It's No Wonder

I haven't eaten a slice of Wonder Bread since the late 60s.

Looking back, a slab of processed American cheese slathered in mayonnaise and topped with a green hairpiece of iceberg hidden between two slices of Wonder Bread was standard fare for a dumb shit like me.

Back then our Chevy BelAir had no seat belts. And back then my parents and their friends could knock back cases of liquor and fill tugboat-sized ashtrays in one evening like they were auditioning for Mad Men.

That was a long time ago. People change. Things improve. Except Wonder Bread.

If Wonder Bread has changed, it has changed for the worse. The New York Times singled out the makers of Wonder Bread as the Most Republican Company. It's no wonder.

Wonder Bread is American conservatism.

Like the air-filled bread, American conservatism lacks substance and leaves me hungry for more. Today's conservatism is bereft of intellectual honesty in the same way Wonder Bread is woefully lacking in nutritional value. For decades American conservatism, like the empty interstices of Wonder Bread, has been fodder for comedians.

If you are what you eat, then don't eat that shit.

REFERENCES

• The Most Republican Company? The Makers of Wonder Bread, 7 May 2014.

Flower Power Ain't So Cool Anymore

The venomous Tea Bagging nincompoops of 2010 have give us a better understanding of American politics in the 1960s.

The radical, counter-culture movement of 1960s was grounded in, and driven by, personal freedoms and exceptionalism, and less so on the philosophy progressives hold dear, like human interdependence and the tacit recognition of innate human flaws.

Forgetting about personal heroes, and legendary pop figures, like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young, the often lionized politics of the 1960s, when examined, is disappointingly me-centric:

• Don't let me be drafted, and
• Don't let the government dictate my personal habits;

rather than a generational plea for fundamental fairness, or a generational acceptance of the pragmatic logic of collectivism.

Personal Freedoms Over Collectivism

Through this lens, Flower Power ain't so cool anymore.

Many hippies were no more than over-indulgent, self-centered libertarians, who might just have devolved into the bitter tea baggers so prominently featured on the Ninny-News-Channel.

The music of the 1960s was insanely good, though.


Joe Cocker - Woodstock 1969.