Did you know that there is no rock music anymore? Look it up on the Wikipedia if you don't believe me. There's still an entry but as you'll see it's the loosest of all possible categories for "all contemporary popular music" or something.

Rock has fragmented into a thousand pebbles. Try finding a today's-rock station on the electronic radio machine. You'll find oldies stations but oldies stations don't count, try to find a today rock station. The most popular rock station in Miami switched formats a couple of years ago. Bet others across the country have too.

Rock did not experience the relative Big Bang death that Big Band did. Using the universe metaphor there wasn't enough dark matter to provide gravitational cohesion and Rock succumbed to centrifugal force and just flew off.

Anyway, this post isn't about rock. This post is about the book "But What If We're Wrong" by Chuck Klosterman. Very cool idea-haven't read it, but heard an interview of Klosterman on NPR-to think about the present, or the recent past, the way people (presumably; maybe AI) will think about it in the future. One of the book's near-past subjects is Rock. Who will come to instantiate Rock for future historians. Klosterman explained his thinking: he was suspicious of choosing what the present would think was the obvious answer, in this case the Beatles, since that isn't how our minds work. He gave the example of the Civil War and how we look at Abraham Lincoln as the greatest president, a demigod really, and that was not how Lincoln was viewed by contemporaries, USA or CSA. So Klosterman would go for a close second or third to the obvious and tried to identify the components of the subject that might stand out, like our noses that keep growing after the rest of our bodies have stopped, and he thought that the African-American influence on early rock would stand out, the guitar as the instrument, other characteristics, I've forgotten which, and he chose Chuck Berry. Interesting. Elvis would have been my choice.

Anyway. And then I heard Klosterman talk about politics. Who is the worst president? The contemporary consensus is Pennsylvania's gift to the nation, James Buchanan. But Klosterman pointed out that not too long ago, and in the memory of the undersigned, U.S. Grant was deemed the worst: Teapot Dome and what all I don't remember.

So Klosterman wonders, when America is not number one, when she has been eclipsed by China or whomever, and future historians look back at the rubble, where are they likely to point, "When it all went wrong"?

The Constitution. Chuck Klosterman informedly speculates that future Chinese historians will identify the Constitution as the incubus of America's decline and eventual fall. He reasoned that the Constitution would be viewed as too rigid to keep up with the changing times and that it was, as it is, so revered that Americans were reluctant to change it, did not change it (enough), both to their extreme detriment, and kept letting it guide them. Straight into oblivion.

Interesting. Disturbing interesting.

Of course we do the same, albeit to a far lesser extent, with the Declaration of Independence, which the mortification of the undersigned at actually reading the Dec of Ind he has expressed in vivid "prose" on manifold occasions.

So, I done picked up a copy of whatchacall "The Federalist Papers." "Moderation," "prudence." Dude, dudette, it's like Poppy Bush was Publius. Moderation and prudence are spewed over "The Federalist Papers" like his bodily essence. The pages stick together. You get a facial of moderation and prudence. You clearly see the influence of the spirit of the Constitution on contemporary political discourse. The political scientist who edited the edition of "The Federalist Papers" that I bought saw the same influence in 1961!

He committed suicide. Clinton Rossiter committed suicide in 1970. Lifetime of depression. Was a voice of moderation at Cornell during the armed racial occupation at Cornell in 1969. Allan Bloom refused to speak to him again. Rossiter only spoke for another fifteen months but still. The last shovel of dirt was thrown on Rossiter's grave and his influence, which was substantial, on political science ended too. It was like Mao's death. The Gang of Four was rounded up and "socialism doesn't work."

Disturbing. Moderation didn't save Clinton Rossiter or his influence on the future. Killed both.

And then I thought of the gang leader of "The Federalist" project. Alexander Hamilton. Born a bastard, just like his country. Moderation didn't save him either. Whacked by Aaron Burr in a duel in 1804.

Unsettling origins, Hamilton, the Constitution, "The Federalist," Rossiter's "The Federalist Papers," America. And then I thought, "Man, maybe Klosterman's going to turn out to be right."

Disturbing.