Devolution

Was Devo Right About The End of Awareness

Watching Donald Trump’s Address to Congress, it reminded me of the prescient philosophical underpinnings of Devo. You may remember Devo from their hit Whip It which was a staple in the rotation on MTV in the early 80’s, when they used to actually play music.

Devo was founded in 1970 – borne out of the chaos of the shootings of students protesting the Vietnam War on the campus of Kent State in Ohio in 1970. Crosby Stills Nash and Young wrote a famous song about it, and Devo’s founders were students there at the time.

Devo, short for “devolution” a moniker conjured by Devo’s founder Mark Mothersbaugh, was predicated on the idea that society and culture was de-evolving, regressing, backsliding toward our murky origins.

It’s hard to argue against them. Despite, or maybe because of our modern technological advancements and understanding, in many ways we are going backwards. It seems common sense runs inverse to technology, at least in some circles. What is unclear is just how far we’ll go.

We may have an answer. We saw in Trump’s Address that Devo was clearly on to something.

First, for some context – let’s not get bogged down in semantics – while it was called an Address to Congress, it was essentially a State of the Union address. Let’s take a peek at some key elements of standout State of the Union speeches from the past.

Abraham Lincoln, 1862:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.”

James Monroe - 1823

“The people being with us exclusively the sovereign, it is indispensable that full information be laid before them on all important subjects, to enable them to exercise that high power with complete effect. If kept in the dark, they must be incompetent to it.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt – 1942

“Freedom of speech and expression”

“Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way”

“Freedom from want, which… means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants”

“Freedom from fear… a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point … that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.”

You get the picture. Heady stuff from our forefathers. They touted aspirational visions for our country grounded in an acknowledgement of human nature, with an understanding that though there are divisions in the country, and differing ideas on policy, at the end of the day we wanted to get to the same place, even if we took different paths to get there.

Now, let’s look at some of the deep-thinking policies and executive orders President Trump focused on in his speech:

· We ordered all federal workers to return to the office. They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.

· I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America

· You should be hired and promoted based on skill and competence, not race or gender. Very important. You should be hired based on merit.

· I signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.

· I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women's sports.

These are just a few of the layups Trump took in his first days in office and highlighted in his address in one of the most esteemed ritual events in our nation.

There is something profoundly unsettling about the most powerful man in the world finding it necessary to spend political capital on such foolishness.

That these self-evident ideas are in any way controversial, let alone need to be codified, shows we are approaching peak stupidity as a nation.

Rather than being the assumed baseline of human awareness, as understood by toddlers, these elementary views will get you canceled in some circles and must be officially recognized by the President of the United States in the most formal of settings, in order to get on to more pressing issues.

This is not progress.

So, instead of enacting meaningful research into say curing cancer, or building efficiencies into energy production, bringing down inflation, or stopping World War III, we’re spending time codifying things that any child will know instinctively before they ever reach kindergarten.

To further illustrate our long slide into irrelevance, let’s peek into the behavior of sitting, elected officials at the Address, and ask yourself, how do these people differentiate themselves from children who eat paste, poop themselves, and struggle to control their emotions:

· Like preschoolers on a field trip, they wore the same color clothing to mark their place in their tribe

· They used paddles to either signal their displeasure, or ask for permission to use the restroom - it’s still not clear

· One member had such big feelings that he disrupted the entire class and had to be given a timeout

· Several members unable to focus on the teacher, left the classroom to go outside for recess

Mind you, these people are supposed to represent the highest, most elevated ideals and character of our country.

Compare the self-inflated intellect of say congressional crybabies with the relative Neanderthals of Renaissance Italy. Or the dusty patrons of Toulouse Lautrec salons, bickering over wine and absinthe of such lowly concepts as the meaning of art, the beauty of God’s creation, understanding the cosmos, or the art of war. Clearly, they pale in relation to the high-brow antics of elected officials lip-synching to Tik-Tok rap videos.

Not to mention this country’s founders, mocked and derided by the paste eaters as misogynists, colonizers, and oppressors of all mankind.

Those so-called tiny brain misfits sought to bring enlightenment, liberty, and beauty to the nation. They understood that humans, with all their frailties and base impulses, are children of God, and would strive to live a noble life in duty to God and man.

In the fevered brains of today’s enlightened class, these backward thinkers, creators, and visionaries of the past, can’t hold a candle to the elevated thinkers of today’s “Trump is Hitler” crowd.

One might think that this is a natural evolution, or de-evolution as it were, but it’s not. It takes a lot of work to see the world filtered through madness and contrary to natural law. We can look to the George Soros’ of the world to see their steady hand on this dismantling of society, though it clearly didn’t start with him, and it will last well past his demise.

Today fully half of our society scoffs at the idea of beauty and elevated discussions on humanity, preferring to screech and posture for social media clicks. Tell me again how advanced we are?

Devolution is near complete.

Let’s hope a search for truth and meaning can keep the destruction at bay and we can revert to the quest for enlightenment that drove our ancestors to greatness.

And he wore a hat

And he had a job

And he brought home the bacon

So that no one knew

He was a mongoloid

—Mongoloid by Devo

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