crass, yes the Vikings are sailing up the Potomac and pillaging the capital and raping the women, but it could be a lot worse.  In fact, I’d say we have it pretty good.  No threat of famine.  Mechanical devices to ensure we aren’t all a bunch of serfs working the land till our fingers bleed.  We have fat poor people. If you want the best idea of what really motivates true, deserved sarcasm- not the pallid imitation spawned by our contemporary, electronic interconnectivity- try out the Wipers Times, a newspaper written by the BEF on a captured Belgian printing press in the First World War.  It is a thousand time more hilarious than anything printed today- because it’s very well motivated and all the more compelling since it’s probably the  absolute worst situation in history, a meaningless and bloody war where the industrial revolution is turned to it’s one and final end-stage- MOLOCH MACHINE.

“In this article I wish to show plainly that under existing conditions, everything points to a speedy disintegration of the enemy. We will take first of all the effect of war on the male population of Germany. Firstly, let us take as our figures, 12,000,000 as the total fighting population of Germany. Of these 8,000,000 are killed or being killed, hence we have 4,000,000 remaining. Of these 1,000,000 are non-combatants, being in the navy.

Of the 3,000,000 remaining, we can write off 2,500,000 as temperamentally unsuitable for fighting, owing to obesity and other ailments engendered by a gross mode of living. This leaves us 500,000 as the full strength. Of these 497,250 are known to be suffering from incurable diseases. This leaves us 2,750. Of these 2,150 are on the eastern front, and of the remaining 600, 584 are generals and staff.

Thus we find that there are 16 men on the western front. This number, I maintain, is not enough to give them even a fair chance of resisting four more big pushes, and hence the collapse of the western campaign.”

http://www.geocities.com/neveahfs/comparepunch.htm

History!

You go gurl

(via studentloansforbeermoney)

Yes I’m sure that if you stop taking Lipitor and staying at Hyatt hotels you’ll really knock ‘em down a peg… you should totally rip the Intel processor out of your Macbook and delete Creative Suite while you’re at it too