Botond173
1hr ago
The other day I commented on the 3-part Netflix documentary series about the Woodstock '99 music festival. Since then I learned that there are actually at least two entire podcasts that dealt with this particular subject matter. As one of these, Break Stuff, is relatively short I decided to listen to all 8 parts, driven more by a general sense of nostalgia than curiosity I guess. I concluded that there are even more cultural angles to this event than I thought.
Here are my general observations and (I assume) potential fodder for culture war discussion:
In the discussion I mentioned above the subject of festival deaths was raised. Curiously the Netflix documentary ignores it wholly. What I read before is that there was one case of death during Woodstock '99. It turns out that I was mistaken, as there were actually three - coincidentally the same reported death toll as of both Woodstock '69 and '94. One was a traffic accident, the other was a case of an older man, supposedly an attendee of Woodstock '69 as well, succumbing to a heart attack. The third case, the one that received any significant media attention at all, involved a young and supposedly obese man who was an avid Metallica fan and decided to try throwing himself in the middle of the moshpit in the punishing heat as the band played and the massive crowd was naturally going nuts. Whatever we think about his decision, I think it's fair to say the paramedics on site, who were generally undermanned and unprepared anyway, were also somewhat negligent in this case. When the guy collapsed due to heatstroke and was carried to them, they instantly assumed it's a drug overdose as they had no thermometer. There was a lawsuit as a result which was predictably settled out of court. I'm going to guess it was due to the victim being obese that the incident garnered only limited attention. Obese people generally get only low levels of sympathy, especially when they are men who put themselves in danger (keeping in mind that 'putting yourself in danger' is a rather wide category when you're obese).
Either way, I'd argue the whole reason why the subject of festival deaths ever had any cultural relevance in the US was the Altamont incident due to the negative significance of the latter as a watershed cultural event.
In one podcast episode it was argued that Woodstock '99 signified the overall decline of the riot grrrl phenomenon, which was notably absent from it. From a feminist point of view, this sad event coincided with the even sadder event of rampant sexual assaults. What was this cultural phenomenon, you might ask? Mark Ames of the former magazine Exile summed it up in 2005 as:
What to do if you’re an American chick who wants to flirt with the cool college rock crowd, and you’re not comfortable adopting the intentionally asexual angry-dyke-elastic-waistband-whine and bleeding-heart ideology of your PC sisters? Why, you simply rip off the unwashed grunge fashion of the boys who you’re trying to get to notice you, adopting their greasy-hair-in-the-face, their four-chord-Stooges aesthetic, their ratty scream and “body art,” and refurbish the hippie-dyke ideology about empowerment and reclaiming your body in angry “whatever, man” poetics, and voila! You’re a grrl! As they said in the 90s, “You go, grrl! Really, we mean go, as in you go and wash your hair and put on something nice. Seriously, just go. You’re embarrassing yourself. ”
I can't really get hung up on this though, as far as I'm concerned. From women's point of view I guess it made practical sense in that particular milieu to adopt a style that does not alienate either your radical feminist fellow female college students or the male grunge fans you hang out with. It came and went, as these trends usually do.
Apparently it was also standard practice at other music festivals during the '90s not even to allow attendees to bring their own drinking water in. Well, damn. At the same time, almost nothing was done to stem the massive amount of illicit drug trade and use that was taking place at Woodstock '99.
The Woodstock festivals in general can be described as populist/egalitarian in character: they were supposed to make a profit (which they never did) while at the same time targeting all music fans (not just fans of any particular genre) and not charging that high of a price for tickets, so that even average college students and young working adults could afford it. VIP treatment and various expensive perks were not on offer. In contrast, Coachella was incidentally organized for the first time in 1999 as well, and it represented the business model of the future. It abandoned any egalitarian pretenses and was marketed to well-paid middle-class adults, offering VIP packages and various perks. This was a big cultural shift. The new model worked and it was only after two decades that the trainwreck of the Fyre festival happened, reminding older Millennials what a similar trainwreck Woodstock '99 was. (Similar, but not for exactly the same reasons.)
Another cultural shift was taking place at roughly the same time Woodstock '99 bombed. It used to be that heavy metal music was popular among young and white, mostly working-class or white trash dudebros who found in it an outlet for their rebellion against their drab, conservative Christian, suffocating and boring cultural surroundings. This was the case throughout the West and to some extent the Soviet Bloc, not just in the US. It was a young, white and lowly subculture cordoned off from the mainstream. We've long been at a point where none of that applies anymore. This music genre is both consumed and created by mostly middle-aged well-off men. The element of rebellion has completely gone away. I suppose the emergence of nu-metal played a big role in this, as it was quickly co-opted by the mainstream and commercialized, causing a rift between older (purist) and younger metal fans.
It was during the turn of the millennium that the Sexual Revolution seemed to have entered a particularly sleazy period in the US, which was reflected in the usual antics during the festival. The porn industry was mainstreamed, Howard Stern was big, the 'Girls Gone Wild' series was on TV and visual entertainment was getting ever raunchier. I guess this trend did not peter out until after 2008.
As I was listening to these accounts I was overcome by a strange sense of nostalgia. From the mid-nineties to 9/11 times were good overall and I don't think we realized back then how good we have it.
