The Coup & Assorted Criticism, Hypery, Links

I feel like the world is generally ignorant of legendary marxist rap crew The Coup, or even worse, is actively skeptical or unreceptive to mentions of that group. I understand perfectly how people can be political, but I personally hold music to be much more honorable than politics, so the general lack of knowledge or enthusiasm about The Coup is baffling. It's understandable. I'm sure smug white people aren't The Coup's ideal audience, so lots of the people I most often deal with have nothing to say when I bring up The Coup.

Shamefully, I never really bring up The Coup at all when people ask me what I like to listen to. The near mythical production of Pam the Funkstress and Boots Riley's cutting rhymes. There was an awareness of the wrongness of things that should speak to anyone, at times. It's not particularly comfortable music, I suppose. It's a little incendiary, even. Revolutionary talk, whether posturing or not, is completely out of favor right now. It's seen something for teenagers, for the mentally unfit, or Russians,  terrorists and other people we disagree with and distrust. Anywhere you look in the world, people will call revolutionaries dangerous, misguided, lazy, out-of-touch – generally before revealing their own lack of comprehension about the basic concepts of socialism or Marxism, whenever socialism is brought up. If you can't revolt and can't hold government to account, why pretend to be happy or enfranchised?

So, if you'd ask me, I'd say The Coup is important, brutally honest, unique, and unabashedly political. Music with a message is nothing new, but it is the nature of popular music to be inherently pro-capitalist or at least ignore the issue or posture about it. The status quo is referenced to establish a lack of privilege and it's on to fun verses about partying, women, crime, or drugs. Hip hop and rap are often maligned for being empty-headed and consumerist by the very people who understand or identify with it the least, and The Coup in particular would serve as an amazing rejoinder. For those reasons and more, I want to pay homage, and celebrate the release of a new album!

Black Friday

I decided to do a commercialism/consumerism bit because in the United States of America it is Black Friday, which is a day when the bottom falls out of consumerism and people draw blood for 20% discounts on dishrags and various goods manufactured overseas. The obvious problem is that Black Friday is not patriotic. If you want to see how eager the average citizen of the world is to sell out their country, you just have to search YouTube for Black Friday videos. It seems most people would bum-rush the secret service for a $20 doohickey or polymer-based thingamajig.

What really sickens me is the subliminal vibes I get from the videos. There are literally herds of consumers. Yes, they are consumers at that point and, to the people advertising at them, not humans. They forget themselves in a strange orgy of incompetent and overloaded greed. I see that as degradation. There are a few news stories about it each year but no gigantic outcry.

Well, I think that Black Friday makes explicit the implicit degradation of consumerism, in which every bit of human potential is swept up in a subhuman madness to get the most for your money - from corporations to the individuals who mimic their behavior. There are no particular individuals to blame for a pathological, systematic problem. I don't hate consumerists. I don't even pity them. They are just bums with money, and in this era being a philistine is completely acceptable, so they work towards the next holiday, the next sale, the next iPhone, et cetera...

Despite facile attempts at being ethical and ecologically friendly, consumerism is more and more a bald lie that people chase because there's little else to do in the modern world but buy things, favourite things, attend things, unbox things, use them, show them off, and throw them out when they become outdated or broken. Oh and if you don't fit into this system there are labels for you: from communist to hobo to slob to snob. This goes beyond the differences between a pedestrian and a highbrow activist. I don't want my and my descendant's future sold to the highest bidder and sold at inflated prices to a mindless horde. I have to wonder if the bottom has fallen out of consumerism, but despite scenes of insane lemmingism I feel it will continue to be a powerful force in the world. Smug capitalism laughs, because this is all a useful distraction.

I find it sickening. Others might see it as fun or harmless, but consumerism guts economies and degrades not only the planet but the human spirit. For all that, spineless millions are unable or unwilling to give up the endless chase and (almost all) world leaders are curiously quiet on the matter. If commercial reform is going to happen, it will have to start with the literate consumer and work its way down the food-chain. Greed is a powerful and addictive drug, next to which cocaine looks like baby powder. This habit is going to leave our species on a truly heartbreaking comedown, and the more we snort the harder we will fall.

And I'm not innocent. Nobody is innocent, and I admit that we need things. However there are currently too many things and not enough reasons for them to exist. Production quotas could be fairer to natural resources and manufacturing does not have to be concentrated in coastal China. There are a lot of things that could be done, and our deluded quality of life might have to change, but if it doesn't, it's only a matter of time before herds of North American Consumers are fighting not for deals, but for livelihoods, to say nothing of consumers, producers, and bums across the world. So in the end I have to give it to Black Friday: thanks for showing how disgraceful we really are at our cores, and hopefully we notice this and do something about it.