All of the people punk rock taught me to hate were already dead or irrelevant by the time I heard the songs about them. Heart failure claimed Pol Pot the same year I first heard Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia." Margaret Thatcher's reign of terror as Prime Minister had ended long before I listened to Crass' "How Does It Feel to Be the Mother of 1,000 Dead." And when I got around to discovering Reagan Youth's discography, The Gipper was a senile old codger counting jellybeans in a rocking chair by a window somewhere.For those who discovered punk after the 80s, the genre was more influential in theory than in practice. The major enemies covered in early punk songs had been dismantled or worn down, but the music's guiding principle remained: The government is inherently evil and not to be trusted. You may know this ideology better by its street name: FUCK THE GOVERNMENT. That ethos, combined with a studded belt and ╬Void╬ backpatch, was pretty much all you needed for your Punk 101 Starter Pack.It was easy to apply this antagonistic "murder the government" [citation: Mr. Mike Burkett, 1997, all rights reserved] attitude during the Bush years, which employed an administration that resembled a veritable cast of Batman villains, from Dick Cheney as the war profiteering Penguin to the Joker himself, George W. Bush, a dimwitted country club daddy's boy who fell assbackwards into the rank of world's most powerful patsy. For eight years, punks flew the "Not My President" flag and the spirit of resistance lived on, with no shortage of things to oppose: two illegal wars, the institution of the Patriot Act, the use of torture, a skyrocketing deficit, and the "war on terrorism" blank check for invading and destroying any perceived threat.But then Barack Obama came along and the line blurred.On paper, Obama was a step forward—a young, biracial idealist appealing to basic tenants of social progress. In campaign speeches, he spoke of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, upholding Roe v. Wade, lifting bans on stem cell research, and expanding protections afforded by hate crime statutes to cover those committed based on gender and sexual orientation. It all sounds basic and commonsense in hindsight but even as recently as 2008 it was fairly revolutionary to hear those ideals as part of a major party's political platform. Given the choice between him and yet another decrepit white man who popped a Viagra every time he thought about bombing brown people, punk made its choice.Continue reading on Noisey.
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