Why Americans Care More About The Loss Of Blockbuster Than The Razing Of Statues

Our past is relayed through commercial memories more than our actual heritage

Nostalgia is rife in modern American culture. All it takes is an old ad or a video of high schoolers to send citizens into paroxysms of longing. This reaches absurd dimensions when middle-aged people talk about the glories of Toys ‘R’ Us and Blockbuster. TikTok and Instagram are filled with strange nostalgia over McDonald’s ball pits. There’s now even a popular video game where you play as a cashier at a ‘90s video rental store.

However ridiculous this nostalgia may seem, it’s genuinely felt. This is the America many people, particularly millennials, want back.

Sometimes the cultural nostalgia latches on to more understandable items. A patriotic 1976 Coke ad went viral last week for showcasing an idyllic America. Mainstream conservatives and right-wing shitposters loved the soda commercial showing a mostly white town with parades, baseball, and happy Americans celebrating the Bicentennial. The ad was contrasted with the apparently dark situation of today. “The past is America. We are now living in a foreign country,” read one typical response on X.

But the clip is not a documentary. It’s an advertisement. Obviously, it depicts an idealized version of life rather than what’s really going on. One would hopefully not rely on ads today to understand what life is like. Otherwise, you would think 80 percent of American couples today are interracial, with the majority being a white husband and black wife.

Kevin Deanna noted the strange way Americans perceive their past. “1976 Coca-Cola ad is being taken as proof of the decline of patriotism just as that 1980s Gillette ad was taken as proof of the death of masculinity,” the right-wing writer posted on X. “We can’t even interpret our decline except through pop culture and commercial advertisements.”

He makes a good point, and it can be expanded to support the notion that Americans can’t interpret who we are except through pop culture and commercial advertisements. This explains why far more Americans, including right-wingers, feel the loss of Blockbuster on a deeper level than the loss of Confederate statues. There’s a more personal connection to the video rental chain than the monuments to long-dead ancestors.

There are a lot of reasons to feel a sense of loss at the current state of America. The Anglo-Protestant people and values that built this country are in decline. Immigrants from every corner of the world can now be found in the heartland. Much of that heartland is filled with ghost towns and drug abuse. Even with woke’s retreat, our schools, universities, and even many of our corporations still spread anti-white racism. Fewer Americans know our history or even care about its heritage. Our country looks a lot less like the America of our grandparents, both demographically and culturally.

The strange nostalgia fueling the Right’s cultural pessimism is a favorite Highly Respected topic. What seems to really move people to despair–more than removed statues or forgotten Anglo norms–are these commercial memories. There’s the obvious explanation that these people actually experienced those enterprises more than the Founding or the Civil War, and so they’re naturally more attached to them.

But there are two other things going on here. One is that millennials’ intense nostalgia reflects their shattered illusions as adults and their desire to return to childhood. The second is how pop culture now serves as the heritage for Americans. We’re a people that proudly dispense with the past. What heritage the individual American is primarily attached to, beyond their own experiences, is commercial memories. That animates the strange cultural pessimism of our time.

Millennials are not a popular generation. While boomers are more hated, boomers at least like themselves. That’s debatable with millennials, as many try to adopt a different generational identity. They’re hated by the young as lame uncs and by the old as ungrateful snowflakes. Millennials are defined by arrested development. Far more of this generation aren’t hitting adult benchmarks of home ownership and marriage than prior generations. Zoomers may exceed them, but Gen Z doesn’t have the same expectations as millennials. Millennials bought into the classic American Dream that if they work hard and do everything right, they’ll be amply rewarded. In adulthood, they learned that wasn’t true. The Great Recession and COVID wrecked millennial job prospects, finances, and socialization. Many millennials point to these events to explain why they didn’t achieve the American Dream they expected simply for doing their homework. Zoomers, on the other hand, don’t have these assumptions and have acclimated to the new America.

Millennials dwell on their childhoods because that’s the time when their dreams still lived and the world made more sense. It’s why they are so attached to Blockbuster, Toys ‘R’ Us, and videos of high schoolers from the George W. Bush era. This was before their expectations were crushed by the realities of 21st century adulthood.

