In the early years after WW2, perception of the American human landscape took on a new meaning.  For starters, millions of young men and many women were forever changed.  At the time of Pearl Harbor, America was incredibly corny.  Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and Jackie Cooper dominated Hollywood.  At war’s end, a disturbed sobriety ensued.  It had then become understood that horrible things could happen.  Combine this with the release of the nuclear genie...and there you have it.

The early ’50s saw the unveiling of new subcultures.  Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1954) showcased biker culture.  Among other things, motorcycle gangs are quintessentially American.  Wide open spaces, a fondness for mechanical gadgets, limited reach of the law — all fit the mold.  Three years later, Jack Kerouak published On the Road, which portrayed post-war veterans as Bohemians with mobile lifestyles.  He followed up with Dharma Bums and The Subterraneans, which further embellished the culture of what Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed Beatniks.  Kerouak hated that name — he thought it sounded too much like “Bolshevik,” and he was an ardent anti-communist.  In On the Road, the character representing the poet Allen Ginsberg is named “Karlo Marx.”

Interestingly, the term “Bohemian” derives from a story by Honoré de Balzac titled “A Prince of Bohemia” (1840). The main character is a member of a deposed aristocratic family, now living in a Parisian garret.  He makes a meager living by giving fencing lessons to the idiot children of pretentious nouveau riche.  Contempt for the middle class is the dominant characteristic of this subculture.

A little more than a decade after On the Road, Hippies became the new Beatniks.  More involved with (ahem) modern chemistry, Hippies introduced America to “street people.”  Beatniks were much less of a police problem...just a parental problem, as typified by Bob Denver’s portrayal of Maynard G. Krebs on the TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

The remaining array of subcultures may be classified as being of two types: voluntary and involuntary.  The most obvious of the involuntary type are ethnic subcultures.  None of us ever gets to choose how he is born.  The voluntary form is much more complicated, the least controversial being the vocational variety.  A kid I grew up with became a car salesman.  He told me about their subculture.  Many car salesmen know each other and change jobs frequently.  Their subculture provides a modicum of stability to their industry.  To the consumer, the make of the automobile is more important than the name of the dealership.

Now we get into the weeds of voluntary versus involuntary...especially when we discuss sexuality.  Our sex is established (not “assigned”) at conception (not birth).  Sometimes mistakes happen — mostly in the case of non-identical twins.  Sex therapists use the term androgyny to describe some of the various manifestations.  This is as far as it goes when being an involuntary member of a sexually unique subculture.  The existence of a “gay” gene has yet to be scientifically established.  Suffice it to say that social influences may steer voluntary membership into a fairly ubiquitous subculture.

Perhaps the most durable example of the involuntary are ethnic subcultures such as the Gypsies.  More properly known as Romany (or just Rom), the term “Gypsy” derives from the erroneous assumption that they originated in Egypt.  More accurately, they are Indo-Persian, and, true to their common name, they have been scattered over much of the world.  A bunch of Gypsies once moved in next door to me.  They were fiercely proud of who they were, particularly because of how they take care of their parents.  Elderly Gypsies are never left alone.  When an important elder died a few hundred miles away, they all got up and relocated to attend the memorial and thereafter.  By the way, Hitler went after the Gypsies just as he went after the Jews...or so I’ve been told.  And speaking of Jews — they are often more inclined to assimilate than Gypsies.

Ireland has its own home-grown analogue of the Gypsies — the Tinkers or Travelers.  Though ethnically Irish, they are mostly separate from the mainstream of Irish culture and, coincidentally, closely follow the Gypsy lifestyle.  They are alleged to have originally become displaced during the Cromwellian Period of the 1600s.  While in Dublin, I saw a TV news report about a Tinker encampment that just popped up on the outskirts of town.  The locals were raising alarms about a bump up in petty crime.  Well, at least it was only petty.

Subcultures can also have political effect.  Back at the turning of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, anarchists had serious international impact.  U.S. president William McKinley, while he was working his way along a greeting line, was murdered by an anarchist.  Then King Humbert of Italy and some members of the French Parliament were also killed.  Being anarchists, however, their subculture dissipated into the annals of history.  Then along came the Bolsheviks, who were much more authoritarian than the anarchists.  In a cynical move to defeat the Allies of the First World War, the Germans released Lenin from his exile in Switzerland and injected him, like a bacillus, into tsarist Petrograd.  Sure enough, Russia withdrew from the war, and the Soviet Union was born.  The Americans, however, entered the war at just about the same time, and the Kaiser’s goose got cooked anyhow.

Now we come to our current situation.  A voluntary political-religious cult-subculture has formed around something as mundane as the weather.  Unlike anarchists and Bolsheviks, Climatistas rely on pervasive ignorance and gullibility about Earth science — rather than the long established proletarian envy of the bourgeoisie.  What used to be routine weather events such as torrential rain, heat waves, wind storms, etc. is now a cataclysmic harbinger of global catastrophe.  Beyond the Bolsheviks’ authoritarianism, the Climatistas are full monty into tyranny.  Micromanagement of the most trivial of personal behaviors — from diet to transportation to all forms of energy consumption — they prefer edicts to suggestions.  Their electric vehicle mandates are poised to cause economic damage never before imagined.

Adherents of the cult display their fealty to the imposed dogma by placing photovoltaic panels on their roofs and by parking E.V.s in their driveways.  The urge to conform is a major inhibitor of social mobility...but nonetheless, it resides in human nature.  What makes the USA unique in all of this is our deeply embedded tendency toward social mobility.  Non-Americans are much more fatalistic in their personal expectations.  Americans, on the other hand, are typically encouraged to follow their dreams.  We are free to assume whatever subcultural identity we choose...as long as the other members are willing to accept us.  It is true that social mobility is at least to some degree universal — but it is particularly apparent in the United States.  Knowing this and the personal freedom it imparts is what makes us American.

...and, I speculate, that American social mobility is the true encouragement that draws immigrants into our domain from all over the world.  Of course, material wealth is an attractant...but where does the expectation of having realistic access to it come from?

Image: Chris Dodds via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.