To be honest, probably the worst tantrum ever. Obviously I’m talking about the riot in the baseball stadium over what was it? Human rights? An end to world hunger? The unjust treatment of marine mammals at Sea World? Oh no that’s right. It was about disco. The music sensation that literally hurt no one. This kind of thing bums me out. The resources wasted, the facility that got trashed, the ton of people who were inconvenienced. And nothing got accomplished. Other than an aside in a history book, what did they achieve?

The amount of power that crowd possessed could have really been put toward something worthwhile, but instead they wasted it on something silly. Honestly I don’t get the whole anti-disco thing. Don’t like it? Don’t listen to it. Easy peasy. It’s like Justin Beiber. People scream about him all day long but it’s not going to stop him from being awful at everything. The whole idea is absurd, and honestly so juvenile. I think it really says something about our culture that this event was considered a success. The wanton destruction of property and disregard for safety in the name of the inane encapsulates the American people to a T.

To me it seems crazy that we could consider ourselves a country before radio. I mean, we had no unifying THING. No one thing that brought the whole country together other than war or something. That is so crazy to think about. Now I could be listening to the same radio station as some kid in Kentucky, or a grandma in Nevada or something else weird and I would never know but it’s so cool to think that it could be happening.

I for one don’t think that nationalism has ended. As long as there are things that everyone dislikes, we’re okay as a country. And as long as we have a government, that’s taken care of. I don’t think any kind of marketing could totally end nationalism. I mean, right now we all have person-specific marketing shoved at us every time we go on Amazon.com, or ebay or wherever. It’s something we all have that makes us feel special. I think it might even bring us together a little bit to think that we have our own set of preferences, outside of our niche. The idea that we don’t have to conform completely is comforting, to me at least.

I think at a certain point we have to acknowledge that corporations have too much power. I mean, if Disney can just change the laws whenever they want what’s the point? Now, I love Disney, I don’t know what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t grown up watching Disney movies, but the mouse is a nonessential element. I understand that the mouse kind of built the company, but that was forever ago. It’s time to move on. If Disney was smart they’re let that go and work it to their advantage. Don’t ask me how, I’m dumber than they are, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I think if they let the mouse go people would start using it for a while, then realize that all they’re doing is advertising for Disney. At this point there’s no going back. It will forever be a Disney icon. Another reason they don’t need to cling to it! There’s really nothing anyone could do with that mouse that would damage Disney in any way. Unless someone did do something bad with the image, claiming to be Disney. That, obviously would be wrong. But other than that, Disney seems untouchable.

I have to say, I really love the idea of copyleft. I had never heard of it before ,but now that I have it seems perfect. Claiming no ownership of something is the coolest thing, I can’t believe it’s not more popular. Well, I can believe that to be honest, given the whole capitalism thing we’ve got going on. But I guess you can really only transcend capitalism if you have no good ideas, or enough to hand out for free. I fall into the former category.

I mean I’d love to take advantage of this kind of thing, I just don’t feel I have anything to contribute. The only problem I have with this is that it’s exclusive to ideas. You couldn’t copyleft a piece of writing, could you? I mean you could but anyone could make modifications to it and the integrity is lost. And without the author’s original name and viewpoints, a huge piece of the intended influence is gone. This is only crossing my mind because this is my area- or at least kind of. I’m an English major, and I’m just trying to find a way that this could carry over.

I suppose that a universal publishing kind of thing could be established, but I guess that’s kind of the internet, isn’t it?

I started out thinking that using someone else’s rhythm or melody in a song wasn’t a terrible thing. I mean, if one person can write a song, but another person can write it better, that second person should get the credit, right? I understand now how stupid that logic is. Maybe if both people wrote the melody from scratch, but one person just making changes to the others work is not the same as ownership. I can’t just walk into a house, hang a picture on the wall, and claim the house is mine now.

Similarly musicians should not be stealing other people’s music, or using it at all without permission. If your contribution to that song is going to be so great, then the first thing you should do is tell the original artist. Musicians love constructive feedback, right?

But, as we discussed, at what point does it stop being plagiarism and start being memory? I know I’ve got a million tunes rattling around in my head that I could never hope to identify in a million years. They are so old, and have been there for so long that to try to figure out where they came from would take a mind reader. If I used one of those tunes and made a million dollars, and some 80-year-old burnout comes up to me and claims credit, am I really responsible? At that point I don’t think so.

I find it hard to believe that there were really 3,000 black confederates at one point or another. The idea that an individual would fight against their freedom is so foreign to me. But, on the other hand, they were slaves. Intentionally kept ignorant as long as the white owners could pull it off. I have no doubt that they were capable of convincing their slaves of their cause. Or just flat out ordering them to partake.

The part I find unrealistic is the 3,000 portion of it. That level of manipulation seems unmanageable, just from a logistics standpoint. But to comment on the dependability of the storyteller, I’m not sure Steiner was really on top of things. There’s no way he was the only person to see this army of black soldiers. Had it really existed there would have been some other accounts, I’m sure of it.

