“Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes”

“Changes”

David Bowie

The Beatles were dismissed as teenage tripe until “Yesterday” and “Michelle,” the backwards vocals of “Rain” and “Sgt. Pepper,” and the adoption of the act by Leonard Bernstein and others in the pantheon of artists respected by establishment.

The Beatles wiped out everything that came before except the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, they ushered in a new era of innovation, the world was music crazy.

Just like with the internet.

And the internet is the devil to the establishment. In these days, the east coast elites who control media.

Social media must be stopped. It’s ruining our children. Look at that kid who killed himself over a chatbot. All chatbots must die!

Kinda like in the old days when just a few disgruntled viewers would call into a station and a TV program would be cancelled. The minority would whipsaw the majority.

But the Beatles were so successful they ushered in a golden era of music, at least commercially, that was only threatened at the turn of the century by Napster. The CD is forever! Even though you can now listen to better than CD quality on numerous streaming services, including mainstay Apple.

Someone asked me how the Democratic party could turn it all around.

I said it would happen when the baby boomers died. And maybe some of the Gen-X’ers too.

Same deal with the music industry. Old people who think they know better doing their best to keep in place an old model that is no longer serving the populace.

That is the story of the year in recorded music. The consolidated major labels have lost control over new music, which is now the land of indies, many making stuff that is anything but Top 40/Spotify Top 50 friendly.

Not that MAGA isn’t a complete load of crap. Things weren’t that good in the old days, and the past has never returned in my lifetime. Sure, there’s some nostalgia, like with vinyl records, but if you lived through that era you think digital music is the best thing that ever happened! The records don’t skip, they don’t have any surface noise, you don’t have to lift the needle at the end of the record, never mind drop it to begin with, and the digital file sounds just as good the thousandth time through unlike the vinyl.

Ah, but people yearn for the old days.

But youngsters are not constrained by them.

Youngsters were on Facebook until better products were released and they abandoned the service to oldsters, who came lately. The youngsters will abandon a platform for a newer, more enticing one on a regular basis. And every time this happens the oldsters are confounded, say they’re not moving from Facebook, if they’re on it at all, and it’s all right to share vacation photos, but we must set limits.

Humans live to connect. It’s in our DNA. And the oldsters want to deny this? Imagine being able to contact each and every person you ever encountered when you grew up, what a dream! The girl you knew at camp, you could message her instantly, even see each other via Facetime. But oh, the art of letter writing is gone, this isn’t good, please bring back the letters.

And we knew who the stars were. The ones built by the system. If you didn’t play by the rules, you couldn’t get distribution, and sans distribution you couldn’t play at all. There was a filter, of gatekeepers, and now that filter is gone.

Even worse, the biases and allegiances of the gatekeepers have been exposed. And the celebrities themselves have been in many cases revealed to be moneygrubbing nitwits. So…

The public used the new platforms to build their own empires, and the oldsters don’t like it.

If you were on X, you could see the power of Elon his bros. But most people pontificating on the left were not on X, so how would they know? And TikTok is a pariah. Can you believe it, people are getting their news from TikTok! But how would you know what that really means if you’ve never been on TikTok?

The emperor has been revealed to have no clothes. And let’s be clear, I’m speaking of the emperor on the left. Which told us ad infinitum that it knew better, was educated and could see the landscape and was to be trusted, when just the opposite was true.

News is big business. There are highly paid executives. It’s a product.

But you can produce a podcast in a basement, for almost no dough. How can that be real? How can a record made by nobody in their bedroom be real?

Well, sans filter it’s a lot more genuine.

Have you ever been interviewed for the news? Oftentimes the person you’re speaking with has no underlying knowledge of the subject. They’ve got prepared questions, your answers are brief, and that’s the way it’s always been done. But Joe Rogan says he doesn’t know much and lets you talk forever. And if you talk long enough, we can see who you are. Don’t you see why this is appealing?

Who is Joe Rogan responsible to? Even Neil Young couldn’t shut him down.

I’m not endorsing Rogan, but I can see how he’s successful.

Let’s be clear, he’s paid his dues, it’s not like he came from nowhere. He was a comic, a TV personality and then was lucky enough to be hooked up with the UFC and voila! Excoriate him all you want, but in truth he’s a product of the old system who jumped into the new.

And people are always looking for the new.

The idea of new in TV news is to change the set. In today’s world it’s less about the penumbra than the nougat, the essence of what you’re selling. You might have a pretty face, but to sustain attention, there must be something there.

