Do you remember, back in the day, when giants once walked the earth? Our childhood era was populated by improbably world-bestriding figures such as “Air” Jordan and “Iron Man” Cal Ripken; Madonna, Prince, and Bruce; Ronnie, Maggie, and Gorby; Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael — the list goes on. Studies have shown that when you ask people what the cultural “golden age” was during their lives, they almost invariably answer with a date when they were between the age of 16 and 25. The best music, the cutest movie stars, the handsiest presidents — they say it’s all merely a reflection of the bias from your own formative halcyon days, nothing more. They forgot Ibram X. Kendi.
For I remember our most recent golden age — perhaps more accurately an iron-pyrite age, if you will — when giants of culture still truly walked among us. And it was quite recently: after the George Floyd riots, during the final violent spasms of the Great Awokening. Recall that horrible, exhausted moment: Huddling in Covid lockdown, with a tumultuous presidential election on the way, we got Ferguson redux in Minneapolis. And at that point a procession of legendary grifters already plying their trade made their bones on the backs of our national discourse, forever deforming it.
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