Matt Harding was born in 1976, a Gen-Xer (1965-1980). That Generation is just as apt to cling to the old ways and standards of their parents (Baby Boomers, 1942-1964) as they are to become utterly nouveau, knowing little, if anything about the shoulders they stand on, or much worse… not caring. Totally self-involved.
Matt, of course, is famous for his “Where the Hell is Matt?” music videos that show him dancing to a single happy, up-beat tune with a gaggle of folks he’d rounded up from some of the most interesting places in the world…from “urban” as in sophisticated European urban to very rural, as in Mongolia-rural.
These little film videos began in 2006, running through 2016, ending just 7 years ago. The one I’m attaching is the one I remember seeing most, from 2012, the title being “Where the Hell is Matt?” (while the 2016 edition, also on Barack Obama’s watch, was watered down to “Where the Heck is Matt?”)
I just tripped across this video yesterday while talking with my blind author-friend and colleague DavidMPoff, who now hangs his hat at Substack at Essential American Wisdom. (You should visit and buy Dave a coffee.)
Dave can’t see this video, mind you, but he likes catchy tunes, can have Alexa read it to him, and he of course can listen to the song, “Trip the Light” and pick up a little of the interaction. I’m anxious to hear how much he could see, for you see, the various reactions are important.
There are many insights to be gained, here, especially about the generations involved, both here and abroad, including trying to acquaint yourself with the zeitgeist of the time.
And it caused me to reflect that these Matt Harding feel-good videos were all of the Obama era while American feel-goodism was sinking beneath the waves in a bath of self-indulgence that has turned to out-and-out nihilism all because the outsider Donald Trump stepped out from the dark and “stole” (in their minds) the 2016 election, forcing them to steal the 2020 election, just to reset History back on the track they had placed it, along the way destroying (or redefining) the very meaning of “virtue”.
Thus the connection between Matt Harding’s “joie de vivre” guided tours around the world, 2006-2016, at the same time the Dark Powers of Middle Earth had settled into the Democrat Party to redefine the very doctrine of the meaning of our founding.
No joy in Mudville, the new rule. (For those of you who ever read or heard “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer, 1888.
Clearly, the moral and cultural climate Matt Harding was pitching with these clips wasn’t the same sort of “good feelings” that Obama and his camp were peddling, mostly using artificial stimulants. Matt only had music and a stage to showcase his stuff. I confess, (and I’ve been around to more out-of-the-way places in the world than most of you, having even seen Korean women and Filipino Jeepney drivers smile and titter amongst themselves when I wasn’t the center of attention) it touches one deep, to the point of tears, when we can see ordinary people all over the world react to a simple piece of music and a dance routine with joy. These people brought tears to my eyes when I first saw them eleven years ago, and still does when I see them now.
What Matt Harding was doing was totally apolitical, while everything…everything…Barack Obama and his staff did and said 2008-2016 was totally wrapped up in a foul-tasting piece of salami anchored to a 5-day-old bagel with cheap mustard, but designed for palates educated to believe they were tasting Boeuf Bourguignon instead.
Only the political Left knows it does, for they wrote the book on fake orgasms. Every time you look at Hillary Clinton remember that.
I keep a cache of photos and films of the people Nancy, Hillary, Barack and Michelle, Schumer and Durbin, Schiff, Hakeem, and their street managers, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Tlaib, and rely on them to carry their flame forward, just so I can share with you and remind you of how they would would choreograph a “street dance”.
With not a smile in the bunch, at every age.
Don’t forget, this has a history, and I got to sit in on a little bit of in the 1970s. So compare.
The inclination is to say “F*** Nancy and all her troops” but I won’t. We’ve already written the script of their demise. But it’s okay to think it. Just be prepared to walk over them roughshod, only with a happy smile on your face. Just remember the happy faces from all over the world this little film records. They are real.
Marx failed. Russia failed. China is next. But hateful, entitled American children are waiting in the wings. Democrats and sadly, a lot of corporate Republicans.
That American “happy music” found in this four and a half minute song speaks volumes of just what the people will respond to.
Store it for future use.