BLOG: Disillusioned American
The death of individuality
By Flint McColgan, Staff Writer
February 29, 2008 | 12:58 p.m.
Nothing is more suited to my method of dangerously depressive soul-searching than the open highway. Moving from the humid Florida air to the crisp, cool mountain air of southern Ohio was the beginning of my search for the American Dream.
Hunter S. Thompson believed that the American Dream died sometime after the summer of love, when the liberties of decadence crashed like the violent end of an amphetamine binge to the paranoia and depression of the Nixon-lead early 1970s.
My vodka-fueled high school days ended like a similar crash somewhere in northern Florida as the fast-food chain restaurant and flee market billboards made way for anti-abortion billboards with pictures of aborted fetuses and “facts” that I knew weren’t true. A roadside fruit stand advertised this was “Huckabee Country,” and a sign read “Home of the Free, because of the brave.”
I did not belong. I tried to pretend I did and sang louder and prouder to John Lee Hooker’s classic “Boom Boom,” manically throwing my left foot about to the blues beat. ‘Keep your cool,’ I thought, ‘don’t let them know you’re not one of them.’ I stayed with the flow of traffic as to not attract attention, and everything was fine until a bend in the road revealed six police cars and an equal number of police motorcycles. This was the end.
When I saw the motorcycle cop’s lights in my rear-view mirror I turned off my radio and smashed my cigarette out in the ashtray, knowing very well that righteous health awareness is the universal trend now and being a distinct person is against social law. About four of us were pulled over, and I was told by officer McKane that he couldn’t cut me any breaks because of the expense of the traffic aircraft overhead that caught me at 70 m.p.h. in a 55 m.p.h. zone.
I had told myself time and again that this was the end of rebellion. Playing to my niche market would get me nowhere and that true radicals know how to play society from the inside out. I would get my formal education, I would get a job, and I will build a network of powerful connections and work hand-in-hand with the powers that be. The distinct worlds of the early-to-mid twentieth century America were a far cry from the world we see today. There is no longer an “aboveground” and an “underground.” This is a world in the hands of globalization with cables and domesticated airwaves joining us together in such a close way that not even those people in charge can explain how it works.
The original dream of globalization was to make the world smaller, more united and peaceful than ever before, and amazingly we’ve splintered into so many different “scenes” and “cultures” that never existed before to fight against everything that is right and spiritually connected in the world, all to get our spot in the limelight. There are no heroes who speak for this generation as a whole. Individuality has taken a nasty turn, and we are more splintered and lost than we have ever been before.
This is our generation, left in the dark.
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