This got me thinking about the “fuck everyone” phase I went through right about the time I got out of college (right before W. Clinton was first elected). If it makes any sense that there are (or could be) alt-right types who are consciously against racism and sexism, I think maybe that’s what I was, or was certainly on the way to becoming. I was reading Answer Me! and, while skeptical about the likes of Boyd Rice, not really dismissive of him, either. I was very amused by Lou Reed’s antics in the interviews he did with Lester Bangs around the time of Metal Machine Music (which I was listening to, start to finish, more than once). I had an idea for a play where the performers go out and slap the audience members. I also got interested in the Italian Futurists. Etc., etc., etc. I think the only thing that kept me grounded at all and going full-blown misanthrope was that I had a girlfriend, who nonetheless was growing tired of Ol’ Man Grumpus, and predictably the relationship unraveled. A few months later, I was at work one day, still dwelling on the relationship that had ended, when I realized that most of the people I worked with had a good 15 or 20 years on me. Many or most of them had already been through divorces and anything else that was a lot worse than what I was going through. A big dose of humility, I guess. That’s the point where I feel like my mind began to turn around for the better (coincidentally it’s around the time I started reading Robert Anton Wilson).
There’s a point to this tale (I think). I was so cynical and pessimistic that I would have latched on to something like the Donald Trump campaign, if it had happened back then. Not that I would have admired him, or even agreed with him, but just because “fuck everyone, if they’re so stupid so as propel the likes of him into the White House, then not only do they deserve him, but I’d love to see him get there myself.” I have to wonder if today’s alt-right types couldn’t get their head around the world and their place in it, or these individuals have some kind of soul-damage that I can’t even imagine, or both. While their antics disgust me I can’t help but feel (a nonzero amount of) pity.
Not sure that made a whole lot of sense but I was suddenly compelled to get it out there.
