Coolness depends on opposing the establishment but lost its target once progressivism became mainstream

Evidence

Historically, “hip” countercultural figures positioned themselves as social progressives opposing the conservative establishment. Scholar Joel Dinerstein observes that coolness was traditionally defined by rebellion against the status quo guarded by conservative “squares.” By 2001, however, this dynamic had inverted. The liberal coalition of the Clinton years, combined with the mainstreaming of alternative music and sympathetic media, had eroded conservative taboos around marijuana, nonmarital sex, gender norms, and homosexuality. Progressive ideals, once transgressive, were now repositioned as middle-class virtues. As philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote about France in 1997, “Why has everything moral, orthodox, and conformist, which was traditionally associated with the right, passed to the left?” This shift created a crisis among the rebels, as cool, by definition, must always be oppositional. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 60

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets up ‘omnivore monoculture’ context: the inverted dynamic where progressivism moved from transgressive to orthodox is the prehistory of why nothing can signal rebellion anymore.
• XREF: This ‘nothing left to oppose’ dynamic parallels the complaints-about-immodesty essay’s moral-panic inversions and the death-of-the-sellout thesis central to this book.