AIN'T IT COOL? A Tale of Two Cultures

It’s Easter Sunday and we are two and a half years into the war. Good Friday evening was one of those nights when, in Southern California, the weather and the combine to create what are rightly called "balmy conditions." Balm, as in a kind of salve to the soul and the skin. The air is warm but not too warm. The skies are clear and the stars seem closer. My wife and I had just seen some current comic book confection at one of the 20 screen multiplexes that are so numerous in this area that you can see the same movies 15 times within a ten mile radius.

We sat by a large sandstone and marble fountain in the stone circle between the vast theater and the vaster parking lot. It was date night and the beginning of Spring Break for the schools of Orange County. All around us kids from 11 to 18 were whooping and laughing and forming clusters of friends. They were dressed according to the upscale Goth-Surfer/Balkan Refugee dress-code common to the kid culture here on the coast. Most were too young to have tattoos or piercing, but you could see some were already planning where those lifestyle statements would go. They were slim, energetic and heedless of the future. In short, they were just reasonably rich kids in America in 2003.

We are two and a half years into the war, but the war is not and will probably never be these kids' concern. It isn't even something they consider outside of, perhaps, a few classroom exercises of dubious intent or merit. There is no reason they should consider war, nor do I wish that upon them. It isn't, in any real sense, their war. War isn't being asked of us or the affluent kids of Orange County, nor does it seem likely to be. Besides, war isn't what they're into.

They're into creating their own layer on top of our culture of cool. Their variation would be, as these things are these days, a kind of slap-dash cultural collage. It would have a bit of the Beatnik, a Hint of the hippy, a shred of the Skateboarder, an ounce of Outlaw, a portion of Punk, a hunk of Hip-Hop, and, because we were on the California coast, more than a soupcon of Surfer. It would be a melange of the old and outdated that would assert it was unique and brand new. When they were done cooking up their "culture of cool" they would all agree among themselves, "Ain't it cool?"

Their parents, as parents now do, would sigh and pour another drink or drop another Ambien, and hope that their children would get through this phase without a drug arrest, a school suspension, a permanent piercing, or a lethal accident on the highways or in the ocean. It was all they asked of them. We were two and a half years into the war and none of the kids of Orange County would fight in it unless they asked for it. All of the parents in Orange County knew their kids were crazy. After all, they were teenagers in high school. Few thought any of their kids were that crazy.

Less than 20 miles south of where we sat last Friday, there was another kind of youth culture. I saw it for a day last January. You don't see it very often around here because it doesn't hang out at the malls. You can't see it from the freeways because its center is far back in the hills. It has its own malls and towns and sporting and educational complexes. It doesn't deal in "the culture of cool." It deals in the culture of carnage. It's the Camp Pendelton Marine Base.

There are many young people here, some the same age as the kids at the malls to the north, but none of these young people are kids. There's something about daily training with tanks, rifles, heavy machine guns and artillery that puts your childhood as far behind you as the kids at the malls have their childhood still in front of them. Instead of worrying if their dad is going to pay for the new mag-chrome rims for their Escalade, this youth culture worries about the state of readiness of their Apache attack helicopters.

The culture of Camp Pendelton isn't cool in the way political fundraisers today feature hip-hop groups and background music from the golden age of Fleetwood Mac. The culture here despises the culture of cool. The culture here is composed of deeper, abiding and more fundamental things: God, Country and The Corps. There are a lot of people in America and elsewhere that would like nothing better than to deconstruct this culture into oblivion, but, as courageous as they might be in proclaiming this elsewhere, they don't seem to be showing up at the gates or on the grounds of Camp Pendleton to press the issue. They wouldn't because, according to their worldview that arises from spending decades as adolescents, the Marines are just so uncool. Aren't they?

The young men and women that come to this culture do not, we are told, come in the main from the affluent suburbs of America. They come from the ghettos and the working class parts of the country. They come to get a leg up and a ticket out of their origins. They come because they see the Marines as either a career or a means to an education that leads to a career. Most have had little given to them because they come from families with little to give. Some come to prove themselves. Some come because members of their family came before. Some come because the only other path open to them led to a cell. Some even come out of a deep faith and a deeper sense of duty. Not all that come will be accepted, but none come because it is cool. Before they came they too were once kids in America. They got the big and repeated message that the military in America these days is uncool. They knew it was uncool and they came anyway. Some because they had no other choice. Many because they didn't care about being cool if being cool meant being a kid forever.

