How Many Cups #19: Some Thoughts I Want To Get Out
have I earned 5 minutes of rambling, likely not
This is what happens when you give me a day off from work. But thanks to Jesus and the local barista at Cafe Luca Bella, I have the requisite time and caffeine to engage in a form of catharsis precisely zero people asked for.
Let’s Talk Beyonce
A proposal as risky as it is necessary, sharing my thoughts on our Queen and Savior is a losing endeavor. We all know my disdain for today’s celebrity obsession. Modernity has propelled deification into levels both noxious and annoying, injurious and inhumane, literally.
I’ll leave my thoughts on her country album muted, although they surely exist. The focus now is on idolatry. Could it be we’ve gone a step too far?
Pop culture is now seasonal. A handful of singers turned actors turned singers again tactfully bide their time until an opening presents itself, waiting to sink their claws into the public psyche then clench until a more domineering beast belts out a more primal roar.
Before the Selena Gomez revival it was Taylor season. Now it’ll be Beyonce Spring until Zendaya announces she’s engaged. Drake will Drake in the summer and an unforeseen trend will slither in during whatever downtime presents itself. It’s frightening how predictable these cycles are.
More frightening, however, is how such totemic worship demands a sacrifice of self-love and can only be born from a precondition of societal nadir. It is hard to observe the dominance of celebrities as anything but religious. Taylor Swift’s autumnal queenship captures this precisely.
Despite singing about broken relationships for over a decade, Swift decided to date a renowned douchebag with the less spiritual depth than a pair of Fabletic sneakers. About as wholesome as a colander, this pairing somehow mesmerized the country at-large in a chokehold. I can’t think of more convincing proof of her deification than this: millions of folks tuning into week 14 of the NFL to catch a glimpse of Taylor catching a glimpse of her boyfriend catching a pass from a guy with the world’s most obnoxious brother.
Perhaps they’re truly in love. Or perhaps you live in the real world and know that this is just a tandem attempt by mid-30-year-olds to transition into their forties with the same cultural cache they had during their twenties. A common theme with our aging stars, it’s why Beyonce posed essentially naked for her country album cover. Country. COUNTRY. It’s like posing with a vibrator for a gospel album then wondering why the Pope got a little peeved.
Sure, I’m treading a bit too close to cantankerous, old-man waters and I truly shouldn’t. Swift and Beyonce deserve happiness and lifetime of riches. We all do. My fear, however, is that their impact isn’t all positive, or close to it. They’ve approached donowrong territory which demands a surrender of self-esteem and respect, necessarily.
And our young men aren’t immune, either. They take their cues from a snake oil salesmen who rose to fame for daring morons into eating worms and when he wasn’t hosting Fear Factor, Joe Rogan could be found reaching hundreds of millions of listeners on his podcast. Perhaps the first person to be diagnosed with CTE before an autopsy, Rogan espouses a brand of nonsensical masculinity that does more to insulate men from the real world than prepare them to meet its challenges with strength and empathy. If Andrew Tate and Rogan went on a world tour, it would sell more tickets than Beyonce - at least the Queen has talent.
Still an individual obsession with them is perfectly understandable. After all, I have one too many Malcolm X memorabilia in my home for any suburban White and you don’t want to even guess my WiFi name. But from 30,000 feet, the mass veneration of and upholding of such icons is truly odd. My fear is that collectively, such zealots will forsake the acceptance of their imperfections and instead replace it with a mimicry of those at their altar. Religion requires imitation. Jesus told others to live like him and we’ve yet to realize not everyone can make a blind man see. Blond Jesus, Bald Jesus and Carmel-skinned Jesus are this closing to demanding the same. I hope our young boys and girls don’t chase after the unreachable facades projected by their idols.
Where We Look When We Imagine
Take a deep breath, I’m truly not this cynical. And this seems like the perfect time to remind everyone that anyone who knows me knows I’ll go to hell and back if it ensures our young people have a self-esteem as radiant as their future. Which brings us to this.
I believe that the pulse of the populace can be ascertained by understanding which way folks are looking when they imagine. It seems like we’re trending in an alarmingly reactionary direction. Millions of Americans are dreaming of the return to a pre-online America; one where both Suburbs and middle management remain White.
Case and point: when Boeing had bolts flying off of their planes, right-wing media was quick to blame non-White pilots. DEI, they bellowed! If only there was an accessible, widely published canon - available in both print and video format - of Boeing’s unwillingness to make safe its airplanes because after all, it’s cheaper to pay out civil lawsuits than refashion an entire fleet of 737s.
Despite adhering to a brand of antiestablishment politics rooted in the ideology of elitist corruption, American conservatives ignored the complicitness of boeing’s millionaire C-Suitors and instead blamed Black folks. If this were any more on the nose it’d be a booger.
Yet, such groupthink can also be educational. From this we’ve learned how roughly half the country does their imagining. For them, the future shouldn’t be a future at all. Rather, they desire a backpedal into the Americana where immigrants stayed silent and poor. Where speaking Spanish signaled someone spent a semester in Madrid instead of a year working remotely in Tulsa. Where gas-guzzling hemis were yet to belie a man’s penis size, or lack thereof. Quite literally, American pseudomen want to revert to a time where synthetic testicles were acceptable on trucks, not he/theys.
Such strong men afraid of blue hair. Buncha crybabies is how I see it. Still, they’re strong in number and represent much of the nation. But how does the American left do their imagining? Although caked in pessimism, they at least have the gumption to look forward. Liberals foresee a future unburdened by college debt and - gasp - the ability to purchase a home. Scary stuff, indeed.
Nonetheless, if you are ever curious about the political leanings of the draft Miller-lite sitting next to you at the bar, ask them which direction they are looking when they imagine. What’s more, if you want to envision what is at stake in the next election, project this thought experiment to the country at-large.
But What Do The Kids See?
…hopefully anything at all.
About five years back the Lego company sent out a survey to children in America, China and the U.K The intent was to uncover what these kids want to be when they grow up. Quickly, take a second to recall what you daydreamed of becoming.
The poll found that “More than half of those in China said they wanted to be an astronaut, making it the most popular career aspiration.” This tracks. China limits those under 14 to only 40 minutes of TikTok and demand their algorithms only show academic videos. Plus, children have a predilection for exploration and the mysteries of science. Or do they?
Only ten percent of Americans and those from the U.K wanted to be an astronaut. Indeed, roughly 30 percent of them said they want to become a Youtuber/Vlogger. In no unclear terms, around a third of these children spend their time imagining themselves in front of a camera unboxing Crocs, inventing a new twerk or streaming their latest fortnite win. Not good, folks.
What else are our youth imagining? Dystopia and death. According to the only deity I worship, professor Jonathan Haidt, depression and anxiety rates have risen by over 50 percent in numerous studies conducted after the widespread accessibility of the smartphone (2012.) The CDC reported that between 2007 and 2021, suicide rates had tripled for American youth. They also found that about one in three teenage girls has had thoughts of self harm.
When they aren’t pondering their own demise, teens aren’t thinking of anything at all. Gallup found that the average teenager spends damn near five hours on social media apps every day. This is the holy text used to worship their aforementioned idols, by the way. It is also the reason the University of Michigan uncovered that teens went from seeing their friends three times a week in the early 2000s to 1.5 times a week currently.
While right wing Americans are looking backwards and lefties are looking forwards, our youth seems to simply be looking down. But as the literal adults in the room, we must have the fortitude and humility to look inwards. I find it easy to hold students accountable when they come to late to class. I find it difficult to hold them accountable for breaking an addiction their parents injected into their bloodstream and continually refuse to monitor.