No True Punk

An Essay on Blowing Bubbles

This is not a punk

Punk is a genre of music, a fashion, and a lifestyle. Depending on who you ask, punk began in the mid ‘60s in Lima, Peru with Los Saicos, in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s in Detroit, with the Stooges, MC5, and Death, in the mid ‘70s, in Cleveland and NYC, with Rocket From the Tombs, the Ramones, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell (and about fifty others), or punk, as we understand it today, “actually” started in the UK with Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, and the Sex Pistols. If you choose to believe Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, punk began with John of Leyden, way back in 1534. That particular theory is dependent on an expansive notion of history and coincidence, where the Mazarin Bible is seen as the first ‘zine, making Johannes Gutenberg the first Kinkos. Which might seem silly but, once you stop caring about most of the sounds associated with “post-punk” occurring concurrently to the sounds we associate most with punk, everything becomes possible. For punk historians, the word “proto-” serves a similar function as whips do for the Belmont Clan in Castlevania; with it by the punk theoretician's side, there’s little that can stand in its way. 

For everyone else, both punk’s history and exactly what punk is (and isn’t) can be confusing. “Fast and loud” is only helpful until it isn’t, which happens almost immediately. “Anti-authority” is helpful, if one is willing to grant no small weight to America’s first punks, who weren’t so much against authority as indifferent to it, with any ostensible rebelliousness tempered from the jump by a distrust of the strident leftism of the ‘60s. Certainly no punk was any more anti-major label then your average member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, with—until the UK’s Crass— “DIY” meaning only so much as it pretty much means now: doing one’s own thang, letting the record label one signed a contract with do the whole “hiring a publicist and booking the tour” thang. Furthering the confusion: in the UK, the subculture was, with the exception of a few notable pub rock train jumpers, aimed almost entirely at the very young; children (who’d have been Teds, Mods, Skins, etc. just a few years prior) and university age young adults. In America, the very young could largely only watch from the sidelines and suburbs, legally/preemptively banned from the pubs, and therefore shows, till hardcore came along. In Australia, AC/DC was considered a punk band, presumably  because it's difficult for outsiders to always discern the subtle differences separating Australian punk culture from Australian Australian culture. 

None of this was made less bewildering by punk’s early Christlike tendency towards death and rebirth, with punk’s periodic expiration/denial of said expiration—usually going on a tertiannual schedule, until roughly 1995—being as much a pillar of punk as hardcore being hardcore is the chief tenet of hardcore. The downside of this wheel of reincarnation was that only a glutton for punishment gives their heart to something that dies every few years, so the whole “punk is dead” thing was eventually discarded in favor of an immortal punk; a punk based loosely on the Dalai Lama model, with various camps serving as punk equivalents of the Tibetans and the CCP; with the result being a diffusion of punks, each with their own anointed figureheads which conveniently validated each group’s political/aesthetic aims. The outside world—perhaps feeling that quibbling over the details of a half-century old fad was akin to punks in 1977 obsessing over whose version of the Lindy Hop was most in line with Charles Lindburgh’s ethos—wisely decided to dip. Rather, inadvertently faithful to punk’s initial cycle, the outside world opted to dip in and out, alternating between years of indifference and months of hyper focused analysis/commodification. Arguably, if the punks in 1977 had drawn some starker lines, between the Lindy Hop developed in Harlem and the fascist sympathies of Charles Lindburgh, a lot of cultural hassle might have been avoided. But, as with Greil Marcus’ suppositions regarding the secrets currents of history, who the fuck knows?

Regardless, for the purposes of this discussion, the punk being considered is the big tent punk which encompasses all the various definitions; fast and loud, d-beat and pop-punk, stadium crust and straight edge, mall and street, circle A and varsity lettering, spikey jacket-ed and flying the flannel, riot city and riot grrrl, 82 of both the UK and Blink-1 varieties, and even all the offshoots that few would classify as punk, like Rage Against the Machine, who are still invariably included in the overground conversation whenever the political utility of punk enters the public arena. Purists may balk but neither parochialism nor being correct will save them. Because in a time when punk is anything which bucks a system, and every person on earth is convinced that The System is whatever they themselves are not, then what we talk about when we talk about punk could be, at very least, every other thing. So limiting this discussion to "guitars + 'tude" is already doing the purists a solid. Narrow the scope further and we'd be talking about something comparitively uncomplicated, like math or economics. Punk is, as they say, wider than a postcard. A giant, expanding, waterlogged postcard where the handwriting is blurred beyond recognition and the address could be anywhere. How a supposedly dogmatic and rigid subculture ended up as malleable as Sillyputty is a far longer discussion than even I'm going to attempt here. Even if "anyone can do it" was more a statement of liberation and encouragemnet than it was accurate, the canard did take hold. If you tell everyone that they can do something, and then you spend fifty years doubling down on that deception, you can't blame everyone for believing that anything that they do manage to do (or anything they just enjoy looking at), is the thing you promised them.

