Opinion of "intellectual indie hack" style liberals

[Velasco]

-Love to listen to pretentious independent music (hence my "scene", common there), go to pretentious indie movies, reject anything "mainstream", etc.

It's just curiosity. Could you name some "pretentious" indie bands? I suspect I might like some of them, unless they are too new. I've been somewhat disconnected in the last 2/3 years and focused on late 70s/ early 80s bands and older stuff (outside mainstream, needless to say). A couple of years ago, I used to hate all "mainstream" music. Nowadays I can enjoy Like A Virgin , only because I'm so cool, etcetera. I've always hated words like "scene", on the other hand, and have little patience with snobs, unless I find other qualities in such persons to compensate their elitist arrogance

[Velasco]

     These people are what is wrong with America.

I think religious lunatics and gun enthusiasts are more important groups, demographically speaking, and I think something's going really wrong with them. If "intelectual indie hack style liberals" exist as a statistical classification, they are for sure a tiny minority. Even if they are annoying, misguided or whatever,  I don't think they represent a significant disturbance for the country as a whole.

[Velasco]

The type of bands I'm thinking of? You probably wouldn't like them. I'm thinking of artsy (real) emo/hardcore, ala Orchid, Ampere, This Ship Will Sink, The Assistant, Instil, Wrong Day to Quit, You and I, Funeral Diner, Staircase, Under a Dying Sun...oh yeah most of that is actually about ten years old now, wow.

Oh well, I've never been into 'real' (artsy) emo/hardcore and some bands you mention -except Orchid, Under a Dying Sun and Staircase- are unknown to me. Anyway I have couple of friends who like that kind of stuff and I could ask them. Maybe those bands are pretentious, or it's just that I can't connect. You realize that emo/hardcore fans are only a tiny fraction of the indie crowd, right?

Btw, to me 'real' hardcore (obvsly not 'emo') is Fugazi, a prehistoric band that I might have never heard but -oddly enough- I know people interested in "the scene".

[Velasco]

Fugazi is not hardcore.

The members came from influential real emo bands Rites of Spring and Embrace.

My apologies, I mixed up 'hardcore' and 'emocore'. Those labels are nasty and you're the expert in the "scene".

Seriously, rhetoric on 'gender oppression' and corporation abuses may sound 'far left', but I think they are, to some extent, a commonplace among all type of 'progressives' in the Western World. On the other hand, I guess what you mean referring to certain Obama hackery and the love for technologic gadgets. I don't see anything bad in supporting Obama; likely I'd vote for him, even when he's too moderate hero for me. Ridiculous hackery, empty rhetoric, i-phones and the like sound in this case just as fashionable (trendy) accessories of a very colorful and specific subculture but, as people says, they may be extensive to a wider group of trendy progressives.