This week of political convention coverage awakened Generation X sensibilities and memories long dormant.
Are we not living in a Mad Max world? Thatap the thought that kept coming, so strong the first time I wrote it down in a notebook. And then there seemed to be something to it.
I saw the new version of the movie months ago. I remember it featured a thug who bullied his people and kept for himself a harem of supermodels. The only alternative to life under this thug ruler was to make a go of living in a wasteland among roaming bands of dirt pirates. The dirt pirates didn’t have to answer to the thug ruler, but they were mean and hard in the worst sort of way, too. They were all over everything, ripping and tearing at the protagonists. They would steal your own blood.
My viewing of it was informed by the fact I saw the original as a teenager. My friends said they loved it, but I wasn’t sure. It was so bleak. How could the world ever become so bleak, my teenage-geek mind questioned. How could human beings become so callused and hateful?
No wonder my generation went grunge.
And yet look at the violence and the rawness and the insanity of our present times, the terrorist attacks, the rupturing of countries and coalitions, the beheadings, the domestic discontent, the mass shootings, the beheadings, questionable police shootings, mass sexual assault, the militarization of police departments, protest in the place of debate, and now the ambush slaughter of police officers. Look at how hateful our politics have become amid this turmoil.
But it wasn’t just the bleakness that I remembered from the new “Mad Max.” Itap what the dirt pirates did with the springy poles; how they vaulted from speeding machines to make their way to attack the good guys and girls (and supermodels). The technical wizardry that allowed the filmmakers to create that sublime effect reminded me of the advances my generation has seen since that first “Mad Max.”
We’ve gone from typewriters to handheld computers for almost everyone, from stop-motion to digital: technology so advanced it would have made a young Bill Gates or Steve Jobs faint.
The same can be said for advances in civil liberties. We have a black president, more equality for the LGBTQ community, the coming nomination of a woman for president and other advances great and small.
And so at this point in the convention coverage I offer optimism.
After running The Denver Postap politics desk the last five years, this is perhaps the one thing I am most sure of: What brings about civic advance is us: The best of our instincts poured out by the parents and teachers and artists and writers and whiz kids and good Samaritans among us.
While itap harder to see, the political class, as it seeks to curry favor, more often latches onto the better of our ideas and instincts, and always has. Sometimes a truly gifted politician channels that energy into something new and even bigger than what we imagined it could be. Sometimes glomming on is enough to do the trick.
The thug rulers of the world don’t want to admit it, but in so many places in your life there is friendliness and optimism and clear thinking. And against that force of humanity, the hateful eventually plays out.
E-mail editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett at cplunkett@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @cplunkett
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