Every generation has its theme music, and I don’t begrudge today’s generation their affection for the music coming from 21st century composers and artists; but to those of us who got through the 60s intact, I think it is fair to say we did so with the help of songs that defined our restlessness and our unrest, the hope we were maybe on the right track, the visions for equality and justice and love, and of the dreams we so desperately needed to achieve. But music alone does not lift a nation to it’s sought-after heights; to do that, a county needs unity of purpose and faith in something yet unseen but possible. Singing “All You Need is Love,” does not perforce bring love into a world of hate.
I’m trying to write something sensible about this 50-year-old path of broken hopes, but, having lived it, I am having trouble putting it down without sounding trite or bitter. Why do we keep making the same mistakes? Why have we allowed the lessons of 50 years ago to not only haunt and revisit us, but to make things worse than they were then?
Our hopes were high; we believed we could stand on the shoulders of the Greatest Generation and be even greater in homage to their sacrifices. If our parents worked so hard, and fought so hard, and endured so much in order to lift us to a better future, was it not reasonable to believe we would exceed their efforts with our own children…with our own country? We not only failed to be greater, we made the world worse for our children and our grandchildren.
Who can honestly look at what passes for national leadership today...what passes for world peace today...what passes for education today...what passes for economic fairness today...what passes for social justice today...what passes for security today...what passes for dialogue today, and say with a straight face we are better now than we were in 1968? Thanks to social media, we are just louder now, we scream more now, we hide our true selves more now; we hurt others more now because we can do so in hand-held anonymity.
George Wallace of 1968 and Donald Trump of 2018: Two bigotry-stained pieces of toilet paper torn from the same shabby and shameful roll. What progress is that? Vietnam and Afghanistan (and Iraq and Syria and a dozen other killing fields): tragedies whose heroes came, and are coming, home under American flags. What progress is that?
Black men and women tear-gassed, pushed to the ground or shoved into a pane of glass or arrested or shot for just existing where whites don’t want them to exist whether in1968 or 2018. What kind of progress is that?
Children not only being killed in our schools, but children expecting to be killed in our schools. What kind of progress is that? Let’s not even get into the damn wall and the terror of children being pulled away from their parents—the shame of that is unfathomable.
What is happening is the normalization of aberrant behavior by public figures. It is not a matter of being "easily offended." It is a matter of being insulted by language that should have been deleted long ago from every dictionary. If I used the N word anywhere in my life, or characterized a black person as an ape or monkey, or suggested that all Southerners are Crackers or rednecks, or decided to use epithets to describe Hispanics, Asians, or Jews or Muslims...I would expect to bear the full brunt of an outraged society.
I've never considered grabbing a woman by....nor minimizing sexual assault...nor criticized a reporter with a disability...nor paid $130,000 as hush money...nor lied every single day to the public...nor used any office I ever held for my own vendettas. I would never have used Memorial Day to praise my accomplishments as Trump did on Monday.
The list goes on, and one cannot come at this issue as if it was just normal behavior.
I'm not thin-skinned. I'm angry, frustrated, hurt, and upset that anyone...after so many years of our working to establish a fair and equitable union...would find pleasure or acceptance in the social and political disaster that is facing our nation today. And before you think I'm just another liberal who is whining about this, look around at all the pain that exists in almost every corner of our country and tell me if a mere label--right, middle, center, liberal, conservative, etc.--makes that pain any fucking better. It does not. If you're not going to help fix the problems, then at least respect the opinions of those of us who, no matter how small and unimportant we are, are trying to make a difference. Don't normalize the disaster that is looming over America.
And for goodness' sake, don’t point to someone like Roseanne Barr and claim all she did was exercise her First Amendment rights.
This is not a First Amendment issue in any way shape for form except to the degree that it is as close to yelling "fire" in a theater as one can get. If Barr had said that about a private citizen...just a black person on the street...it would be actionable for slander and defamation or humiliation. That her target was a public figure makes no difference in my book...it was a vile, repugnant, and hurtful statement, based on her deep-seated and horribly-flawed world view.
Barr and Trump and their adherents are looking for theaters filled with people like me in which to yell fire...they love to yell it...they want to burn those theaters down...they love to disrupt and shift the center of gravity of personal, community, and national discourse. That's not a First Amendment right; that's anarchy when it begins to swarm and grow.
The fires—real and metaphorical—of the 1960s should have died, cooled to ash and blown away long before my children were born. Yet, having watched 1968 and revisited my memories—good and not so good—I believe there are still hot embers remaining, embers that will ignite the tinder of racism, economic inequality, failing education, ageism, distrust, and spittle-flecked vitriol. If we are incapable of action, those patches of flame will burst forth and consume us as they did 50 years ago.
What is happening is the normalization of aberrant behavior by public figures. It is not a matter of being "easily offended." It is a matter of being insulted by language that should have been deleted long ago from every dictionary. If I used the N word anywhere in my life, or characterized a black person as an ape or monkey, or suggested that all Southerners are Crackers or rednecks, or decided to use epithets to describe Hispanics, Asians, or Jews or Muslims...I would expect to bear the full brunt of an outraged society.
I've never considered grabbing a woman by....nor minimizing sexual assault...nor criticized a reporter with a disability...nor paid $130,000 as hush money...nor lied every single day to the public...nor used any office I ever held for my own vendettas. I would never have used Memorial Day to praise my accomplishments as Trump did on Monday.
The list goes on, and one cannot come at this issue as if it was just normal behavior.
I'm not thin-skinned. I'm angry, frustrated, hurt, and upset that anyone...after so many years of our working to establish a fair and equitable union...would find pleasure or acceptance in the social and political disaster that is facing our nation today. And before you think I'm just another liberal who is whining about this, look around at all the pain that exists in almost every corner of our country and tell me if a mere label--right, middle, center, liberal, conservative, etc.--makes that pain any fucking better. It does not. If you're not going to help fix the problems, then at least respect the opinions of those of us who, no matter how small and unimportant we are, are trying to make a difference. Don't normalize the disaster that is looming over America.
And for goodness' sake, don’t point to someone like Roseanne Barr and claim all she did was exercise her First Amendment rights.
This is not a First Amendment issue in any way shape for form except to the degree that it is as close to yelling "fire" in a theater as one can get. If Barr had said that about a private citizen...just a black person on the street...it would be actionable for slander and defamation or humiliation. That her target was a public figure makes no difference in my book...it was a vile, repugnant, and hurtful statement, based on her deep-seated and horribly-flawed world view.
Barr and Trump and their adherents are looking for theaters filled with people like me in which to yell fire...they love to yell it...they want to burn those theaters down...they love to disrupt and shift the center of gravity of personal, community, and national discourse. That's not a First Amendment right; that's anarchy when it begins to swarm and grow.
The fires—real and metaphorical—of the 1960s should have died, cooled to ash and blown away long before my children were born. Yet, having watched 1968 and revisited my memories—good and not so good—I believe there are still hot embers remaining, embers that will ignite the tinder of racism, economic inequality, failing education, ageism, distrust, and spittle-flecked vitriol. If we are incapable of action, those patches of flame will burst forth and consume us as they did 50 years ago.
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