Punk Is Not Progressive

Punk discourse repeats itself, first as tattooed Betty and mohawked Veronica, second as *fart noise.* Now, like Warped Tour, the fart noise is back. In what can only be described as a lateral move, the argument that punk will be good again under Trump has transformed itself for the times. Way back in 2016, there was semi-mass delusion (held, tbc, not by punks but by former punks and from-a-distance punk well-wishers) that wishcast that some new, not yet discovered protest guitar music would bloom In These Dark Times, and that entire schools of Deader Kennedys and Drumph Milkmen would rise up and save us from Donald Trump. Just like, back when America was still America (complimentary), NOFX and (International) Noise Conspiracy saved all those Iraqis. To be fair, the only name brand to explicitly state support for this glass-half-full view of onset facism was Amanda Palmer, a bumptious hootchy-koo artist who was famous first for her steampunk cabaret act, then for running a string quartet ponzi scheme, and finally for her current role as a pimp for her ex-husband; sort of a polyamorous Miss Hannigan for the “recommended for mature audiences” set. After a few approving articles, any wider expression of this hope was widely (and correctly) derided into silence. But it did not disappear. The hope for a second Weimar Republic, or at very least a Broadway revival of American Idiot, was the subtext of numerous posts by normies, bemoaning the (perceived, incorrectly) absence of protest music, and it was the subtext of nearly every PR email sent out during the first Trump regime, with every day bringing a new shoegaze act or former fencewalking metal/goth act being positioned as the new soundtrack of empowerment. 

In the years since then, from fascism to not-fascism, and back again, new circumstances have required those, whose lifestyle choices and/or compromises require their thinking of punk as an inherent good, to adjust their self-aggrandizement accordingly. So, the same impulse which inspired that earlier, willfully trivial retreat into speculative fiction has given up on that (This Bike Is A) pipe dream and instead turned its attention towards the punk which already exists. 

A strain of self-flattery has long existed within punk subculture, at least since ‘82. Setting aside the tribalism of any youth-centric hobby worth its salt, the notion that “punk is this, not that” has existential roots worth respecting. Even if the Clash’s worries about the authenticity of bands with new boots and contracts was perhaps a bit defensively misapplied, and even if Cock Sparrer’s accusatory pondering regarding the whereabouts of punk’s first wave was as much about establishing Cock Sparrer’s punk bonafides within the subculture as it was about any betrayal of political ideals,  it can still be argued that the significantly higher stakes of the miner strikes and Rock Against Racism justified any insistence that punks have politics consistent with those expressed on their badges and patches. What’s less justified is a misremembering of those times. A misremembering which casts punk’s progressivism as baked in, a natural law which posits that Pu=ACAB, and always has. A misremembering which must inevitably turn into revisionism, which insists that the only right wing punks were in Skrewdriver, and therefore not punks at all. As though Chelsea never had had a song called “Right to Work,” Agnostic Front was just kidding about welfare, HR was never a homophobe and Bad Brains never robbed the Big Boys, and where uncomfortable questions, such as “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated,” are the purview of counterrevolutionaries and poseurs, with John Lydon cast as just the singer of a boy band, a proto-sea-lion who was Just Asking Questions on his way to shill for the fascist butter corporations.

Of course, nobody who adheres to the new discourse claims none of the above happened.

Instead they... 

A. Ignore it in favor of photos of Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux (swastika pin and lyrics to “Arabian Nights” not pictured), Viv Albertine, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde (thankfully not holding a sign spelling out her non-doctrinaire feelings pertaining to her own sexual assault), and Pauline Black (thankfully not asking the poster to name a single Selector song). 

