The Dawning Of The Age by Jeff Dorchen
This is the time of year when my thoughts turn to the dark cave of ancient European winter solstice traditions. I don’t know what all the specifics are, but I know that Yule was a macabre time when the countryside was skulked by goat-headed demons, wooly wildmen brandishing knobby clubs, vengeful ghosts, hammer-wielding butchers, and other pagan shades visiting comeuppance, disproportionate or otherwise, upon the gullible, myth-hectored children of Europe. And from this I derive comfort. I crawl into that dim thought-cave and hibernate till early January.
As I drift off, I ponder. I ponder, ruminate, daydream, and consider. What is the nature of this historical period we’re living in? Is this really the rightwing version of the Age of Aquarius as it’s advertised to be? If so, what shall we call it? The Age of Acquisitus? The Age of Cupiditus? The Age of Non compos mentis? The Age of Nefarious, Precarious, Usurious, You Serious?
It’s clear that the fascist chaos-mongers of today feel themselves to be simultaneously the functional equivalent of, the revenge upon, and the antidote to the radicals of five and six decades ago. Milo Yiannopoulos, James O’Keefe, and Dinesh D’Souza think they’re the Yippies of the new millennium. The nationalist, nativist, and white supremacist militias consider themselves justified by, as they justifiably retaliate against, not just BLM or the Presidency of Obama, but also the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and the American Indian Movement from “back in the day.”
And their rank-and-file Paleoconservative fellow travelers in the voting and non-voting-on-principle mass of Americans consider themselves “hip” to the “anti-establishment” message today’s groovy thought-masters are laying down. The execrable Jordan B Peterson has no better analogue in the past zeitgeist than Alan Watts of yore.
Of course, these analogues are not one-to-one. Alan Watts championed the probably mythical founder of Taoism, Laozi, whose work he had some grasp on and whose message he attempted to pass along in relatively good faith, while the bullying Peterson champions a Nietzsche distorted through his own pet peeves and crotchets with, more than likely, an eye to one day setting up a franchise of motivational churches.
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