Botond173
5hr ago
Current day depopulation doomers should take note, and think twice before they engage in their own atrocities to prevent the coming apocalypse.
I suggest approaching this subject from a different angle. The idea that overpopulation/overbreeding causes poverty has been popular among bourgeois intellectuals for a long time, which is not that surprising as they have zero experience of either poverty or overbreeding themselves. This assumption is the reason Planned Parenthood exists, for example. We also know that Chinese Communist leaders bought into this idea, and also into Ehrlich's idiotic theories, with rather large-scale consequences. The reality on the other hand is that it's not a high birthrate that causes poverty, but the other way around. When you're destitute and without perspectives, having and raising children is the only activity that will accord you social status and respect, not to mention being the only possible source of whatever you will be able to call a pension down the line.
You might be tempted to say that WWI was mistake but, on the bright side, it brought us Yugoslavia.
I find it somewhat odd that it's Yugoslavia that you mentioned and not Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, the Czechs or the Slovaks. I'll not argue that dismantling the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was a good idea, but breaking Yugoslavia apart wasn't that stellar an idea either.
In an final insult, plaque commemorating her was removed from her birthplace in Polish Zamosc.
Petty addition on my part: this already happened in 2018. Now there's a small scandal around a proposal to install a new plaque.
Botond173
1d ago
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
I think it's largely a consequence of US liberal leftists, including ones who consider themselves moderate and centrist-adjacent, having adopted a completely dismissive and critical attitude towards the War on Drugs, largely as one expression of their hard antagonism towards Nixon and Reagan, and in turn having adopted the same attitude towards the steep growth of incarceration rates during the Reagan and Clinton years. (The growth was indeed steep, to be sure.) As layman I think they are interpreting this whole phenomenon as thus: it was all done to cynically pander to disgusting white middle-class racist garbage humans and it represented an absolute erosion and betrayal of the glorious wonder that was the Civil Rights Movement. Yet again the helpless black minority was thrown under the bus to suffer in AmeriKKKa. Nixon and Reagan were just horrible ghouls. That Clinton guy may have been sort of decent, but when he actually tried to implement rather moderate measures to advance liberalism, GOP goons rallied their deplorable base against him, and when the Democrats lost seats in the Senate and the House, unfortunately he had no choice but to compromise with these twats who just wanted to keep throwing disadvantaged black men in prison en masse. We cannot let this happen again.
Botond173
3d ago
I present to you a true crime story from Miami from last year – I’m assuming it wasn’t discussed here yet.
"This fella is a really bad guy. He is the epitome of evil. He hunts his prey. He’s patient with his prey, and then he kills them," Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne A. Jones said at a news conference last month. “There’s no doubt in my mind, had he not been caught, he would’ve done this again and again and again."
According to detectives, Zsolyomi is a Hungarian national listed as an illegal overstay by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He wore an ankle monitor after he was released from custody from a robbery arrest in Miami Beach in July of 2024.
The Hungarian man who police said was responsible for two brutal murders in Miami-Dade County is now believed to have been targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community.[…] Zsolyomi is facing two counts of second-degree murder from the cases dating back to November and January, in which police said he had befriended both men before strangling them to death. Zsolyomi is currently being held without bond and he has been placed on an immigration hold because authorities said he overstayed his visa.
A Hungarian national who was set to be deported disabled his ankle monitor before he murdered two men in Miami-Dade County, triggering an investigation that led to his arrest, federal authorities said.[…] Investigators said the monitor was placed on him a month earlier by ICE officials while at the Krome Detention Center in West Miami-Dade.
In a statement, an ICE spokesperson wrote that in July of 2024, “Miami Beach Police arrested Zsolyomi for strong-arm robbery, [and] he was encountered by ICE” shortly thereafter.
Federal authorities said the Hungarian was in the U.S. illegally and scheduled to be deported, but in September, the ICE statement reads, “He was processed and then released” with the GPS monitor.
Obviously a clear-cut case it is. Since then it was reported that he’s probably getting sentenced to death. What possible culture war angle is there besides the involvement of ICE, you might ask? Well, I’m not much of a true crime nerd and don’t know much about law enforcement procedures, but I’ll say this: when the guy was arrested for armed robbery, I’m sure he still had his passport in his possession. Would have he just thrown it away after his tourist visa expired? I’d be surprised.
It’s not like I’m expecting much of any police force anywhere, but had they checked his identity and then contacted Hungarian authorities, they’d have learned that there are multiple outstanding arrest warrants against him. He’s the sort of dime-a-dozen criminal hoodlum who was probably never planning to do a single day of honest work in his life and he isn’t even a nobody, as he participated in an episode of some lame-ass local TV reality show. Had they learned about this in time, I assume federal authorities could have just deported him to his native country, right? Not only is he a criminal, by the way, but also a white guy, probably a bisexual, but is not identifying as a homosexual, so he wasn’t even going to get any sympathy points.
To address another aspect, him being described as ‘targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community’ sort of insinuates that these were somehow hate crimes, when in reality he was simply selecting victims who had money and were easy to victimize, and took pretty much the easiest path there is.
