Colbert Report: The Word-Acid Flashback
Sometimes Colbert does a REALLY good political punch at modern academia and the media. Although this isn't one of those powerful ones, his monologue towards the end is, nevertheless, poignent.
Here it is:
"Barak Obama, give it up. You're stuck with the 60s battles... We stick with these 40 year old battles, because they are comfortable and familiar. We know how to take sides in these arguments. Besides, if we didn't, we'd have to address the problems of the present and who wants to do that? Those things are monstrous. So, let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents, nevermind that 50% of today's Americans weren't even born when these arguments mattered. They are still relevant today. The 60s are a political gift that keeps on giving. Because they are a wound from which our country can never heal."
I think Colbert makes a VERY VERY VERY tremendous observation. The media and academia are using the dead to perpetuate actions done by those of the present. This is idiotic, elementary, childish. Why can we not reference the future instead of put words in the mouths of those who will never speak again? Do they really matter that much that they must always keep us in this circular state of hatred and division? The 1960s were a time of difference, violence, hatred, clashing of culture, and the use of propaganda to force those to believe what they heard. It is now the 21st century, and, although we do not need to FORGET about the 1960s and how the changed America as a nation, we need to stop reliving the decade through our politics and popular culture. We need to move on, as we did with World War II, as we did with World War I, as we did with the Revolutionary War (notices those I omitted, please).
If we continue to place Obama in the guise of MLK, Jr. or Malcolm X or JFK & R?K and McCain in the guise of LBJ, Nixon, Bush, whatever, we're only reliving the past and totally erasing the possibility of a new time in American government. If we whine about Bush Jr. and all of his messing ups and how all politicians under the same party are going to mess up and the same for the Dems and their illogical actions, we will never solve anything, let alone come to grips with what politics is doing to culture and society.
I wish someone would say, "Hey, what are we doing? We haven't solved a thing. We need to talk, not pander about playing with each other. I need to sit down and tell these people that they need to shut up and listen. Listen to whomever, forget the media and their ignorant motives, forget political leanings and earmarks and all of those selfish matters. I want to end the past corrupting the present now. I want people to realize how we can't grow unless we separate ourselves from our ancestor's actions that we have since learned was stupid and mean."
However, no one says this because they cannot learn how to separate themselves from what they think makes people like them. They cannot separate themselves from the static ideologies of their parties or historical culture. They cling to the past, hoping this will aid them in their pursuits of the future, hoping that they will become popular for what is being relived and is familiar to politics and anger. The past is being used more for propaganda than as a tool for learning past misdeeds and correcting them.
These 2008 campaigns only stress the ignorance expounded in modern politics and the media. The world will never learn. We will all live in guilt and never come to understand how the past must be lived with and not in.