You Say You Want a Revolution?

The last Luddite column ("What If They Gave a War...?") stirred the pot more than a little, provoking plenty of debate. In the words of a great American patriot, "Mission accomplished."

Besides the threaded discussion that accompanied the column, hundreds of you saw fit to write me directly to say "Right on" or "You're full of (expletive deleted)" and, in at least one instance, "Christ, you're pompous." (Guilty with an explanation, your honor.) One guy even suggested that my lousy curveball was the real reason I quit the high school baseball team. Oh, and that I probably walk like a girl.

But pro or con, the chorus was so overwhelming, and so scattered -- responses ranging from the insightful and thoughtful to the I've-just-spilled-my-beer-on-my-shoes variety -- that I'd like to keep this ball rolling for another week.

Because arguing long and loud about where we're headed as a nation is something that's long overdue and badly needed in our increasingly bargain-basement marketplace of ideas.

Readers who think the nation has lost its ethical bearings, if not its mind, tended to agree with my basic premise that the administration is using the fear of terrorism to keep us compliant while it pursues its own agenda, very little of which has anything to do with terrorism. Plenty of you disagree, of course, although the tactic itself is certainly not new.

My profession comes in for its share of blame, too, getting slammed pretty hard from both the left and right. Conservatives, as is their wont, delight in fingering liberal, biased journalists, blaming them for everything from disintegrating morality to coddling terrorists to fluoridated water. You lefties (and I use the word here in its broadest sense) see a media that has become more corporate and profit-driven, hence far less inclined than before to rock the ship of state which, after all, is Job One for a free press in a democratic society.

I received a lot of angry mail from people who didn't appreciate my laying out such an unhappy scenario without providing any solutions. To recap, the fundamental causes for our present misery are hubris, arrogance and greed. How do you offer solutions for problems so deeply rooted in the human condition?

How about simply refusing to go along?

But a lot of you also said that taking it to the streets, à la 1968, is not an effective tactic in 2006. And you're right. Bucking the system -- real rebellion -- requires passion, healthy skepticism and a spirit of self-sacrifice, all of which are in short supply in today's cynical world.

Conformity through consumption is the name of the game these days. What is a hipster, after all, other than a successful slave to the dictates of the pop culture police? A ponce like that isn't going to stick his neck out for anything. What? And risk having some baton-wielding cop break his iPod? I mean, how annoying is that?

The '60s counterculture, which rose organically and flourished only briefly, was co-opted and marketed out of existence, just as the hip-hop culture is being co-opted and marketed out of existence now. Once Madison Avenue smells money, you can sound the death knell for any original idea.

And nothing sells to the "youth demographic" like the idea of being a rebel. Well, guess what? The iconoclast has been marketed out of existence, too. This is a nation of sheep. Slick magazines, TV and, increasingly, the internet tell us what to buy, what to wear, how to think. (Cosmopolitan even tells you how to have an orgasm.) Mass culture has extracted our collective rebel bone. If only the British had marketed themselves better in 1776, we'd still be swearing fealty to the Crown.