It feels good to be American again

One of the little tricks of culture that I've always admired is how it facilitates group survival by making cooperation feel good.  It just seems to be something that human cultures naturally do: set up rituals through which food, money, labor, and goods are redistributed in the context of festivals full of sensual pleasure, the relaxation of societal norms, gorging on food, spectacle, dancing, and play -- in other words, fun.  Good times.

It follows that when a culture's traditions of making cooperation feel good break down, the cooperation will not work so well.  This is, of course, what we have going on in our society.  We are not all able to "party" together, exactly.  Bill Gates does not throw keggers to which we are all invited.  This is a problem.

The 1968/2008 connection has been pretty hyped recently.  So I'll add this to it: Another important similarity between the two years is that they're times when a counterculture has made important political progress that was facilitated by methods that felt good.

A friend who participated in some of the protests and marches of the late sixties was recently insisting to me that those political actions, though sometimes scary and difficult, were also pretty fun -- even "sexy."  I'm sure that point must be obvious to most people, but for me it was a bit of a revelation.  In my mind, I'd always kept the counterculture's social and political action in a separate compartment from its other manifestations (music, fashion, art, lifestyle).  I'd always thought of those latter things as mere superficial manifestations of the more substantive things that were going on.  But of course, they were a crucial element of the engine of change.  Because they provided the good times, the fun, that made taking real risks feel good.

Since the sixties, our culture has been lacking that means of making political engagement feel good.  As the medium of TV became more and more powerful, people felt more and more disengaged from, angry at, and helpless against culture. Rather than facilitating worthwhile action, popular culture became a soma.  This happened because there was no meaningful way to engage with our pop culture.  No ordinary American can participate in TV culture, because TV culture only goes one way.  All you can do with TV culture is receive it, not contribute.

But now the internet.  The internet feels good.  It's not nearly as visceral a medium of communal cooperation as actual dancing, feasting, etc. -- but it is one in which everyone can participate.  And that is the crucial part.  The internet is 2008's version of the streets and parks where the protests and happenings of 1968 took place.  It's a place where participation feels good, because it's taking place in the cultural vernacular -- a vernacular that seems pretty silly and childish to people sometimes, but there it is.  In the sixties there were folk songs; now there's Obama Girl.

Because engagement in the American political process is feeling good, American patriotism is coming back.  Michelle Obama's controversial sound bite about feeling proud of her country again is more representative of how we've been feeling as a nation than most would care to admit.  But now, I believe, a trend of popular, mainstream, non-ironic American pride is beginning, and it's showing up in pop culture.  The main examples I'm aware of so far are HBO's John Adams miniseries and the new, heavily-advertised JC Penney "American Living" line.  But I bet more are coming soon.