One of the most revered podcasters is Sam Harris, a philosopher, with a slow delivery. He evidences thinking, he can question his beliefs, you don’t see this on TV news. As Scott Galloway recently put it:

“People listen to pods to learn; they watch cable TV to sanctify what they already believe.”

I turned on MSNBC two days after the election and it was the same as it ever was. The faults of the right, no reconsideration, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, us vs. them. I turned it off, I don’t have time for that.

If you’re excoriating the youth and social media, the internet in general, the joke is on you.

The smartphone is the greatest device ever invented by man. Better than the wheel. The smartphone can take you anywhere, instantly. Awaken you to new worlds. Keep you in touch with everybody and everything.

Anybody who has spent a lot of time using one knows this.

But we have articles in the “New York Times” about smartphone fasts, turning the device off for a day or a week or a month… And others telling you not to upgrade, and still others saying people are still keeping their flip phones. This is like oldsters in the sixties demanding radio bring back Perry Como!

And so many are unaware of the power of these devices. Sure, you can do your e-mail, text, but if you’ve got an iPhone 16 Pro and that’s all you’re doing, you’re a person more concerned about image than what’s inside. Dig deep. Get into reddit. Buy Apple News+. Oh, that’s another thing, oldsters won’t pop for subscriptions, for online costs like youngsters. You’re buying air, something not real, and therefore they’re out. Meanwhile, the less you spend the less you know. Not everything is free, contrary to conventional wisdom, especially news.

What this election has revealed is that those telling us they knew what was going on have absolutely no clue.

Starting with Biden. Who couldn’t read the landscape. Yeah, we want a President in his eighties, who is already slowing down. If he just went online, he’d be aware of all the negative feedback, he might have reconsidered his position to run. If you’re not checking in with what people are saying about you, then you don’t know what kind of impact you’re having. Sure, a lot of the hate should be ignored, but there’s a lot to learn by being exposed to it.

And the Democratic party told us the instant anointment of Harris would yield no negative effects. Well, the internet is all about transparency. Never mind that when she actually ran, her goal was to say little or utter word salad.

Even worse, if you say any of the above, you’re seen as a hater. The left has become as bad as the right.

So let me get this straight, I must agree with everybody on everything. I must love Taylor Swift, BTS, I have to subjugate my identity to be a member of the group. This is what the youngsters rebelled against in the sixties, which is why that decade resulted in so much revolutionary change.

I don’t want to paint the right as angels. But at least they understand where we’re at better than the left.

I know I’m shocked that my grocery prices are high. I went to Langer’s for a #19 and it was $23.95. For a pastrami sandwich? How can that BE?

But you keep telling me the economy is great.

Sure, tell me every nation had inflation, and Biden did a good job of addressing it, but don’t tell me everything’s hunky-dory and we should just have more of the same.

These are basics. Even abortion is secondary to food on the table.

But the Democrats couldn’t see this, not at all.

And the worst thing about the Democrats is since they’re educated, the products of the good life, they believe they’re right, they can’t question their beliefs whatsoever. They’ve spent their entire life building to this perch, they don’t want to sacrifice an iota, don’t want to lose a step, they just want to stonewall. Sound like Trump? IT DOES!

Oh, I could list all the heinous Trump policies. And I didn’t vote for him. But I never believed in Kamala Harris. I thought she was smart, but did I really think she was experienced and could do the job? And don’t tell me about Obama, he was inexperienced and it showed. Enough of the coronation. Obama appeased the right to his and our detriment. Give Biden credit for ignoring the blowback and doing what was right.

Yes, Biden was very right before he got it wrong.

If this was sports they would have pulled him from the field long ago. Lose your skills and you’re gone, whether you’re Magic Johnson or Joe Namath or anybody. Becomes a time when you can’t do it anymore. Doesn’t mean you weren’t great before.

Enough with the resistance. Enough of being down in the dumps. This is the time for a giant reset.

Sure, trans people need to be protected. Sure, we should protect the rights of minorities. But when these are considered our major issues, most of the public says where’s that at, if you want me I’ll be in the bar.

It’s scary. Because right now there’s no one to believe in. Not in the mainstream or the blogosphere or social media or in podcasting. You pick and choose, you literally do your own research. Ain’t that a laugh. We should have trusted sources. We thought we had them. This week taught us we did not.