Why then, though would he commit to writing such an absurd story? As an educated man, you’d think he’d know better than to exaggerate to that extent.

To be honest, I don’t know how to feel about these shows. I want to feel outraged, but I fell like it’s not my place to be outraged. I feel ashamed that I am part of this kind of culture, even if it is in a lesser form now. But it mostly just makes me tired. I realize that these shows had a huge influence on the direction of music in America, but it gets me so mad that that influence had to come from something so disgusting.

It makes me wonder if everything is like that really. Does everything that has changed America come from being awful in general? This whole country’s history starts with the reckless bloodshed of its native peoples, from the Aztecs to the American Indians, and hasn’t gotten much better since. We fight off anyone who wants to have the slightest influence over us, and we build walls to make sure everyone else stays good and out. And as if that weren’t bad enough, when we get bored we go out and start trouble ourselves!

How would American culture progressed if the Minstrel shows had never been a thing? Would we have found some new way to be awful, or would we actually have done something right for a change and tried to mend a relationship. I’ve read that the reason a lot of racism still exists in America is because we never talked about slavery in an open way. We fought a war to end it (kind of) but then we immediately put it in our history. There was no discussion or accountability. It was a thing of the past, just like that. Would the American public have benefited from some kind of open dialogue? Absolutely. But we don’t have it. It’s why I feel I don’t have a right to be outraged, and why I feel ashamed of myself.

I find it so interesting that America- this crazy country that has never done anything other than whatever the hell it wants, is always chasing the past. There is nostalgia in everything we do! Not just in the music we discussed by Chess that is designed to make people homesick for the South, or country music for the same kind of thing. But nostalgia is marketed to us, literally, it is used in ad campaigns every day.

“You need this new camera to preserve memories of your kids who are growing up too fast.”

“You need to buy this light bulb to save the planet so your children can enjoy the same Earth you did.”

It’s shoved down our throats at every turn and we eat it up! Well, as a youth (ish) of this country I feel personally victimized by this (I’m being dramatic for effect, I swear I’m not a brat.) All this talk about providing a better world for the children and here I am, barely on the cusp of adulthood and reaping no benefits whatsoever from this attack. You want to give your kids a better life? How about health care? How about free higher education? How about sex ed programs in inner cities that actually teach safe sex? How about a government that doesn’t beg us for our vote one second and curse us as lazy the next? OR how about taking some of that ad money clearly going to waste and feeding some of the starving youths out there? I realize that this was in no way really related to the lesson, but that’s what it got me thinking about.

The thing I find most shocking after our discussion of the internet is that the entire world doesn’t have whiplash. This entire, world-changing thing has come around so fast! When I think about how long it’s taken the human race to get to this point and then how quickly this crazy big thing has been assimilated into our lives, it’s kind of scary. It’s like in all those old sci-fi movies where someone comes out of nowhere with a brain chip and people are all “Hey this sounds like a great idea! Let’s ALL get brain chips!” and then surprise surprise it’s a mind control device and you’re just sitting there going, ‘How the hell did you not see that one coming?’

Not that I thing the internet is a mind control device- or at least it wasn’t designed to be one in any intentionally awful way. I just think when something this good comes along this fast, it’s a sign we need to step back and chill out for a bit. I want to clarify- this is coming from a millennial- I’m not some crotchety old grandpa condemning today’s youth. I just know from personal experience- I mean when I was a kid we didn’t have internet. Now I carry it around literally in my back pocket and freak out if I don’t check it every day.  That’s not healthy.

Not that I’m going to change anything anytime soon, but at least I’m aware of my problem.

I gotta say, I’m not a huge fan of war. I mean, I don’t think anyone is really, but there are people who call it a necessity. Or, as discussed in class, that they are important to the reorganization of the world. I have a few different perspectives to throw at this statement. Firstly is my own. My dad was in the Army, and was deployed in Iraq and Saudi Arabia for nearly a decade of my childhood. He didn’t have any crazy sense of patriotism, he didn’t go voluntarily. He had joined the reserves as a job banking on the idea that no one would be stupid enough to start another war before his number was up. Thankfully he came home safe. Every day though I think, from the perspective of one little person, how incredibly pointless it was for me to miss out on the experience of having my dad home every day.

My other perspective is somewhat pro-war. Speaking as a member of the human race, I do think in the long run war makes things better, culturally. There are the reasons we discussed in class, like the wonderful pension building and the glory of the IQ test. But there are so many other things too, worldwide that would not have happened without a major cultural revamp. Violence yields a type of beauty that peace will never know- I mean look at any country, like France for example. More revolutions and invasions than you can shake a stick at. And what do you get at the end of it? A haven of exquisite food and art. I don’t know another place on Earth that has produced something that beautiful out of nothing.

My third perspective is a bit depressing, but it’s got to do with nature, and the nature of things. Is war in our nature? I can’t think of another species that wages wars to the extent that humans do. Does that make us natural or unnatural? Is that what makes us human? Our willing determination to wipe each other out? If so I’m not so sure I’m so hot on the human race anymore.