Author P.J. O'Rourke reflects on life in the sixties to today with nostalgia and humor
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2024
- In this episode of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter sits down with one of America’s favorite political satirists, P. J. O’Rourke, to discuss his best-selling books and the political philosophies that inspired them. O’Rourke describes how he came to hold his political ideals on liberty and individual responsibility and goes on to analyze how his generation, the baby boomers, has shaped today’s policies. O’Rourke is the author of more than sixteen books, including Parliament of Whores, listed on the New York Times’s best-seller list and, most recently, The Baby Boom. His articles can be found in American Spectator, Vanity Fair, House and Garden, the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Weekly Standard, and more. Click here to watch:
R.I.P Mr O'Rouke.....BRILLIANT satirist!
i saw this guy in person at Cal State Northridge in 1987 or 88, He was giving a speech and was quite amusing. He was out front before the speech, I talked to him and had him sign my blue book because it was the only spare paper i had. Very nice guy and loved his work in National Lampoon,. Read most of his books since then. He's a much toned down Hunter Thompson with the volume turned down to sanity.
Fantastic interview.
Some people come across better in writing, some in speaking. Pick up All The Trouble in the World or Give War a Chance, they are so engaging its hard to put them down.
A perfect description, a tantrum brought on by Walt Disney. We learned nothing and remembered nothing. The Bourbons on
coke; Where are we going to get some more when this is gone?
What do we get if we let a whole generation pretty much have their own way? Lets see what happens with the Millennials in a dozen years.
Too much fun is lost to me...First impressions. Brian Williams embellishment? T. Sowell and T. Cruz have much stronger arguments. I hate and love politics, but I LOVE the HooverInstitution... It Grounds and elevates my thinking, and sharpens arguments.
This elaborate camera work is completely redundant. please don't do it again.
What a complete and total whitewash of the political reality of the 60's. I was there and active and remember it well. This guy is either totally ignorant or a liar.
InTheNameOfJustice Depends on your point of view. One man's reality is another man's fantasy...and vice-versa. Your experience was your own...but there were 74,999,999 other Boomers who might have seen things a bit different.
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Reality is reality. There is nothing relativistic about what is real.
InTheNameOfJustice ...according to how YOU saw it, of course. Anyone else who disagrees with you on this earth is just full of it, right?
Neither one, since I am A) not in need of a loony bin and B) am neither a Democrat, nor left wing, myself (there are fewer harsher critics of such than me).
Interestingly enough, P.J. O'Rourke is also a self-described conservative -- and it shows through, in his take of the 60's.
When talking about one's individual perception of the 60's (or their specific experiences, therein), that is different than hard, cold laws of physics. One's politics and views shape their world on a day-to-day basis, and the 60's were no exception -- meaning that ten different people could have had ten different experiences, and ten different stories. That's a bit different that ten different people walking off a rooftop and all of them being subject to the law of gravity, regardless.
Now, if your argument is that many people in the '60's were ignoring reality in their pursuit of 'peace' and left-wing utopianism, then yes...we are in agreement on that point. O'Rourke himself made note of that, in the book he talked about, here. There are hard, cold realities that exist as a backdrop to everything. I'm talking about each person's perspective simply being a little different, because no two people are exactly the same.
And yes...I do know what a catapult is. It's part of our vernacular here, in the states...and is quite distinct from what we know as a sling-shot (hand-held device consisting of a 'y'-shaped branch or pieces of wood, with a strip of rubber suspended between them).
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Sling shot. Noun. "a Y -shaped stick with an elastic strip between the prongs for shooting stones and other small missiles."
Also.....
sling-shot. noun.
1.North American
a handheld catapult.
I put "slingshot" for Americans because when many think of a catapult over there many think of the ancient siege engine and not the hand held type.
I grew up in the 60's. I saw people dodging reality all over the place. The entire drug culture was based on it. My point is that reality remains constant regardless of perception - drug induced or otherwise. People may have an alternative view of reality but it is their perceptions that are skewed and not reality itself.
I am glad I am not chatting here with another lefty. It means there is a chance for finding some common ground and talking sanely about things. I apologise for the slur. It was made because in my experience it is usually the left that retreat into esoteric ideas and claims about alternate realities to explain away their often sad and confused lives. I thought that was were you were headed.
Experience is subjective as you say because experience is influenced in humans by their emotional responses to reality and where they are, what they are doing and who with, in relation to that reality.
Two people watching a mounted policemen beating a protester over the head with a baton in 1960's Russell Square, in London, may form an entirely different view about what they saw based upon their emotional perspectives. Those emotional perspectives will form their personal political perspectives.
One of them may think the protester was attacking the established order and needed to be forcibly prevented from doing so and therefore the beating was justified. Another may think that the protester was being assaulted by the police officer and that the officer was wrong to use force.
Either way, the reality is that a mounted police officer beat some guy around the head with a baton on that day and at that time in that place. That cannot be changed by individual perception, regardless of how stoned/drunk/prejudiced/politically invested etc the individual may be and regardless of what they think they saw, or what they 'wanted' to think they saw and heard at the time.
My argument with P.J. O'Rourke's view of the 60's is that it highly inaccurate from a political point of view. So inaccurate that it is dangerous because it misinforms the now generation. In fact, the 1960's was not a decade when the powers that be simply removed all restrictions and let people "do what they wanted." As if it were some giant party. The opposite is true. The establishment tried very, very, hard to fight against the revolution that was taking place and lost because they were incompetent in HOW they fought. It was Sun Tzu in, "The Art of War" who said (para) 'know yourself and know your enemy.' The establishment in the 1960's knew neither. It had lost its own way and had no idea where the people were going and why, either.
It was not a "social experiment" as he claims, it was a genuine revolution that is still going on to this day and which is having enormously damaging effects on our society in the West, just as it was designed to do.
For me, P.J. O'Rourke trivialises what he does not understand and so manages to retain the illusion of being smart while completely missing the truth about what the people in the 60's (And all subsequent decades) were really going through. He views things through a lens that he invented for himself and it is a lens that seems to prevent him from looking in the right places for answers. Consequently, he is missing the reality and inventing his own.
Had I the chance to talk with him I would suggest he investigate the Frankfurt School and their doctrines. The highly influential proponents and teachers of those doctrines at the time. The recipients and enablers of those doctrines and the effects they had, and are still having, in the West.
What happened in the 1960's was no "social experiment." It was a calculated revolution that had set out, in print, in advance, all of its aims and goals and which has not deviated one inch from those aims and goals. The 1960's saw the advent of Cultural Marxism and we are living with its freedom killing effects right now.