… is the debut album from the now-prestigious New York rock band, The Strokes. Its release to North American audiences in October 2001 was met with swathes of unprecedented acclaim—a level of praise so feverish, in fact, that it kindled a newfound sonic desire in the minds of American rock devotees; within the year, this desire boiled over into zealous fandom and imitation, and thus, the indie/garage rock revival of the early 2000s had begun, with “Is This It” elevating not just The Strokes to superstardom, but its humble home genre as well.
Thematically, the album is drenched in an atmosphere of disassociation. It presents modern life as a constant, desperate gambit to find some semblance of compassion, community, or happiness, only for each meager attempt to be punished by faceless societal forces of hopelessness, angst, and above all, disappointment. But disappointment in what? In the album’s namesake opening track, we’re given a thesis on its origin:
“Said they’d give you anything you ever wanted
When they lied, I knew it was just stable
Children tryin’ hard not to realize.”
Promises undelivered. Duplicitousness accepted as an innate character of life. A necessity for escapism—especially for children. All of these themes orbit one central, heart-aching truth: modernity is disappointing. These late-capitalist woes weighed heavily on the psyche of Americans in 2001, and their weight has only grown more unbearable. With each generational lurch of neoliberalism, a new wave of music fans seek the anodyne comfort of “Is This It”; if only to find some sort of solidarity in their collective phantom pain. Still today, despondent 20-somethings listen to the album with the same hunger that the New York scene had back in 2001, with soi-disant audiophile forums considering it among the greatest indie albums ever made. We’re all still rocking with it; isn’t that awful?
This ineffable, near-endless sensation of alienation is the “This” of “Is This It,” and returns us to the album’s terminal question: Is this really it? Is this all there is? Though The Strokes may have been the foremost band to give this existential malaise a musical voice, scholars of political philosophy have grappled with it since capitalism’s inception. Perhaps the most notorious of these academics is Francis Fukuyama. In his landmark book “The End of History and the Last Man,” Fukuyama posits that, with the fall of the communist USSR in the early 90s, liberal democracy has achieved total victory as the ultimate ideological project of all nations. This proclamation differs from the common American heuristic of eternal progression. Rather than viewing history as a constant trudge towards “goodness,” Fukuyama presents history as a philosophical object—a progression not towards transcendence, but rather towards the creation of a governance that is in line with the human psychological condition; this resultant state, Fukuyama claims, is liberal democracy; and by ideological proxy, capitalist hegemony. In essence: This is it.
It’s been 32 years since Fukuyama’s publication, and 23 since “Is This It,” and we have yet to prove either untrue; we have not yet escaped the event horizon of capitalism. This is not for lack of trying. The last decade of American political chaos has proven to be the ultimate weight-bearance test for Fukuyamist thought. The mass-politic fervor of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, for instance, caught the neoliberal vanguard unprepared. The Democrats, upon being delivered a political movement with the momentum and mass appeal to defeat Trump, chose not to ride it to a grassroots-powered victory. Instead, they opted to suffocate the moment with the entirety of the American media machinery. Why? Well, they wanted to win, sure, but at the potential risk of capitulation to socialism? Never. And thus, the Trump Era was born—wrought upon the world as all other fascistic movements have been: via the corpse of socialist hope.
But even then, at our supposed worst… it was only more of the same. Trump *didn’t* plunge America into fascism—which is not to argue that he didn’t make life worse for damn-near everyone, but it must be stated that none of his administration’s machinations reached too far beyond the liberal-capitalist toolbox. Even January 6th, a moment with all the zeal and insanity of a fascist coup, withered away into a pathetic, meaningless razing… of what? A few desks? Our dignity? Even when given a chance at the levers of power, the average American fascist is incapable of creating anything beyond what already is. I digress.
With their pride thoroughly hurt, the Democrats of 2020 sought salvation in the same type of careerist politician that they had bet the house on in 2016; enter, Joe Biden, whose promise to return decorum to Washington was as insufferable as it was untrue (See: Gaza). And now we’re here. 2024. It’ll be Biden v. Trump *again*, assuming neither of them succumbs to senescence or go to jail before November. With weary hearts and heavy eyelids, more and more Americans are asking: “Is this the best we can do?,” “Is there no one else?,” “These are the choices we have?”…
From track 6, “Alone, Together”:
“The world is over and I don’t care,
‘cause I am with you.”