And there’s a sort of funny aspect to this too: there are local liberal-leaning news sites simply describing him as an ‘illegal immigrant’. Technically speaking he is one indeed, but the journalists in question have otherwise completely adopted US Blue Tribe narratives on no human being illegal, welcoming refugees etc. and would never describe anyone as an ‘illegal immigrant’ in other contexts.
Botond173
4d ago
Never in a million years would I have expected the word 'evangelion' to be brought up in such a context here or any other place. It's Old Greek supposedly?
Botond173
4d ago
I’m just a layman regarding these matters. I’m assuming that military command gets recon carried out of targets it is to target with missiles. Satellite photos, maybe aerial recon, SIGINT and so on. I guess that’s supposed to be evident to a layman like me? So if there’s an enemy military base which had its perimeter changed years before, and as a result there is a building that used to be barracks but is now a school, recon should confirm that in time. There’s no need for a separate unit to be set up under a fancy name with the specific task of preventing collateral damage.
Botond173
5d ago
Do you specifically mean alcohol sales at bars and clubs? I'd also like to know what exactly 'a few years ago' means here.
Botond173
5d ago
We work remotely
Not new hires in their first corporate job ever though. Also, kids still attend public schools and college, don't they? That hasn't changed. I imagine economic stagnation may have reached such levels that only few college students can afford to go on summer vacations.
Botond173
5d ago
Indeed. Society only functions properly if people form meaningful friendships.
Botond173
5d ago
Unfortunately I think there are units with even more woke people in them.
Botond173
5d ago
like a small unit in a bloated imperial military that tries to reduce collateral damage by fucking checking whether a building marked 10 years ago as barracks is clearly something else now".
This seems to be a standard job for military recon units, doesn't it? Before you fire on a target, confirm where it is and what it is. Shouldn't that be evident? What's the point in creating a separate unit responsible for reducing collateral damage? And then naming it 'Civilian Protection Center of Excellence' to boot?
Botond173
5d ago
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.
Seriously??
Botond173
5d ago
This is the consequence of the Great Awokening. Welcome to the current year.
Botond173
5d ago
Fair enough. My point is that the "neo-" part has a more concrete and agreed-upon definition than the "late-" part.
Botond173
6d ago
Adding this for further context:
The development of capitalism is divided into three stages.[6] The first volume of Der moderne Kapitalismus published in 1902, deals with proto-capitalism, the origins and transition to capitalism from feudalism,[7] and the period he called early capitalism – Frühkapitalismus – which ended before the Industrial Revolution.[8] In his second volume, which he published in 1916, he described the period that began c. 1760, as high capitalism – Hochkapitalismus.[9] The last book, published in 1927, treats conditions in the 20th century. He called this stage late capitalism – Spätkapitalismus, which began with World War I.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sombart#Middle_career_and_sociology
In somewhat comical fashion, Wikipedia authors examined Sombart himself and drew similar biographical conclusions:
As a young man, Sombart was a socialist who associated with Marxist intellectuals and the German Social Democratic Party. Friedrich Engels praised Sombart's review of the first edition of Marx's Das Kapital Vol. 3 in 1894, and sent him a letter.[9] As a mature academic who became well known for his own sociological writings, Sombart had a sympathetically critical attitude to the ideas of Karl Marx — seeking to criticize, modify and elaborate Marx's insights, while disavowing Marxist doctrinairism and dogmatism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism#Initial_use_of_the_term
Botond173
6d ago
True. Historians also differentiate Early and Late Antiquity or Early and Late Feudalism. I guess one can also speak of Mature/Peak Antiquity/Feudalism if we want to divide eras even further. The existence of any economic system is conditional and conditions are necessarily subject to change, which means no system can continue indefinitely, and nor can cancer.
According to Wikiquote this seems to be the quote you are looking for:
The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it the Catholic and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, the Catholic and the Freethinker, the Catholic and the Buddhist, the Catholic and the Mahometan will co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour toward an end beneficial to all. For, as we have said elsewhere, socialism is neither Protestant nor Catholic, Christian nor Freethinker, Buddhist, Mahometan, nor Jew; it is only Human. We of the socialist working class realise that as we suffer together we must work together that we may enjoy together. We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.
These are actually the closing words of a pamphlet he wrote in 1910 as a response to the anti-socialist lectures of some priest. Well...technically speaking we cannot say if he was correct or incorrect. Four years later the entire world had an opportunity to learn what the firebrand of capitalist warfare is in its true form, and he argued that only a globally united working class can possibly prevent that disaster. I guess that may be true in retrospect.
Botond173
6d ago
I think it's obvious that the phrase "neoliberalism" was invented in order to differentiate the liberal economic policies as they existed before and after the emergence and implementation of Keynesianism.
Botond173
6d ago
I'll not ask you to doxx yourself but I just wonder where all your friends live then. Is it some suburb in the Rust Belt? Some stagnant town in Central Valley, CA? What is going on here?
Observing the one historical parallel we have at hand to judge whether US intervention was a good idea, namely the current social and economic condition of unified Vietnam, what exactly was the point of defending South Korea?
More options
Context Copy link