Maggie's Farm

I keep seeing this phrase: "Politics is downstream of culture"; It's in the Dylan story. What does this even mean? Isn't it demonstrably untrue, an undesirable condition? It's often used to browbeat political professionals, to get them into alignment with the latest social fads.

But that's not why we have political leaders. This is just a way to nudge the responsible ones further away from power. Political leadership shapes culture; it's the large rock around which culture flows, on its way downstream.

And who / what is shaping culture these days? Do you think we have looting-filled, violence-filled riots as a common event because political leadership is doing a good job, setting the tone? Or is it because many of them are scurrying along after culture, trying to placate it and ingratiate themselves on the downstream side? Is that leadership>?

I think this expression has come into the common lexicon because we haven't had effective policy-making that charts a course rather than pandering to the crew. It's been this way for a long time, and it's showing. If politics is downstream of culture, then political operatives from PACs and other NGOs are fully functioning as cutural leadership on the upstream side: Organizing riots, providing bottomless funding for the preferred electoral candidates, for Antifa, for BLM, CRT, extra-governmental autonomous zones, and other agenda-driven efforts. No election necessary, eh?