The modern American liberal activists on Twitter are a very interesting bunch to me. I think that they are a very confused bunch of folks because, coming from the US culture, and not wanting to look outside of it more or less, they almost have no real "intellectual tradition" to pull from -- since none rerally exists in the States.
I think if many of the modern American liberals were more inclined to look outside of America for heros to draw inspiration from...and especially if they were willing to look into the past .. they might be able to set up a better movement, and a sturdier foundation. The problem with the American lib movement, however, is that , even though they're liberals and everything, they're still Americans, and in my opinion, I can't stress enough how little most Americans think to look outside of the country for inspiration. As for the past, American culture --especially liberal culture -- has little to no understanding of it. Basically they sort of "brush off" the past as though it was all horrible. One strong reason I think this happens is because much of the American liberal movement is based completey around the concerns of the African-Americans (which it should be). Nevertheless, since the African-Americans have had such a horrible past, I find that it's very uncomfortable in US liberal circles to reference literally any aspect of history, without inevitably falling into the "but this author was clearly a racist, or a this, or a that..." sort of idea.
In other countries, older ones, like France and so on, the past isn't something people are so terrified of, I think. In America it's literally as though everything before 1995 or so has just been completely erased. No one wants to remember the world before the Michael Jackson era ,in a liberal camp. This is a big problem, because they are missing out on significant stockpiles of ammunition that many historical figures are keeping for them. My basic belief is essentially that, if liberals in America were able to display just how old and even traditional liberalism is in some respects, they may actually have a better chance of selling it to the people they need to convert. If they were able to show just how long some of these ideas have been around, I feel the opposition might be easier to beat, since we all know that the opposition is concerned with conserving the past, and understanding it, et cetera. Again, however, the big problem in the States is that all the liberals are forever painting liberalism as though it's literally something that just began the other night, and that it is something completely new.
Gay culture is really the best example of something that has been completely re-painted in America to seem utterly new, even though it is not new, at all. From the typical American point of view, even from many gays themselves, it's literally almost as though gay people were living entirely in the closet -- or maybe didn't even exist at all -- until the year 1980. This is ridiculous of course, but sometimes you look at it and it really feels that way. Gay icons from older eras all seem to be matter of factly ignored, forgotten, and hardly ever referenced. There is no discussion in the States, for example, of how decidedly queer movements like the Renaissance in Florence, Italy were, or, for that matter, even how queer a recent movement like rock 'n' roll was in the 50s and 60s. Modern gays would be aghast, I feel, at trying to paint smeone like Elvis Presley as a "sort of" gay icon. In my opinion, he actually kind of was though, especially latter-day Elvis. Yet for some reason it's never even remotely mentioned.
All of these historical examples of queerness are totally abandoned and left for the straights to consume -- as though they were always just straight, normal movements. No parallel is drawn between a figure like Michelangelo Buonarotti and Giorgio Armani (a modern gay icon), even though a parallel certainly exists. Nor is there really too much of a parallel drawn between someone like Little Richard from the 50s, Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison from the 60s, and then someone like Lady Gaga these days. Hendrix is seen as a completely masculine figure, worshipped in a rock n roll camp that, nowadays, seems to be imbibed solely by young men, or even older men who are of the biker culture etc.Same with Jim Morrison of the Doors. But the fact of the matter was that those two were enormously transgressive by the standards of masculinity for their day. Quite frankly, they both would have seemed like queers at that point in time, to the older men who were around then...
Yet the modern queer movement doesn't even so much as think to point this out to anyone. In my opinion, you have to sort of "steal" the icons that the straights cherish in order to pull them in. You also have to steal, like I said, these big pockets of their culture. The more you try to point out that a cherished movement like rock music was unusually queer, the more you show straights just how long this has been going on....and then, in my opinion, the more comfortable they become. Why? Because they see that society did not collapse .
That is the big fear, after all: all of this new fangled liberalism is going to make society collapse!!! They believe this because they think it's something that has never been tested before. They do not even realize just how much their own modern culture has been pulling from queerdom for so long. A band like the Rolling Stones from the same era is yet another perfect example, maybe one of the best: this band is, to an extent, worshipped even within the modern country music culture because of songs like "Wild Horses" and "Dead Flowers" etc. Mick Jagger was decidedly gay acting. Yet, again, he is seemingly never at all mentioned in any of these modern discussions, he is never seen as a gay icon at all, so it seems to me. How is it possible that the modern country movement could feel so comfortable with Mick Jagger and his band and yet not feel at all comfortable with someone like Lady Gaga? It's not because Gaga is more outspoken, in my opinion. It's instead because they are somehow not even seeing Jagger as slightly gay. Why not? Because he lives, as a figure, underneath literally miles and miles of heavy straight white man "stone". The stone is the rock movement itself, which again as I say, is consistently read now as the "straightest" thing ever. It's seen as the domain of the most straight acting normal white men on Earth, the working class white men, the wild motorcycle mad men, who, we are repeatedly told, disavow and despise everything to do with queerdom or difference. These working class white men who are ritualistically condemned by the queer and liberal community have been listneing to a queer music for the past 40 years now. Do they really hate queers as much as we are told? I don't think so. I think they're just confused...just like the liberals themselves are . They are confused because they do not understand one thing about history. They have never been made to see the "rainbow" in the classic rock artists.
The other problem with hte modern liberal movement, too, in the States, is the fact that not only has it completely disregarded these historical figures--but it also seems to think it ought to utterly disregard entire art forms & communication avenues.
When you look at the modern liberal & by extension queer movement, it seems to exist solidly in three places to me: FIrst of all, it is very strong in the realm of the Female pop /rap artist, i.e. Madonna, Gaga, and now Minaj et cetera, secondly it is there in the Twitterverse and the new social media, and lastly it is occasionally glimpsed on TV shows. Look towards more traditional forms of culture, however, like the aforementioned country or rock music, or novel writing, or even film, somehow, and where is everyone? Well, I understand they might feel these forms "reject" them, but it doesn't help any that the modern lib. always seems to reject these forms just as much. When I try to envision, for example, a queer man performing country music in drag for his entire stage act, its essentially impossible. I don't think it ought to be, however. Again, I think this is exactly what needs to happen in order to show people that these movements are not wholly disconnected from oldness or normality (or whatever they think those things to be). In our own time, it's practically as though someone gay could not possibly enjoy country songs. This is ridiculous. It needs to fade. These forms of art that are considered the domains of the straight and the normal need to be adopted and immediately subverted. It is sometimes better to subvert a thing rather than consistently create new types of music, et cetera, constantly....
In a way, I suppose we could say that it's almost as though queer culture just "allows" things to be stolen without putting up much fight. They don't seem to think twice about an icon like Jagger being washed over completely by straights, because they have already forgotten him, anyways.Well why have they forgotten him? Because they are never taking stock of their past successes or triumphs. They are, as I said in the beginning, acting like perfect little Americans: they are habitually disregarding the past, even just the relatively recent past. The queer culture is very much a throwaway culture that gets rid you after 5 years or so, once it is tired and onto something new. Love it or hate it, the truth is that the straight culture does not do that nearly as much -- primarily because they are not trained to be so "Frightened of the past". There is no sense for a straight, really, that the world was any more wicked in the 1970s than it was now. If anything, as we all know, it's perhaps the case that it seems all the more comforting back there in the 70s. So they re-visit it constantly. The liberals, the queers, the AfricanAmericans, I know it might sound controversial, but it's like they've all been trained to just look at the past and immediately despise it without second thought. And so too do they then just despise *all* the icons from it. This is a big, big error...
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