Many desire a return to childhood but know that’s frowned upon by society. So some turn to political explanations for why they want Blockbuster and 2007 high school back. This is where things get absurd and these places are extolled as exemplifying rooted, organic communities. One apparently found a real identity in the McDonald’s ball pit. Others insist that they pine for these failed stores because they represent a time when it was safe to shop. Apparently, one can no longer leave one’s house without being murdered anymore (don’t compare the murder rates between now and the ‘90s/2000s).

These justifications for nostalgia are ridiculous and provide no serious basis for a right-wing worldview. But it makes sense why millennials long for their adolescence. It was a better time for many of them.

But millennial longing isn’t the only explanation for our curious form of nostalgia. It’s also how we interpret our heritage and our past through commercial memories. The past is literally a foreign country to Americans. The majority don’t feel a deep connection to our history and imagine it involves different people rather than their ancestors. For recent immigrants, this is true. But it also applies to Heritage Americans.

You’ll notice this in the South. Southerners are not like Germans who feel immense ancestral guilt for what their predecessors did. Modern Southerners will often act like it was some other people who practiced slavery and Jim Crow, not anyone they’re related to. This is mostly a good thing because it blocks the imposition of self-hatred and the feeling that they owe reparations. At the same time, it allows southerners to separate themselves from their past.

Most Americans are like this. Despite being more patriotic than other developed countries, only three percent of Americans say our history makes them proud. Normie Americans shrug their shoulders at finding out their family has been here since the 17th century. Revolutionary War ancestors are as relevant to them as their medieval peasant ancestors. They’re focused on the here and now. What matters to them are the only family members that were around in their lifetime. But even their experiences don’t weigh heavily on them. White millennials and zoomers have pretty much all forgotten how their parents and grandparents were forced out of cities and many public schools following the Civil Rights Revolution. The only historical memory that remains strong is World War II, an event kept in the public consciousness by an endless supply of films and video games.

The majority of Americans don’t grow up being inculcated with a direct connection to the American past. They’re not learning Civil War songs, stories from their ancestors, or any kind of specific group identity from their family or school. Anything that happened before their time is ancient history–unless it’s a fun conspiracy theory shared by their favorite podcaster. Of course, there are still people who care about this history, but it’s a minority–and it’s increasingly older.

What stands in the place of heritage is our mass culture, as I explained in an article two years ago:

[W]e have a new mythos that’s replaced actual history. Marvel, Star Wars, and other popular franchises serve as our reference points for world affairs. When the Ukraine War broke out, many commentators explained the conflict through the lens of The Avengers. Harry Potter references were frequently deployed by politicians and media outlets to showcase the alleged evil of the Trump administration. Past political leaders utilized allusions from the Bible, classical works, and American history to illustrate their points to the public. Now our leaders cite Spider-Man and Voldemort. World War II is the only historical event most Americans are familiar with due to its inclusion in comic book films and video games. The Nazis stand as the ultimate bad guys in American mythology–our countrymen just might not know which country they ruled.

This new national character makes it much easier for immigrants to assimilate. They no longer need to turn themselves into Anglos who revere the Founding Fathers. They just need to enjoy working and watch our favorite shows. That’s about it.

There are upsides to this. We recoil at collective guilt projects because we insist that individuals today aren’t tainted by the alleged sins of the past. We’re too optimistic and forward-thinking for the guilt cults that dominate Germany, Canada, and other countries to take deep root here. Only the most libtarded Americans feel bad over white privilege.

But it also creates a bizarre public memory and shared heritage. Star Wars and the NFL make for a rather shallow national identity. But that’s what our people are attached to, and that’s why this strange nostalgia pervades social media. It also partially explains the decline in patriotism. Chain stores are likely to inspire deep reverence.

There’s still the opportunity to awaken a sense of identity based on America’s heritage rather than its pop culture. But it will take time and a lot of effort to do so.

Until then, expect millennials to keep posting about the McDonald’s ball pit and picking up The Lion King to rent. We can only hope Zoomers don’t do the same nostalgia posting about Fortnite in the 2030s.

You can now preorder Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.