Or

B. They admit that, sure, the very existence of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” the song which serves as unofficial theme song to this current movement, does seem to imply that, at least at some point in time, there were punks who somehow managed to be nazis, and that both the Dead Kennedys and Napalm Death (who covered the song) accepted said Nazis’ self designation as punks, at least to the extent that Jello Biafra didn’t write a song called “Nazi Nazis (Who I Rarely, If Ever, Encounter Within My Social Milieu), Fuck Off.” Of course, in the days of 7”s, economy of language was necessary, so who knows? But conceding that, the concession is walked back a bit In what is known as the “Back in the day, we knew how to handle Nazis” stance, where it’s resolutely promised that that, if there were right wingers in punk, they served only as punching bags for the good and righteous punks, until there were no more Nazi punks. 

And if there were any left? After the various D-Days of the ‘80s? Even, improbable as it may seem, after “Killing In the Name Of” came out? Well, comrade, Kurdt’s liner notes for Incesticide took care of that problem, tout suite, leaving the pastures of punk devoid of rightest tendencies; so much so that Green Day had to take their anti-imperialism to Broadway just to find some baddies to fight. 

Which brings us to the final nail in fascism’s coffin; the good people (Phil and Charlotte, no last names) at the UK based creative design studio known as H.E Creative. AKA the “put a bird on it” of the punk resist-o-sphere. AKA the only thing in the last twenty years that has made me miss VICE even a (very) little. AKA the punk Holocaust deniers, but for punk Holocaust deniers. AKA the Reverse Hernandez Bros.. AKA the people who make those goddamn tattooed Betty and Veronica cartoons.

If you haven’t seen these cartoons—which depict two punk gals drawn in the house style of Archie Comics, pointing to a sign which says “You can’t be punk and also be: racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic. It’s impossible!”—then you either aren’t on Instagram or Reddit, or you're just far better at curating your feed than I am. If you haven’t at least seen the various bootlegged shirts or memed variations of the two black-flag-barred Riverdale-ians (not to be confused with the Riverdales, an impossible band), your algorithms are so divergent from mine that you might be a Nazi. Or just less interested in punk, cartoons, and/or leftism than I am. Same difference tbh. 

There is a time when the claim that it was “impossible” for punks to express any of the aforementioned -isms would have have gotten one laughed out of the punk house. Not because the laughers (necessarily) subscribed to any of those beliefs, but because the idea that punk—as both scene and genre—wasn’t positively lousy with all four of the -isms was patently absurd, and anyone who claimed otherwise must be either a child or a cop reading from the wrong infiltration script. Happily, for the discourse, this time nobody is laughing. At least not out loud. This time, everyone agrees. When it’s argued that it's currently  impossible to be conservative, or transphobic, or racist, and still be a punk, the claim is met with resounding  cheers. Because punk is inherently progressive. Because one simply cannot be a nazi and be a punk. It’s a contradiction in terms. To say otherwise is akin to co-signing fascism. One might as well show up to a Thou show in a Burzum t-shirt. Or play Absurd covers at a festival in Brooklyn. 

Look, I’m not entirely obtuse. I know that the thinking behind any entirely ahistorical romanticization of a genre/lifestyle that was, while in many ways transgressive and liberatory, also deeply reactionary, is always well intentioned, and oftentimes simply based on what the expresser of said misapprehensions was taught in punk school (where the text books are often written by Rolling Stone writers). If one attended an institution of higher punk learning that’s flag was a tote bag with the Black Flag bars rendered as four cats, it’s understandable that one might earnestly believe that there’s no tension between thinking punk rock and sexism are antithetical concerns whilst sporting a jolly ol’ Milo Goes to College tee. After all, when Jason Van Tatenhove, former member of the right wing group the Oath Keepers, showed up at the Jan 6th hearings wearing that exact same Descendents shirt, there were many ostensibly smart people who responded as if a conservative enjoying such anti-ism lyrics as *checks notes* “Mr.Buttfuck, you don’t belong here,” and “What will you do when you turn 21? You're cockteasing at the singles bar just for fun,” was just about the craziest thing they’d ever seen.

That said, “well intentioned” part is an excuse, as far as that goes, but not the ignorance. Every single issue of MaximumRocknRoll, Razorcake, and Punk Planet printed throughout the ‘90s and Aughts contained at least one mention, expressed at varying degrees of stridency, of the not-always admirable threads which made up punk history. It’s not gatekeeping to say so. And if it is gatekeeping, it’s no more so than model airplane enthusiasts expecting neophytes to read the warning label on airplane glue before sticking the tube up their nostrils. It’s not too much to ask for those who might be interested in the subculture of punk to have at least a cursory inkling that the music/style, at its inception, was at least partially rooted in a conservative impulse to return to a perceived “realness” of the past (in punk’s case, the authentic, conveniently not disco, rock music of two decades prior), and was suffused—from day two if not day one—with edgelord tendencies (swastikas for shock value) and edgelord sentiments sincerely expressed (swastikas for swastika value). Rock Against Racism may have been formed, in part, in response to Eric Clapton’s vile political views, but it still saw a reason to stick around—and still found its members fighting members of Rock Against Communism in the streets—even after Clapton narrowed his focus, from being a shitty human to just being a shitty songwriter and dad. 