There aren't many rich Orange County mall rats that come to the Marines out of high school. Rich kids no longer have this calling. Instead they wander on in their extended childhood though college. Then they drift into the arena where all they will have will be a six-figure income and a few "great moments at work." They will learn, if they do not already know, how to play golf and how to drive themselves deep into "middle management." In time, they will form one or two or more families in one or two or more cities or suburbs. Their roots will be shallow, but they will take lots of interesting two-week vacations to comfortable enclaves in Europe or pacified third-world countries. Towards the end, they'll spend a lot on cruise ships where they will be treated 'like royalty.' They'll acquire real estate and hope for "a nice appreciation ride." They will have little to show that they existed but that will be all right. They will use the word 'cool' in conversation and evaluation well into their seventh decade. One of the central social anxieties of their lives will be being discovered being or doing something that their peers will say is "uncool."

In short, they will be such cool Americans that, two and a half years into a war, nothing will be asked of them. That would be, you see, very uncool.

Twenty miles south at Camp Pendelton, everything is being asked of the Americans there. It is asked for in Iraq daily and paid there daily. Our very cool media's job is clear. It is to tell us in hundreds of big and little ways daily of how uncool it is to ask everything of someone. Our media is very cool indeed.

Our media is by default not a "liberal media," but a melange of many businesses and institutions that are staffed by generations of the coolest of the cool in our aging culture of cool. Our media, as every MTV-addled mall rat learns by age 5, is where the really cool jobs are. Rock star or record producer, movie star or director, reporter, anchorman, editor, publisher, video-game designer, web-monkey, DJ, photographer, pundit, columnist -- the positions go on and on and everybody knows, EVERYBODY knows, that the media's where the cool people are.

If you have a job in the media you go to the cool parties. You live in the cool towns driving the cool cars. You eat the cool foods in the cool restaurants where everybody knows your name and you get the cool table next to what passes for this week's cool celebrity du jour. You subscribe to the cool magazines and if you haven't had your picture in one yet, your turn is on the way. You have the cool summer place. Your haircut is cool. Your computer is cool. Your friends are cool. Even your dog is cool. You wear the cool clothes, and you are absolutely up-to-the-nanosecond on what is cool now and what will be cooler tomorrow. And you also know that that which is not of the culture of cool is uncool.

What is uncool today, two and a half years into the war, is, of course, the war. War's been uncool to these eternal cool kids and their kids since about 1962 and, except for a brief six month period after September 11, 2001, war is uncool now. War's uncool because, well, it is "unhealthy for children and other living things" goes the party line in the culture of cool. This war is especially uncool because it is being run by uncool people and the uncoolest President ever. But really, war is uncool because it is one of the big things that threatens to undo all the great parties and smooth lifestyles promised and delivered by the media-made culture of cool. And how does war threaten this? War, real war, actually asks something of the people of a nation as a whole people. It asks them to sacrifice their blood and their treasure and their cool attitudes and their endless summers. It asks, in the parlance of the Marine Corps, that "all give some and that some give all."

The American culture of cool has become a nation apart, an alternate-America that looks to the real America as merely some mechanism set up to deliver the many features and benefits of America to the culture of cool without question, by divine right of media. This culture is not into giving back anything they have taken from the culture at large. The culture of cool is not a giving culture, it is an taking culture. Anything is chooses to have is taken in and used to improve the lot of those within the culture of cool. That which is not cool it seeks to either use or destroy depending on whether or not it advances the culture of cool and the lifestyles of those that exist within it. It sees itself as the real soul and real intelligence of America, even as it actually rides on the broad shoulders of America like some strangling old man of the sea that, once taken up, refuses to get down. It sees itself as the engine responsible for making the culture of America continually new, even as it only recycles one empty cultural container after another through the battered green bins of its rigid internal codes and fashions to pop them out as 'new, improved and even more impossibly hip.'

Regardless of the shiny gift wrap of the cool advertising and marketing agencies that have taken to spotwelding vintage rock and roll and the latest pop or sports sensation's face onto their shabby garage sale goods, we seldom see, hear, or read anything today that is not either a remake, a sequel, or an allusion to the cool things of yesteryear. The same holds true for the politics of cool. This is confirmed in a brief review of the lamentable Democratic primaries of this year. During the months of this excruciating ritual, what was once a proud and progressive party offered up nearly a dozen cardboard candidates. When it was all over, the party chose the one candidate that sounded the most like, looked the most like, and sported the haircut and even the initials of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Camelot Redux because JFK was, as the culture of cool constantly reminds us, the coolest President ever.

