The Anti-Life Culture of Thug "Music"
by Steven Thomas Druckenmiller
One of the most troubling trends in current society is the embrace and idolization of so-called “rap” (read: gangster, criminal, anti-social and anti-life) culture. Everywhere an individual may look, the full acceptance of gangster “life” and activity is present. In social gatherings, clubs, bars and dance halls, the most popular music with young teens (most noticeably, young white women, members of the groups whom these troglodytes vilify and bash the most) and twentysomethings is “thug life” music.
It is now disturbingly popular among young men of all racial persuasions to refer to women as “bitches” and “hoes.” Racial slurs (such as “nigger” and “honkey”) are now terms of light use, forgetting the ugly idea altogether of collectivism from which such disgusting terms sprang. What should be particularly upsetting to many SOLOists here about this anti-life music is its unending hatred for anything that is seen as opposed to gangster culture, to include homosexuals, women, successful blacks and the police.
The quandary in which the New Left finds itself would be funny if it were not so sad. On one hand, black males, the New Left’s favorite poster “victim,” are making themselves successful by marketing a lifestyle, successfully, to white suburbia. Some Leftists are delighted that the supposed “plight” of the American black male has entered white American consciousness so easily and subversively. However, the popularity of “thug life” comes with a heavy price: gangster culture and music currently derides and hates the New Left’s other “victim groups,” like poor women (called “bitches”), gays (called “fags,” “queers” ad nauseam) and middle-class blacks (who are often mocked in the ghetto community for “selling out” and refusing to sacrifice themselves to help the vicious gangsters oppress the community). This is why the New Left finds it acceptable to castigate and criticize rapper Marshall Mathers (Eminem), because he puts out lyrics with some of the same messages but he is white, so it’s OK to criticize him! Hypocritically, Eminem is far and away NOT the worst offender, not even close. In fact, even I find his lyrics (on his more serious pieces) intellectual, to the point that rap CAN be intellectual. No, even though Eminem is not the worst offender, the New Left shows its racism by going after someone because of his race.
The racial, misogynistic, violent and near-criminal tendencies of gangster rap should make it easy to dismiss and virulently unpopular. Yet it flourishes now more than ever? Why? Ayn Rand predicted this (as always) when she penned words about the “fashionable non-conformist.” Is it wrong to talk about women as mere commodities, calling them “bitches” and suggesting the entire sex isn’t worth a damn? Yes!, so America’s youth embrace it and call it “authentic street behavior.” Should it be wrong to glorify drive-by shootings, executing your neighbors for small insults and anti-police sentiment? Yes!, and so, American youth continue booty-shaking toward Gomorrah. As I stated earlier, the most disturbing trend is the way young, smart white women adopt ghetto culture, shaking their “thangs” while wearing clothes that would make a hooker vomit and going home with any “man” who will call her a “bitch” and treat her like one of the fillies of his herd. It is the fashionable non-conformist calling, telling her to have no respect for herself and to sacrifice in to the gods of Popularity and Crowd.
The Objectivist theory of art has a place here. We should recognize ghetto culture and rap music as just the newest and most dangerous form of Naturalism, because of the Naturalist’s tendency to tell life “how it is” rather than how is should be. We should continue to battle “thug music” and all other forms of Naturalism that tell us gays are to be hated, life on the street is nothing but pain, war and sorrow, and that misogyny is not just acceptable, it is to be embraced. The sick beat of rap reminds me of nothing less than the beat of savages, and rappers who believe in living their lives as if they lived in a jungle. Rap is anti-civilization, anti-success, and anti-life, and it is time Objectivists started waging philosophical war with these appalling ideas that “this is the way life is” and started offering up, instead, ideas about “the way life should be.”
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