Whether born out of a need to be part of slightly more pure Resistance than the one that big up-ed the CIA, FBI, and (at least material-y, if with some hand wringing) the IDF, or born out of just being, you know, recently born, the result is the same; a refusal to countenance things as they were and/or are, coupled with the belief that somehow a new righteous future might result as a continuation of this imagined nobel past. Confident in the belief that the past is easier to change than the future (and way less hassle than wrestling with the present as it actually is), the new approach is novel in that, rather than going through the rouble of inventing time travel, going back and in time and killing a baby Hitler, the new punk discourse argues that no true baby would ever be Hitler, because babies are cute and Hitler is not cute. So therefore; checkmate, Hitler. You were never a baby, and I’m telling everyone. 

Punk Is Not Conservative

This part is a bit easier, to the point of it being tempting to give it an altogether short thrift. After all, if you have to be a bit naive to think that punk is inherently progressive, you do have to be a fucking moron to believe its inherently more conservative. Rather, there can be some argument for punk having conservative strains. Certainly some of those punching Nazis, at least in NYC, were hardcore types whose politics (when, say, it came to welfare or HIV) skewed… *cough* a bit to the right. But, and this can’t be stressed enough, even those within the NYC punk scene who had somewhat unfortunate views regarding hurtful language and/or immigration, still believed strongly that anyone who willfully aligned themself with the right wing very much deserved to have their teeth separated from their faces, usually via the closest available sidewalk curb. NYHC may have espoused some bullshit worldviews in the ‘80s and ‘90s. “Racism should be debated in the marketplace of ideas” was not one of them. 

Of course, “conservatism is the new punk” is part and parcel of punk being blurred and flattened, from being a subculture/music genre to being a word that now is just a shorthand for a vigorous brand of being correct. At the risk of victim blaming, I knew we were fucked the first time I heard someone at a bar describe Nina Simone as “punk,” as if any visionary might be validated only by being retroactively being invited to the spikey jacket cookout. From this, it’s a short leap to punk being interchangeable with “I do what I want,” a conveniently neo-liberal worldview where GG Alin’s throwing of feces is the same as “fuck you, I won’t do what they tell me,” NOFX referring to its members as “beans” is a permission slip for wanting to building a border wall, and the truest embodiment of punk is South Park’s Cartman calling Jews out for killing Christ, boldly standing athwart the forces of political correctness (at least as much as a case of polio will allow). Conservatism is the New Punk galls further in its dispensing with the need to be connected to the subculture at all, with punk being applied to gaming (in direct opposition to one of punk’s actually inarguable tenets: to be more than a witness in life), downtown scenesterism (a cruel inversion of “scene reports” and even the bearded, ostensibly blue collar integrity of regional punk), and even organized religion; where New Right Catholicism is DIY because it’s counterintuitively (and petulantly) anti-papist. The latter is so fucking dumb that I’m even annoyed on behalf of Screeching Weasel, early adopters to attempting to circle the square of Christ and Johnny Ramone both being King.

Punk is the friends we make along the way (to punk)

At this juncture, a reasonable person (or as reasonable a person as one might be if one understood enough of the references to wade this far down the page) might reasonably say: “what’s the point here? Do people even say ‘punk is the new conservatism’ anymore?” And, to that, I’d say: No, not so much. They don’t have to, seeing as posturing as an underdog has lost a bit of its utility, seeing as how the right has won and is now back to running things. 

Which they always were but let’s not pretend that there weren’t a few years where it looked like our side might hold the reins of the culture industry; albeit in a compromised, commoditized, and largely facile fashion. The revolution may have been Disneyfied, defunding the police may have looked a lot like funding the police, and it may be hard to fathom the mental gymnastics required to having a rentier state we’d occupied for twenty years—two decades we’d spent treating the populace with a malign fecklessness (like it was their fault we didn’t have the guts to invade Saudi Arabia) and a palpable contempt, and/or as a plot point for our prestige television anti-heroes—and then abandoning that country overnight to the Taliban, and then to pass that noblesse shiteé as some sort of progressive “win.”