John F. Kerry is, in many ways, the perfect candidate for today's graying culture of cool. He snowboards at sixty. How cool is that? He goes to great parties with hip-hop stars. Too cool. He's got lots of money that he didn't earn. So cool. He can hold opposite positions on difficult issues and lie about it with a straight face. Very cool way of getting out of middle management into upper management. He can fight in a war and throw another man's medals away. Cool career move. He can promise 10 million jobs to the 8 million unemployed. Super cool to make more jobs than workers. If he can tax those jobs that have no workers, he can probably cool out the deficit. He can talk to and cajole the alienated country of France into amour encore. This is extremely cool since it makes renting summer villas in France and trips to Paris acceptable again. Besides France is the coolest country in Europe as every member of the culture of cool will attest. His Africa-born white wife is so cool she calls herself an "African-American." Most of all, Kerry is cool because he thinks the war is uncool and is saying so in a cool kind of way. Even more than that, the members of the culture of cool know that Kerry will never ask anything of them. And the culture of cool is not a giving culture, but a taking one. If Kerry would only learn to play the saxophone he would be cooler than JFK.

Yesterday I saw a photograph fresh from the war in Iraq. There are many photographs from Iraq these days. It's an uncool country in an uncool part of the world where American soldiers are fighting and dying to cool it out. It's uncool to be a soldier there, but it is very cool to be a photographer, so we have a lot of photographers and a lot of photographs. Some taken by being on call to and hanging out with the people who are killing Americans. How cool is that?

The photograph was taken in a hanger at a military base. It shows a group of young, uncool American Marines kneeling in a tight circle on the ground in prayer. Prayer. How totally uncool.

When you look closer at the photograph you notice that extending out from within the circle of kneeling and praying Marines are the legs of a dying or dead comrade in arms. Probably a very young comrade, not too distant in age from the kids laughing and playing in front of the multiplex on a balmy night in Orange County a world away.

How uncool this man was to die for his country and his comrades. How uncool is the effort to liberate a country mired in the morass of the middle ages, when you could just stay home and play video games. How uncool to take the war to an enemy that has sworn to kill Americans wholesale and has done so. How very, very uncool.

Now this Marine will never have a shot at working in the mail room of a movie studio, a record company, or a publishing house. All this Marine has now as he recedes into death are the prayers of those Marines who trained and fought beside him. That and a military funeral and a folded flag given to his family. Prayers. Funerals. Folded flags. These things are very uncool as the media-made captions on these photographs will seek to remind you. Very uncool.

At the same time that this Marine lay dying in Iraq, the current senior spokesman for the Democratic Party, Senator Ted Kennedy (a man whose cool, credibility and courage are equal in measure) was busy condemning the effort that cost this uncool Marine his life by waving the bloody shirt of Vietnam under the nose of the nation. His words and image were duly broadcast across America by all his life-long compatriots in the culture of cool. It's a shirt faded and frayed by many decades of constant handling, wringing and waving, but the bloody shirt of Vietnam has a lot of buttons, patches, fringe, and embroidered flowers on it. It's vintage clothing. Ain't it cool?

I'm sure HH would appreciate this...
I am certain that he will, too - AFTER he gets back from his week-long trip to the Naval Academy. :o)

"...Less than 20 miles south of where we sat last Friday, there was another kind of youth culture.
I saw it for a day last January. You don't see it very often around here because it doesn't hang out at the malls. You can't see it from the freeways because its center is far back in the hills.
It has its own malls and towns and sporting and educational complexes.
It doesn't deal in 'the culture of cool.'
It deals in the culture of carnage.
It's the Camp Pendelton Marine Base..." - Gerard Van der Leun

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-- I see a need for a voluntary 'rite of passage' type draft in America..
One tied to becoming a full voting citizen. -- Call it a boot camp for the franchise. -- No service, no vote.

Extremely bad idea, for four reasons.

1) It puts those who resent being there into the military. There's a reason pretty much every military professional in the US prefers an all-volunteer force.

2) It will get those currently apathetic kids interested in politics in a very non-constructive manner.

3) It allows politicians to skimp on military pay, military equipment, and military preparedness in order to pay for welfare or pork barrel projects.

