The Repubican Party's Sinking Armada

When reflecting on the decade of the 1980's, something which may prove difficult for the millennial generation, perhaps it also is a surreal window into a seeming alternate American reality.  As I have studied the "Jazz Age" the persistent reality is I don't connect with that musical aesthetic or social dynamic.  The "Roaring Twenties" can be construed as a reaction to the brutal realities of World War I.  Soldiers returning home dead in pine boxes would have been a stark and stigmatizing experience.  It is not every American generation which has been beset with war.  Prohibition or the illegality of alcohol fueled this rebellion or recalcitrance to governmental authority.  The "Roaring Twenties" was a party decade which came to a grinding halt at the onset of the Great Depression.  Ten years of reckless behavior, cavalier spending, and reckless investment led America into her greatest economic depths.  The Economic Crisis of 2008 can be understood as the same.  America has yet to recover from her irresponsible opportunism of the Clinton Housing Bubble.  Wall Street may never recover and reestablish itself as an honest and steadfast investment methodology for Americans.  Instead it was exploited by the most selfish, narcissistic, and self-serving gladiatorial bankers.  Their damage to American economics is irreversible.  One could consider the era of the 1980's a glimpse of a more successful navigation of available American wealth.  While Ronald Reagan's "Trickle Down Economics" staunchly can be considered an economic failure, in retrospect this decade was decidedly more successful, enjoyable, and fruitful for American society.  The "Gulf War" necessarily emerged as a vehicle for the empowerment of the Bush Clan, but until "Dessert Storm" America was reveling in a Viet Nam free  playground of television, film, and music.  The music industry usurped Hollywood in revenue proving how Americans were open to a musically influenced life.  In her best times America was guided by a musical language personifying what often can be a complex and misunderstood political dynamic.  Music in America rarely is a tool or propaganda of the establishment.  More often it is the voice of dissent, malcontent, or rebellion.  For the most part this artistic voice of freedom has been castrated.  Subtly and discreetly the rebellious voice of American freedom has been caged, and Kevin McCarthy has become its self-proclaimed false prophet.  He and Trump are nothing more than pathetic fallen televangelists attempting to collect the alms of the gullible and needy.  The Arts are the needed mechanism of "Checks and Balances."  If ever we did choose to take them seriously, the Expressionist movement of the 1920's would tell the story.  Everything all ready has happened in the world, but the false prophets are suggesting nothing is of significance.  We are to just let it be free and continue to empower the future fascist dictator of the American Communist nation.  While the 1980's can seem indulgent they are in fact a metaphor for artistic, technological, and industrial achievement.  Perhaps billionaires and the internet have grabbed the reins, but pure technology all ready has come to fruition through Japanese electronics, Apple computers, and pure American textiles and manufacturing.  Currently we are in a billabong of war profiteering, white nationalism, and re-emergent Jim Crow.  The essence of American ingenuity, freedom, and rebelliousness are asleep under the luke warm semen of misguided, right wing, soap box shouters.  While beautiful clothing, hair, and make up are just window dressing, they were an empowering vehicle for American artistic integrity.  It is time to return to that mind set.  I believe most of America is tired of swimming in the vestiges of Trump's sinking luxury armada.