But it was nice, that decade or so, when medium-wit bread/circus enthusiasts—almost uniformly lacking chins strong enough to properly suck a cock—didn’t say “retarded” and “gay” all the goddamn time.  

Well, that time is over. At least for now, though I’d wager that the era of mandatory kindness was the last gasp of that illusory (but very pleasant!) societal tik/cope we historically called “being polite,” and that it’s not coming back. Everybody’s got the taste for blood now. 

Punks is Hippies/Punk is Doge 

Which brings me, finally, to something like a point. And the point is: Twist. I was never talking about punk at all, even when I was talking about punk. I was talking about how the left (meaning, to me, everyone even slightly to the left of being delighted with the genocide being enacted upon Palestinians by the state of Israel) is currently slapped the fuck silly. We are losing. Politically and culturally. When we are grasping at “our halftime show made Drumph leave the football game early,” we are, as the kids say, cooked. Cooked, in fact, down to grease. I don’t much like it. I see the right as my enemy, and I want the adherents of rightist ideology to lose and be humiliated. Not because I think they’re not human, not capable of appreciating Minor Threat the way I do, or even that some/many of them are “not good people.” I don’t care if their tattoos are on point, if the former spokesperson of the NRA loved 13th Floor Elevators, or if they’re good people. Because the right’s goal is to destroy and humiliate those that I hold dear, even the strangers, even the individuals I don’t particularly like. The right’s goal is control and humiliation. And, in that, I don’t pretend that none of them are smart or that some of them don’t occasionally have excellent taste in rock music. Yes, many of them are, in fact, idiots with (what I consider) bad taste. But, even while intellectually being aware that “taste” has zero bearing on intelligence or morality, when I say that no one I oppose is punk, or pretty, or funny, or smart, I’m basically slapping myself and the things that I love; all these things that are, in their entirety, seemingly incapable of convincing any sizable portion of the electorate that I—or you, or the purple haired intelligentsia to whom I feel a kinship towards—has worth. 

Which is what I'm talking about, when I talk ceaselessly about punk. I am not qualified to talk about much else, but lucky for me, the way punk is discussed, just like any other folk tradition, has reverberation and meaning that can be applied to larger culture, as it so often already is (whether punk likes it or not). Basically, the dream state which the punk Betty and Veronica occupies is as hyperreal and spiritually succumbing as any animatronic propaganda. It’s a comfortable lie that disarms. Just like rock and roll has always been accused of being, and if that’s the case, well, nevermind I guess. But if we might agree that there might be some culture, with a good beat that we can dance to, that isn't a CIA psyop, then it’s worth interrogating how we think of our own shared cultural history, even the niche bullshit. And by "interrogate," I don't mean "attain retroactive purity, therefore negating any need to either adjust our own way of thinking or percieve our enemies as anything other than some sort of alien virus to whom we couldn't possibly share any common DNA with." If the opposition shares no cultural space with us, never did, and is just dumb and endlessly lucky (and seeing that the left isn't excatly famous for it's luck), then we can't be blamed if no progressive holds high office for the next fifty years. As long as we made clear to the world that Rancid, if not the Senate, belongs to us. If the only war all our smarts and taste can win is decades-old lifestyle choices—and that's only because Green Day took a break from writing Bill Maher's theme music to issue a press release which stated unequivicaly that our side was, in fact, smart and pretty all along—what remains is either despair or violence. I’m not opposed to the latter, but if that’s the route we’re leaving for ourselves, we're going to need to find some time to hit the gym/shooting range. 

As a rule, I reject despair. It’s disrespectful to those who fought back in what were (compared to America’s current circumstances) more materially difficult times. Despair is disrespectful to the Civil Rights movement, to Act-Up, to the ANC, to the Algerian FLN, the housewives of Harlan County, to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and to fuckin’ Sacco & Vanzetti et al.. Despair is a form of complicity. The odds aren’t insurmountable. They are, I tend to believe (at least 60% of the time), mountable as hell. There was a (short but not infinitesimally so) window, even in the midst of our usual warmongering, where a slim majority within this country believed in unions, some small degree of human rights, and the scientific grounding underlying dentistry. And voted accordingly. Getting back to at least that feels… doable. I mean, Jesus. Not a high bar, I think? But even that ground level bar is only reachable if we don’t behave as though our side just deserves to win, based on our moral, cultural, and intellectual fortitude. If we don’t satiate our need for conflict by simply making up stories about how cool and anti-fascist our haircuts have historically been and, outside of that, basically praying for the wind to change. 