4) It allows politicians to fight half-ast wars of attrition using an endless supply of cannon fodder rather than fighting wars to their conclusion as quickly as possible.

If you want to play social engineer, don't mess with the military. It's too important.

-Eric

One tied to becoming a full voting citizen. -- Call it a boot camp for the franchise. -- No service, no vote.
Read Starship Troopers by Heinlein.
Military service OR a somewhat longer term in social/community service or no franchise.
Interesting read even with out the bugs.

Heinlein pointed out a few times that he wasn't quite advocating such a system, he was just saying it could be made to work. He definitely had contempt for general conscription, believing that a nation that needed it to defend itself didn't deserve to be defended.

It's important to note that all the men and women in Iraq today and at Pendleton volunteered before they had any formal military training.

-Eric

Wondeful post! I am from the culture of cool. I grew up in South Orange County and I was one of those kids you described (maybe with a little more surfer ingredient).

We used to surf in San Clemente and there were always guys from the Marine Corps on the beach. My friends and I did not think they belonged there and my "cool" friends and I called them jarheads.

After the first Gulf War I began to develop more respect for the military. Before, I never did have respect for the military despite the fact that my dad served in the Navy for four years. Of course, my dad was not cool either.

When the war on terror broke out and I saw these guys going to places like Afganhistan, the Phillipines and Iraq so that I would not have to worry about nuclear bombs going off in my backyard.(I remember in the days after 9/11 that I thought a nuclear bomb was ready to go off at anytime) I flashed back to my young carefree days on the beach in San Clemente and had a huge sense of guilt come over me for how I treated these guys when I was young.

I wanted to apologize to each and every last one of them. I suppose that maturity has something to do with my change of heart, but it also has something to do with now understanding the tremendous sacrafice these guys are make for our country

I now literally want punch the likes of Ted Kennedy or John Kerry for pissing on these guys. Hell, I was 15 years old and stupid when I hated these guys, these clowns from Massachusetts are twice my age and are national leaders who have the ability to understand how dangerous this world is today! Regretably, I think it is that nuclear bomb that has to go off before it registers.

So, to any of you who were in the Marine's at Camp Pendleton in the early to mid 1980's, my deepest apologies and thank you for all you have done for this country.

At the same time that this Marine lay dying in Iraq, the current senior spokesman for the Democratic Party, Senator Ted Kennedy...
See also, from:

Kennedy's Support for Kerry Thrills G.O.P.
NY Times ^ | 4/10/04 | Carl Hulse
Posted on 04/10/2004 2:29:30 PM PDT by NYC Republican

As he took the microphone at a crowded Washington fund-raiser a few days ago, Senator John Kerry made no secret of his strong ties to the man who had just given him a rousing introduction: Senator Edward M. Kennedy...
-- snip --
With careers and lives that have intersected across 33 years, including 19 together in the Senate representing Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Kerry have indeed forged a special relationship. And it reached a new level this year with Mr. Kennedy's pivotal role in turning around Mr. Kerry's once-struggling primary campaign with behind-the-scenes advice and spirited public appearances.
-- snip --
Now that bond has some Democrats nervous that Mr. Kerry is making it easier for Republicans to paint him as a member in good standing of his party's most liberal wing by accentuating his connection with Mr. Kennedy, whose image is firmly fixed in the minds of those who admire him and those who do not.
Republicans, on the other hand, are happy with Mr. Kennedy's involvement.
"The more Teddy Kennedy on the campaign trail, the better," said Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader...
-- snip --

To: NYC Republican

2 posted on 04/10/2004 2:33:35 PM PDT by Registered
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
(Animated image from: www.registeredmedia.com)

E rocc Makes some good points in his reply, and let me add another thought.

If some choose to serve America by their contribution to the economy (our wealth is just as influential as our bullets, if handled properly), or by strengthening our moral characteristics by going into the ministry, or by staying home with the kids instead of sending them off to day care, or basically doing what is right, however that happens to play out, then that individual has a say in society.

The ones who live off the labor of others, complain and subvert the destiny of this nation are the enemy within. They unfortunately have more of a say than they ever should.

But nobody can justly project the calling of a soldier onto every individual. I'm much more valuable as a businessman than a soldier.

But don't get me wrong, I'll carry a rifle to defend my country, if it comes to that.

After reading this, I had to restrain myself from wishing for a San Onofre explosion and a wind to blow the fumes northward. But I have to remind myself that you and other conservatives are still there in OC, fighting the good fight, no matter how badly you're being beaten by the cool fools.

