Hip to be square.......................

A few excerpts from Michael Kelly's excellent essay, Getting Hip to Squareness:

Can we be square again?  We were last square half a century ago.  Then we were, more or less successively, hep, hip, cool, wild, beat, alienated, mod, groovy, radical, turned on, dropped out, camp, self-actualizing, meaningful, punk, greedy, ironic, Clintonian, and finally, postmodern, which is to say exhausted - and who can blame us?

Now we are supposed to be square again.  No one puts it that bluntly, because square remains the condition that dare not speak its name.

Returning to square seems like revirginizing.  The problem is knowingness.  All anti-square postures stand on a base of superior knowingness:  Suburban life may look wholesome and sweet, but it is really one vast snake pit tarted up as a gunite swimming pool.  George Washington may look like the star of Founding Father Knows Best, but really he was a false-tooth real-estate speculator.  Woody Guthrie carries a nice tune, but this land is not your land, unless you are a Trump or a Tisch.

Editor's Note:  If you follow the link above, you will find The Atlantic is a bit disorganized.  Several things not belonging to Kelly's essay are interspersed within Kelly's essay.  Do your best to sort it out.  It is worth the effort.  The excerpts above came from Things Worth Fighting For, Kelly's collected writings.