Gallows Poll TNP LIVE EP98 : Monologue
Now that Labor Day has passed, we enter the downside of the year for me. The sun slowly goes away, the leaves fall, and when it used to be back to school time with no end in sight, the depression would sink in that I'd be trapped in that institution until Christmas break.
Since 2001 I've had a different association with the coming of Fall. I remember listening to Howard Stern while showering to get ready to go to the dentist. I remember punching the shower wall as he described one of the towers collapsing. I thought of all the people still trapped in there. I had a girl back then that I was talking to who's Dad worked at The Pentagon. She couldn't tell me much and as life goes at that age with distance we drifted apart. Like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer said “C'est lavie”.
Later that day I had to go work a retail job at a store that nobody came to. It was like the world was on pause. The America I was discovering through the music of my youth was constantly teaching me about our conformist and commercialist culture, but now the stores and roads and office buildings are empty. Was this a turning point where that was going to change for people?
Well that answer ended up being a resounding “Fuck No!”
Granted, I felt anger as many others did for what happened on 9/11. I wanted the greatest military on earth to respond and then I wanted peace. I believed that what America did in World War 2, that my Pap served in was right. But I wasn't looking to nuke people like others were saying, I believed in my American culture. I thought that I understood that America had done some bad things with some bad people in charge but we could take that back because there was another Altruistic spirit in Americans and we could settle the timeless wars in the Middle East with Walmarts and a Disneyland when we were done.
I believed that because of the cultural change in Japan after WW2 and what became an economic powerhouse and a threat to the American economy. I grew up with movies where Michael Keaton and others were fighting a war of industry that changed the American auto industry. I watched the economics of the country change and my parents were able to start making decent money at that time so I could finally get cable to watch Nickelodeon and WWF. Something to celebrate back then, now so many years later, I realize that what I knew was being force fed to me through school, the tv, and even the music that inspired much of my life's journey.
In the years since 9/11 America has become part of The Global Corporatist Oligarchy. We shopped and voted harder into war and debt. Social issues for which the government will persecute you for have changed and the media I grew up with is much to blame for that. Not until Covid did I realize that I couldn't leave my decisions in the hands of my government or my culture anymore. That's when I really turned to Alternative media.
In the years since America shuffles along like a zombie in a Romero movie, the media describes the shuffle in a positive light while pop music accompanies its dangling emaciated arms. And in this post apocalyptic dystopian future we have DIY radio on the internet. Drawing us into gangs like in The Warriors. Some can be trusted, some cannot.
Today on TNP LIVE we shall discuss this type of media, and where it may be going from here. Now can you dig that?