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The Tyranny of Being “Cool”
Robert McReynolds’ post about “Smart Republicans” could not be more apropos to a conversation I had over dinner with a dear friend and fellow young Conservative. Part of our conversation included a discussion about becoming less tolerant of intolerance as we become older.
We both said that our circle of friends is shrinking with each passing year, as the drudgery of putting on a smile and biting our tongue — while someone makes a snide comment about how awful things will be now that those Republicans control the House and the Senate — increasingly grates on us. Actually, it’s the hypocrisy of the Left that drives us batty, but those on the Left don’t see it that way. They believe they are the purveyors of truth and tolerance, and those that don’t agree with them can shut the foxtrot up!
My dinner mate and I — both semi-hipsters — don’t shop exclusively at Whole Foods (what?!), don’t eat only organic (outrageous!), are Christian (you are so hateful!) and Conservative (you’re an awful person). And all of that makes us un-cool. The Academy, in their ivory tower genterie, has done a bang-up job of branding Conservatism the worst thing possible to a Millennial — uncool. After all, is there anything more horrible to a young person that to be uncool, unhip, unfashionable?
The tragedy of being uncool is aided by the vacuousness of youth and Millennial culture. When the deepest thought a 21-year-old has is about how brave Kim K was for posing nude in order to “break the internet,” it is not hard to sell that person on the virtues of being “cool” at all cost. Progressivism is cool, young, hip, and forward-thinking. Conservatism is for old, outdated, sweater vest-wearing fogies (one might make a joke about wearing a sweater around one’s neck if one were so inclined…). The Academy and the liberal media have created an “us vs. them” mentality between Liberals and Conservatives, much as there is an “us vs. them” aspect between children and their parents. And if you’re young, you don’t want to be like your parents — ugh!
As a result of this intense Millennial need for ‘coolness’ and acceptance — funny, considering the joke of how you drown a hipster (“in the mainstream”) — has pushed many young Conservatives effectively into the closet, with all the same fears of retaliation and hatred the gay community experienced “back in the day.” When I’m in certain circles, I do not feel at liberty to offer my thoughts on current events or politics, because I quite enjoy having my throat intact.
I am intensely irritated at the hypocrisy of the whole situation — those who claim to be the most tolerant are themselves supremely intolerant, and that makes me want to scream at them, which I believe is socially unacceptable? Therefore, if I can help it, I often choose to not interact with people of the Whole Foods, inner-arm tattoo, organic microbrewery bent.
I am fortunate to work at a facility that is largely conservative, though there is a group that loudly expresses their opposing views. And guess what? I’m okay with that! My dinner mate, however, works at an ad agency. “I’m pretty sure I would be lynched if I let my coworkers know my political views,” he told me tonight. What a horrible thing to feel! What discrimination festers at that office! Oh wait, they’re Liberal, so it’s okay for them to discriminate, right…?
The reason there is no sense of exceptionalism is because so few of the Millennials are themselves exceptional. It’s hard to triumph something you know so very little about.
@Vicryl Contessa- “Some of my high school friends just posted pictures on FB of them having dinner together over the holiday break. Every one of them has a Masters or a Doctorate (MIT, Yale, U of Chicago, NYU), and every one is as Progressive and Leftist as they come. These are not intellectual slouches, but yet they choose the easy way out politically. I do not understand.”
Th sociologist David Reisman once noted that people without strong convictions tend to be what he termed ‘Other-directed’ or, in today’s terms, ‘trendies.’ Therefore, I imagine that the secularizing effect of a university education, combined with the leftist indoctrination of our colleges, plus the pressure to conform from social media, has produced a nation of young leftist conformists.
The topic is a matter of choice. Do you avoid expressing your opinion because you’re afraid of the intolerance? Or do you keep your mouth shut and allow the intolerance to grow? My choice is to take the fight to the ones that started the fight in the first place. All those that claim to be morally and intellectually superior to us loathsome people on the right are the same ones that have been on the wrong side of history for a very long time. I choose to stick that in their face while their preaching their superior intellect and moral high ground.
The truth is that people on the left don’t prefer to think much at all. They’re reactionary people who believe that if it “Feels” right , therefore it is right. When you point this out to them, they prove how “reactionary” they are.
VC, you run with a smart crowd. Did the schools do that to them or were they leftists before you left high school? Did you see the transition?
