For most of western history art was used as a way for patrons to showcase achievements or propagandize citizens or lionize individuals. Maybe the single greatest artist in human history, Michelangelo, created his greatest works for patrons of various sorts. David he created for the Florentine Guild of Wool, the Pieta for the French ambassador to the Holy See and the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica for popes. Art was, in one way or another an homage to something greater than its creator.
Fast-forward about three centuries and the art world begun
to change. Art as an indulgence of
artists, where they would paint whatever they wanted, with or without a desire
that someone would pay for it is largely a child of the late 19th
century. That’s when Impressionism, that
distinctly unconventional, non traditional form or painting emerged. In a very short period of time the world of
art went from uber traditional world of Bouguereau to
the anything but world of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh. Suddenly art was no longer a vehicle for vanity
or the celebration of greatness or storytelling. It was something else.
In 1917 Marcel Duchamp, a French artist unveiled a urinal on
a wooden box and called it “Fountain”. A
hundred years later art had “evolved” so much that a banana taped to a wall
with duct tape (an actual banana… not plastic or paper mâché) would sell
for $120,000 in 2019…
It is into this universe of art that we find what is
supposed to be cutting edge and courageous, in the form of the Pietà
by German designer Harald Glööckler.
The revisualization of the classic piece features a tattooed Christ and
a trans Mary. And what’s courageous
about this piece? It stands up to those
vicious, hateful… Christians.
In the cacophony of 2023, while there are other issues that
are of far more import than this, this one might be a bit illustrative.
Having the “courage” to stand up to Christians and defile
Christian traditions and symbols doesn’t actually require any courage… because
there’s no danger of anything bad actually happening besides some chastising
words from a few of the offended. No one
is going to issue death threats against you, no one is going to put a bounty on
your head, mobs of people aren’t going to start riots and kill others because
of you, as was shown in 1986 with The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili and 1987
with Piss Christ, by Andres Serrano. Of course there is another religion where
that’s exactly what happens if one were to criticize it or its symbols… but of
course those “courageous” artists aren’t assailing that religion.
This is a symbol of the bizarro world we find ourselves
living in. Other things that are counted
as courageous today include a man announcing that he’s a woman, flaunting one’s
morbid obesity in public or wrapping oneself in the flag of victimization for
being black or gay or some other category.
None of those things takes courage in 2023 America where
being anything but a patriotic heterosexual Christian white male accords hero
worship. It doesn’t take courage to assail someone or something where there is
no threat of consequences.
Heterosexual Christian white males built most (but not all) of
the world we live in today. It’s far
from perfect, but no time or place in history has been perfect. But it’s not their DNA that somehow makes
them better citizens or better people. No, it’s the culture they built.
We’re told that somehow western culture is bad because it
was not crafted by a multicultural collective.
That makes no sense. Virtually
every culture in human history has been built by members of a single race. There were not a lot of whites helping to
craft the Mali Empire in Africa, there were not a lot of blacks at the center
of the Chinese Middle Kingdom, not a lot of yellow people helping to build the
Inca Empire and there weren’t a lot of brown people helping to build Russia or the
Russian Empire. No, most of human history has been dominated by monochromatic
empires, nations and cultures.
Because that culture largely focuses on meritocracy,
accountability, individual liberty and limited government rather than coercion
from above, people who have yet to achieve their desired goals have the
opportunity to criticize it with impunity, something they cannot do in most
other parts of the world and couldn’t have done throughout most of human
history virtually everywhere. Yet without the threat of consequence they often
call themselves courageous.
Western civilization, the driver of said unprecedented
levels of freedom and prosperity and opportunity in all of human history, today
finds itself under attack by those who have migrated to it, have invaded it or
whose ancestors were brought to it, because they’ve not achieved their desired
goals. This, despite the fact that conditions back wherever they or their
ancestors left from are likely far worse than they are anywhere in the
west. But no matter. These “protesters” use the freedoms accorded
by western culture to attack it. That’s
a problem. No culture can survive if there are no shared values. No culture can survive if citizens don’t have
at least a common appreciation for the nations’ fundamental culture and assume
it to be a good thing.
Here at home, if those criticizing America were just a few
outliers there would be no problem. A
strong nation can withstand critique, even from within, and that’s why we have
a 1st Amendment. The problem
in 2023 however is that fully half of the country has been brainwashed into
believing that the bedrock principles upon which America is based are somehow
evil, corrupt or illegitimate. They got
that way because one of the two main political parties has proffered that lie for
decades and enlisted its fellow fabulists in the media, academia and the
government to reinforce it.
That is simply not sustainable. Like the movement of art
from the classical style of Botticelli, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Rubins to the self
important renderings of Basquiat, Mark Rothco, Robert Mapplethorpe and Glööckler,
the transition from the a nation built on universal God given fundamental
rights to one based on balkanization and subjective grievances based on
“equity” and victimization promises to replace something great with something
absurd. What’s more, that absurd
subjective culture cannot long stand.
Just as we’ve seen with the Democrat party since the beginning of the war
in Gaza, at some point groups joined by victim status can and will splinter as their
various victim classes turn against one another based on the current hierarchy of
victim status.
As we march towards what will be the most consequential presidential
election in American history, we might want to start suggesting to those who
seek to destroy what “white heterosexual Christian males” have built that they take
a look around. They’ll not find a better combination of opportunity, freedom
and real equality anywhere on earth or in history, particularly as it relates
to protecting minorities. They should,
unlike the Gays for Gaza buffoons we see in the streets, consider what happens
to them if they actually get what they wish for.
No comments:
Post a Comment