I Miss the Radicals

I remember sitting in my dorm room at Michigan State University and talking BS with others over a 24-pack of Mickeys. We posed ridiculous possibilities and impossibilities. The world needs youth to do this. They are supposed to throw out dumb ideas, crazy ideas. They stand a peculiar juxtaposition of awareness of mortality and belief that death is far off. It’s a wonderful energy.

I entertained existentialism to nihilism. Rock and Roll. Burn bright and burn fast. Start a commune. Reject reality. Create new universes unattached to the laws of nature. Rebel. Everything before me was stupid. It’s dangerous but exciting.

Growing up, the radio was full of mass produced pop filler. It was thrilling to subvert it. I had to wait until midnight to listen to Clambake on WLAV in Grand Rapids in order to hear Husker Du or 1/2 Man 1/2 Biscuit. I had to go to record stores and search for radical voices.

Then there were those who acted on their fantasies. Dress different. Press the limits. Scream into a microphone. It was understood that they were ridiculous. Maybe pilgrims. Maybe morons. They populate the bohemian districts with the good food, good sounds, and good smells. They were likely wrong in all their directions. But we needed them to be.

Every generation had them. They were crazy but produced beautiful things. No one really believed in their realities, but they did cause one to think and enjoy. They were the edge, Kurzes ruling in the jungle. We needed them to go over. To see where it was. But like Kurz, they all had to eventually die.

Today this radicalism has been institutionalized. People that weren’t quite radicals but instead their groupies got jobs in universities and sought to normalize rebellion. Then what?

They killed excitement. They killed radicalism and the fervor of thinking crazy thoughts. It’s all normalized. From current government employees to mass educated high school teachers. What’s really radical or rebellious anymore?

Not to justify crazy ideas, behaviors, or teachings. But they press the audience, the public. Like Judas they kill our Christs so we may find meaning in our Christs.

What now? Boring. A 62 year old Madonna still shows her wrinkled skin as if she is smashing some glass ceiling. Well there is no ceiling anymore. You can buy her at the mall. Who doesn’t talk about sex, identity, power in unconventional ways. It’s now so very conventional. In fact the boorish radical groupies have fought to normalize crazy. How boring!

Sad. The danger when radicalism is institutionalized is that radicalism can’t handle disagreement or rebellion. Because it is just that! It becomes violent. Totalitarian. Probably because it usually doesn’t possess any foundation in reason, nature, or reality. Therefore it requires obedience instead of voluntary assent.

Of course, as TS Eliot – the greatest poet next to Ezra Pound of the 20th century – enjoyed, it’s fun to both espouse traditional and logical ideas and also be countercultural, even avant-garde. Maybe one day Americans will visit conservative enclaves in their cities for some great food, music, and crazy ideas like 2+2 and symmetry.

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John J. Flanagan on September 1, 2021 at 12:13 pm

Funny thing, how the necessary passages of youth affect people differently. In your case, you experimented to a greater degree than I, but to a smaller degree than others. However, the rite of passage was needed in order to grow, and to find oneself and how we fit into the cosmic order. College tested our ideas and presuppositions about the subjects we studied, and in learning new information, we were often freed from old prejudices, and sometimes embraced new ones in the process. Ideas mattered, but so did discernment. Without critical analysis of our own beliefs and values, coupled with experience, we simply do not grow, nor can we benefit from what we have learned. I first attended a community college in 1965, and a fraction of the student body were long haired, dope smoking hippie types. I belonged to the “other” group, the short haired, buzz cut, or groomed ones, the ones who drank beer, partied, but never tried drugs, loved rock music and folk songs, and held part time jobs in town. We shared our parent’s middle class, non radical, traditional blue collar social and religious values. Most of us, a majority, were identified as Catholic, and most of us were totally New Yorkers, having parents who escaped the declining neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx to join the white flight of the 1950’s and poured into the safe and genteel suburbs. For many of us, mixing with the radical students was never gonna happen. There might as well have been a Berlin Wall separating us. But you are right to observe that many of the radicals eventually bought suits and ties, merged into the mainstream culture, and now…are the oppressors and tyrants carrying forth the “woke” banner. Go figure. Holding onto my faith, despite all this radical change in America, is something which makes me grateful for God’s grace, because some forms of radicalism are simply rejection of God and His word. And that is the most dangerous and damning of all radical ideas we could harbor.

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The Jagged Word

I Miss the Radicals

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