Cool Hipsters! I think all the Iraqi/Afghanistan Vets are pretty cool hipsters. I mean, when I talk to them, they are the most confident, self assured, independent guys I know (sorry, I don’t know any female Vets).
They are a smart crow, though I’m not close with them any more, apart from Facebook. I went to a real smarty-pants high school, and was mocked for going to a state school over the other high-brow universities I was accepted to. In high school, this group of girls was already on the liberal side. One girl was the daughter of parents who were part of the Red Guard, another girl was from Russia and her parents were there during Andropov et al. It is somewhat surprising to me that these two in particular still hold up the faith of Socialism/Communism despite what their parents witnessed back in the motherland. A third girl comes from a Conservative family all holding doctorates- I think her friendship with our Chinese and Russian friends did influence her views.
The education we received in high school was pretty pro-America and pro-Capitalism. I think much of their big “L” liberalism comes from outside our high school education.
I agree with you about the vets. A friend of mine is a Marine, and definitely has his head screwed on straight for the most part. I don’t know that I would call them hipsters, per se, though…
I guessed I really lucked into an early epiphany . First year of college, heady radicalism was everywhere (1969-70), Kent State, first Earth Day, think Paul McCartney died ( which covers a number of other subsets) . English teacher tells me if I turn in anymore papers with America spelled Amerika and continue to use the “f” word in my essays , that I won’t have to do any other assignments and he will give me an “A” . After turning in my year end essay on Political Analogies in the Marquis deSade books, and all 8 pages were completely unpunctuated, I received the “A”. The paper was passed around the English department… Well, I figured out right there about the bias in place. It completely disheartened me to find out how easy things could be if you played along. This was a large State University.
I left after one year and returned home to attend a local University where they actually cared about punctuation and structure. But getting a peek under the tent at 18 was very important . I also starting working a good deal. Was going to vote McGovern in 72 when my grandfather threatened to “cut me off” , so I cheated and voted for Spock. I felt dirty and it’s been a breeze to be uncool ever since.
I think of them as modern hipsters. Cocky and ready for the world. Not a single one of my nephews or nieces did any military service and they all drifted or are still drifting through and after college. Ditto for friends with kids.
Being a tech. guy, so are most of my friends. And the one’s with kids not only did not see their kids join the military, but none of them received technical (STEM) degrees. Not one! I know 2 doctors with 3 and 5 kids each, and, although all went to college, not a single STEM degree between them.
What happened?
My saving grace was becoming a Republican at 18 before I went to college. I was already working full time in the trades and making phenomenal money for having no prior experience. Imagine the shock when I saw my first paycheck and the appalling amount of taxes deducted. I became a conservative the first pay day. On top of that, as a house painter, I had to deal with the moronic EPA regulations first hand. I’ve hated it ever since.
There might or might not have been a few fellow conservatives in my college classes. If there were, they never spoke up.
It’s common on the Right to keep quiet to appease our hippie overlords at school, at work, at social gatherings. And it’s killing us.
As Steyn often says, people are attracted to strength. Conservatives perceive themselves as prudent in their silence. Liberals perceive that silence as submission… and I bet individuals on the fence do too.
Put another way, every conservative acknowledges that financial success requires risks. Cultural progress also requires risks.
If conservatives want to make headway, many of us will have to suffer for it socially and financially. Sadly, our families will suffer with us.
The costs of freedom are not always fair or just.
Maybe if we try to get ourselves classified as a protected class we won’t have to worry about retaliation ;)
I don’t know, many of my very good friends are Democrats, but they respect my views enough to not make snide remarks. We’ve had some heated discussions, but we can usually agree to disagree. I’ve found that people who make snide remarks about an opposing political view usually crumple under scrutiny, so by all means speak up and ask them lots of questions about their views. Often you’ll find out they aren’t that informed.
I kinda enjoy being counter-cultural. A few weeks ago one son’s cub scout den went on a fieldtrip to Fox News Studios in DC – and I put up photos about it on Facebook. It felt very subversive, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it felt good. Hipsters are now the mainstream. And they’re boring, coddled and ruin everything with their stupid trends.
I’m 36, and I think the problem with the concept of going to college is that it will make you more worldly. Now I went to a Maritime College, and traveled to different countries and now I work in Maritime field which is International, because ships travel all over the world.