After reading your post, I could almost vomit.

I personally know of three young men, all pretty cool friends of mine that I went through school with, all from "affluent" Orange County, and as I did, they *joined* the army, one went into the Marines, and all went to Vietnam.

One was only in country for about two weeks, we believe a grenade of some type was thrown from a passing vehicle landing right on his back while his platoon was taking a break along side a road, his entire lower spine was exposed and his kidneys and other vital organs were hang out. He laid there in shock, asking how bad he was, and if he was going to be alright, as he started going in and out of consciousness, he was nervously told by his buddy's he would be OK. He obviously died, never made it to the field hospital.

The other cool friend of mine from Orange Country was on routine patrol, and was shot through the throat and died within three minutes. He only had 3 months of his tour left.

My third cool friend from Orange county was a on a chopper, heading to a military hospital. He that had already been hit by small arms fire and was wounded in both arms. After being airlifted out, the chopper got about a quarter mile away, and was blown out of the sky by a rocket. All on 5 on board died.

One of my best buddy's, another cool brat from Orange County was lucky.

It's believed a mortar exploded about 30 feet from him, a piece of shrapnel entered the outer edge of one of his eyes, popping his eye right out of the socket, and was hanging down around his cheek, bleeding real bad, as he was being taken to an LZ clearing to get a ride out, they had to clip his optic nerved, (cut it off) and tie it off to help save him. He survived and still wears an eye patch to this day. His glass eye never looked right, makes him look crazy.

It isn't, in any real sense, their war. War isn't being asked of us or the affluent kids of Orange County, nor does it seem likely to be. Besides, war isn't what they're into.

I cringe when I hear statements like this.

Interesting read [Starship Troopers by Heinlein] even with out the bugs.
See also:

Touch 'Em All: The 'EWWWW!' Factor
[GIANT "camel spiders" menace our troops in Iraq]
TheWBALChannel.com ^ | April 9, 2004 | Larry Frum, Jr., Managing Editor
Posted on 04/10/2004 2:38:36 AM PDT by RonDog

The "EWWW!" Factor
My brother is a member of the United States armed forces. I can't tell you what he does, because I don't think I completely understand it myself -- which is probably best for me.
However, with all that is going on over in Iraq, he does have a pretty good sense of what some of the personnel are going through over there. His latest e-mail makes me wonder if we here at home really understand.
Take a look at this picture:
This is a camel spider (or rather two of them) -- one of the indigenous creatures in Iraq. The following is from an e-mail my brother sent me with the picture:
The camel spider isn't really a spider, because it is also called a wind scorpion, but it is not a scorpion either. It is related to both the spiders and the scorpions, and it belongs to its own group of animals.
It can be as long as 6 inches across and camel spiders like to live in barren parts of the desert. They don't like oases either, and they feel most at home in the open, uninhabited places of the desert.
Most of the time camel spiders hide in their burrows, coming out only when they're hungry. So when they do come out at night to feed, they are very ferocious and dangerous. A hunting camel spider runs across the desert floor almost at lightning speed, and it is so fast that it is impossible for the human eye to follow...
-- snip --
...One guy said he killed about a dozen of these things because they kept coming into their tent.
While they knew they weren't poisonous, they still freaked out the soldiers -- especially the new ones...
Ya think?
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread

Rich kids no longer have this calling. Instead they wander on in their extended childhood though college. Then they drift into the arena where all they will have will be a six-figure income and a few "great moments at work." They will learn, if they do not already know, how to play golf and how to drive themselves deep into "middle management." In time, they will form one or two or more families in one or two or more cities or suburbs. Their roots will be shallow, but they will take lots of interesting two-week vacations to comfortable enclaves in Europe or pacified third-world countries. Towards the end, they'll spend a lot on cruise ships where they will be treated 'like royalty.' They'll acquire real estate and hope for "a nice appreciation ride."

I think they'll find that the gravy train of Big Daddy's coattails will run dry a lot sooner than they think.

The topic of military service comes up constantly in todays social situations. Those who served, drafted or not, are proud of their service. Those who didn't tend to avoid the subject.

It's even gone further than that. Last week the neighbor's grunge, rocker, deadbeat son -- who never comes out during the day because his pupils are so dilated from the drugs, it would cook his eyeballs -- was asking me about Vietnam. He even spoke in marginally coherent, quasi-respectful sentences.

Everything old is new again, I guess.