Politics & Power Quote by Thurston Moore

There is a casual shrug baked into Thurston Moore's line, and that's the point. "That's sort of a given" isn't just a description of a band's politics; it's a claim about the cultural ecosystem that bands like his inhabit. Moore treats "liberal philosophy" less as a manifesto than as the default setting for an alternative-rock milieu where skepticism toward authority, sympathy for outsiders, and a DIY ethic are assumed, not argued. The offhand tone is doing defensive work: it preempts the tedious demand to justify politics as if they were an add-on to the music, while also sidestepping the trap of sounding preachy.

The subtext is about genre as a social contract. In the underground rock world Sonic Youth helped define, the audience isn't only consuming sound; they're buying into a set of values - anti-censorship, pro-experimentation, and a reflexive distrust of conservative moral panic that shadowed rock through the Reagan years and the culture wars. Moore's "sort of" is a strategic softener, leaving room for complexity and contradiction while still planting a flag.

It's also a subtle flex of legitimacy. By presenting liberalism as self-evident, Moore positions the band within a lineage where political posture is inseparable from artistic freedom. The line works because it refuses the spectacle of outrage: it normalizes a stance that, in other contexts, gets treated as controversy, and in doing so reminds you how much "apolitical" is often just another ideology with better PR.