So—and, again, without ruling out violence entirely—what remains must be hope, sure, but coupled with strategy, cold and with some cunning. Cunning which has no chance in hell of succeeding if we lie to ourselves about what we are up against, if we act as though getting out-jived by a failed Seattle council candidate and the star of the Apprentice doesn’t call for a certain stepping up of some game, if our opposition is systematically under-appreciated as both mouth-breathing and as unbeatable as sleet or any other aspect of dumb and brutal nature. And I do mean “appreciated” specifically, both in how no minds or hearts have ever been turned towards grace by contempt, and in how no unchangeable asshole has ever had their teeth kicked in by good and decent people who, assuming said asshole was an amputee, fought with one hand tied behind their back. 

So, yeah, sorry if I can’t chortle at fascists not understanding Rage Against the Machine, regardless how often Tom Morello assures my side that we’re the real RATM-whisperers, because I fight harder against the right’s murderous (reciprocated) disdain when I’m honest about the fact that they have outmaneuvered my side by utilizing Rage Against the Machine’s essential nature: that of a group of Sony employees who couple “fuck you” with some of the most infectiously energizing guitar parts ever recorded. My self esteem, my dignity, demands that, if my side is currently getting its ass kicked, it’s not by dummies. It’s by equals, occasionally (in my case if not in yours) by big brained “betters” who can code or even make a fuck-ton of money, all of whom I correctly hate as a matter of both survival and solidarity. I don’t want to feel good about my hobbies. I don’t want to feel superior about anything. I want to see these pricks’ teeth on the pavement*. 

*metaphorically or as literal enamel. Whatever's clever.

Punkscript (postscript)

Oh and my other point (added only partially because I don’t want to end this essay sounding like a self aggrandizing tough guy, no matter how sincerely felt) is this: when all you “you can’t be punk and like Donald Trump” types listen to your X (the band, not twitter) LPs, do you only perceive half the instruments? When you go see them, is it like Garfield Minus Garfield? 

Also, if libertarianism is your red line, I have some bad news for you concerning the Melvins…

THANKS FOR READING. Please share and subscribe. Please subscribe to CREEM. Please purchase the art that myself and Zohra make. Please donate to this (Afghanistan fund), this (Palestine), this (Trans Lifeline), and this (Sudan fund). PLEASE SIGN THIS (petition to free the Filton 18). And please, you know, *extreme The Clash voice* stay free. 

PPS: And for those who might (crazily) demand solutions from a man who just spent 4,000 words quibbling about punk semantics, I got you. I mean, of course I don’t. These are just off the top of my head and I wouldn’t swear by (or have the guts to attempt) half of ‘em, but I feel like I should throw some stuff out there. If any of it works, please name a garden devoted to brutalist sculpture after me. 

To Win Society, the Left Should (if they haven’t already) (with, again, the major caveat that I write about hardcore for a reason: I have many opinions and am not a genius):

1. Learn how to use guns. Not out of revolutionary delusion. They’ll always have more guns. But the future of America is guns, just like it always is, and a side with zero understanding of their appeal and zero familiarity with how they work besides jokes about small dicks is going to lose. Also wouldn’t hurt to become a market share within the weapon industry. 
2. Demand a return of the draft/national service, the only way to ensure that America’s armed forces don’t continue its current trajectory of being a separate warrior caste; essentially a rightist fifth column that trains only to maintain empire and funnel more demi-fascists into our already militarized police class. 
3. Boycott Amazon, but actually do it this time
4. Vote in primaries, local elections, school board elections, all of it. Run if you’re not a complete weirdo (or if you’re a complete weirdo with charm to burn).
5. Learn a second language.
6. Break up the majority of indie rock bands, as though they were monopolies, and force all the more competent musicians to go to nursing school
7. Interact with people on the right, either to convert them with class consciousness, seduce them with gender fluidity, or to find out where they live and then rob them.
8. Understand, on a cellular level, that the utopian dream of the internet, that information wants to be free, was not foolish or a bad dream; but it did fail. Irrevocably so. If you consume art or media, pay for it. At least to whatever degree you are able. Anything else is anti worker. Think of it like a tithe. To Lemmy, if that helps.
9. Cease using the word “punk” in any capacity, other than to describe bands that sound exactly like either Discharge or Blatz, no other exceptions, for a duration of no less than fifty (50) years.