But most of my friends went to “regular college” as I called it since mine was regimented and had to wear a uniform and be accountable. Many of them went to school with people, exactly like them but instead of being from the New York suburbs they are meeting people from the Philly suburbs (WOW!!) When many of them graduated they moved into their parents house and hung out with the same people and many of them moved to Manhattan because it’s cool to pay $1200 a month to share a one bedroom apartment with 3 other people, especially when your parents live 20 minutes away to do your laundry.
But I think college gives many of these folks the illusion of being “on their own” meanwhile it’s really just like boarding school, mommy and daddy are still footing the bill. So when they come out they feel like they’ve experienced the world, but still live in their sheltered world where they have no clue how people live in other places or how people from other walks of life live and tend to see the world from only their perspective and can’t view it any other way.
I like this comment very much, Karen! You are absolutely correct that those whose belief platforms are the shakiest often squawk the loudest, only to crumble under the weight of evidence. Unfortunately, that’s how much of society is amongst my generation, it seems. If I were to poll my friends, I bet only two or three would know how much the national debt is or what quantitative easing is. Some of my friends openly flaunt their ignorance with a sense of pride, as though they think it perfectly acceptable to be uniformed.
Because of this epidemic of ignorance, and it’s attendant platitude parroting, there seems to no longer exist a culture in which people can discuss ideas- especially opposing ideas- without the debate falling into catty, snide remarks about the person’s intentions and intelligence. If people can discuss and disagree with civility, then we are all the better as a society for it.
I have some of the same friends. I think it just makes them feel good to be so “understanding”. The easy grind of being superior has made them feel guilty.
Maybe they came from very successful parents (big time breeding ground for new age libs) or maybe they have no clue how to coach-up anybody else.
Either way they are killing the people they claim to support. But hey…at least they feel good about it!!
This made me lol but I didn’t have parents to do my laundry or even help with the rent. Where did I go wrong?
You were raised right. I moved to the Bronx because it was cheaper and they all thought I was crazy, but my parents moved down south after I graduated so I was on my own. In the Bronx I had space and could keep my car (which many of them borrowed when they wanted to go to said parents house to do their laundry, but I would soak them for gas money)
YOU OWNED A CAR IN DA BRONX?
Word, ET! I had to schlep my laundry down my 4th floor walk-up to the laundry mat. Doing it in the snow was especially awesome! What part of the city did/do you live? I started on the UWS, then went to Hamilton Hghts, then Inwood- I loved Inwood.
I hope we’re talking Marble Hill and not the Concourse!
It was a crappy car, and I was in Riverdale, so it was kind of the Suburbs.
Whew. Ok then.
Oh, ok, that makes sense. It’s totes the suburbs up there. You weren’t far from me in Inwood. Yay, Target!
This was many moons ago, way back in 2001 (yikes! that was 14 years ago) I did look at places in the Park Terrace Apartments in Inwood. Inwood was really great but I got a great deal on a 1 bedroom in Riverdale. Yeah NYC!!
Yupper West Side before it was hip (Columbus Avenue).
Later on, I moved down to the financial district and had a lovely apartment at the tip of the island with a floor-to-ceiling view of Miss Liberty!
That must have been spectacular! I lived in the city for two years and have visited many, many times apart from my time living there, but I’ve never seen the Statue or gone up on the ESB. Sad, kinda…with some pride thrown in for never having given into the tourist stuff.
They are also clueless about how to make money, where the money comes from that their parents are spending to keep them in boarding school for 4, 5, 6 years; and worst of all I suspect a significant minority (maybe more) would really prefer to just vote for more better Obama phones and such for themselves and let all those not at all hip or cool old white dudes keep working themselves into an early grave to try to keep the country afloat because like – you know – it’s just, uhm, fair and that.
“I’m like – you know – too educated to work for minimum wage or flip burgers. I’ll just smoke dope in my parents basement until someone comes along and offers me the kind of salary that I deserve.”
I’m so uncool that I hadn’t even heard of hipsters until five years ago.
@Matede, Vicryl, and ET- You’re all making me feel ancient. My parents and siblings were all born in the Bronx or Manhattan, but I was born in Miami, where my parents lived for a few years. I lived in the Bronx from the age of 3 months, on Nereid Ave., which, as far as I recall, was near Mount Vernon. But we left the Bronx and moved to Staten Island when I was 4, and the president was Eisenhower.
And I haven’t set foot in New York since 1982.