You can always count on Johnny Lydon – AKA Johnny Rotten of the legendary Sex Pistols – to tick people off. He ticked me off last May when I saw him with his second band, PiL, and he not only failed to play any of the classic Pistols hits but also any of PiL’s good songs. I was deeply annoyed – and figured that if Johnny isn’t annoying you, he just isn’t Johnny. He is a rebel.
Johnny did it again when Queen Elizabeth II passed away. The Sex Pistol are, of course, known for their 1977 song “God Save the Queen,” among others – the whole punk scandal overshadowed the fact that the Pistols are a great, great rock band (“Bodies” not only rocks but is basically a conservative anti-abortion tune) – and a superficial reading of the song’s lyrics imply contempt for the monarch. Granted, lyrics like “God save the queen/She's not a human being” might lead you to that impression, though the terrific song – it’s one of the best rock tunes ever – is really about the alienation brought on by the failure of their own British ruling class in the seventies.
So, when Elizabeth went to her reward, Lydon used his official Twitter account to tweet a beautiful portrait of the monarch (incidentally, the same one the Pistols adulterated for their famous record cover) and included the words “Send her victorious,” a stirring line from the British national anthem which is also called “God Save the Queen.”
Oh, did the self-proclaimed edgy set freak out. If you read the comments, you were treated to a non-stop litany of sissy blue checks explaining to Johnny Freaking Rotten how he’s just not punk enough for their exacting standards. The guy who spent his twenties hanging out with Sid Vicious was getting lectured to by people who spent their twenties out with their parents and using their inside voices.
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No punk ever tells you his pronouns.
And you know Johnny got a kick out of blowing the minds of the very same people who insist they aren’t squares. Homeboy is a rebel – he does what he wants and if you don’t like it, well, bugger off, ya wanker.
The world could use a lot more of this outstanding attitude. There is no group in human history more deserving of a middle finger than our garbage ruling elite. Arrogant, stupid, corrupt, inept, and yet possessed of such awesome self-regard that is actually astonishing. How can people so devoid of any actual accomplishments be so firmly convinced of their own moral and mental superiority?
And while their inexplicable conviction of their own hyper-competence is tiresome, perhaps their most irritating affectation is that they think they are rebels. They imagine themselves as being the underdogs, of battling the bourgeois constraints that keep them from flying their freak flags and being exactly who they are. Yeah, the big problem in America today is all the repression that keeps people from being who they are.
In fact, far too many people are being who they are when they are, in fact, appalling in every way. Weirdos, losers, mutations – these bizarre goofs think they are somehow striking back against society when the mandarins of our institutions are not interested in stopping their shenanigans, even when they include grooming kiddies to form the next generation of geebos. Our institutional class is interested in helping them become the very best version of themselves, which is often terrible.
Here's the thing. If you aren’t doing something the people in power dislike, you are not a rebel. You are a cog, a cog in a machine designed to crush all dissent. And these people are eager to be cogs. They are actually delighted to submit, happy to conform. And they hate you because you won’t.
Here’s a test. Which of these will society – in the form of government, schools, the media, and the corporations, to the extent they differ – not harass:
Some dude who dresses up in leather bondage gear with a thong, puts a unicorn horn on his head, and dances for dollar bills before a kindergarten class at a public school;
or
An 18-year-old in a college class who disagrees with the professor that Christians are racists who are ruining America;
or
Some healthy mom who didn’t want to make her kids wear a mask outside;
or
A citizen who expresses concerns about the integrity of an election that is not the 2000 election, the 2004 election, the 2016 election, or the last Georgia governor’s election.
There’s the easiest quiz you’ll take all year. In fact, the only conformist among those examples is the dude trying so very hard to be special and unique, just like all his friends. And pardon me if I misgendered said being.
But if you refuse to conform, you risk everything and gain only trouble. They say conservatism is the new punk rock, and there’s much to that. We’re the ones who take risks. We’re the ones in danger of getting fired for wrong think, of getting banned from social media for dissenting, of having a rabid pack of useless goobers try to cancel us for refusing to comply.
It’s true throughout society. If you are some Hollywood star, you risk nothing and gain everything by joining the pack and braying your commie nonsense like that washed-up Harvey Weinstein dishrag Jennifer Lovemeformymind who recently spouted off about how she in haunted by Tucker and how she hates her conservative family in a pathetic attempt to salvage some attention as her talents and prospects begin to sag. The ridiculous and elderly Dee Snider and Howard Stern, once out there on the edge, are today both so far up the establishment they are human suppositories.
Everyone knows it, but the truth is immaterial. Their narrative is that they are the rebels, and they are sticking to it. Mere facts are not going to change their minds – or at least make them admit it out loud. The smarter among them hate themselves inside for their cowardice, and they should. They suck. Let’s keep reminding them of that by mocking them, just like Johnny R did by paying tribute to Elizabeth R.
It is nice to know that in this world of rebels without any rebelling, with hacks raging in favor of the machine, that are at least a few rebels like good old Johnny Lydon still telling the powers that be to stuff it. Though it would have been so cool if he had played “Anarchy in the UK.”
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