|
view. Don't kick people when they're down. Find the way to buck them up, energize them, re-empower them, help them out of their morass. Currently, we have the specific mechanism of power in a democratic country--our right to vote, and our right to transparent vote counting--that has been taken away, recently--with the Bushite-controlled "trade secret" programming in the new electronic voting systems. The fascists now have direct control over vote counting. This is something that can still be changed, by a focused effort at the state/local level. It's not glamorous work, but it is essential to restoring the basic condition of democracy: transparent elections.
People are hurting and oppressed. And many don't yet know about this control mechanism or that it is still changeable. It's the sort of practical thing that Martin Luther King, or Gandhi, would address himself to. MLK's main focus, besides desegregation, was black voting rights, and specifically the poll tax and other mechanisms that were used to keep blacks from voting, and from achieving any foothold on power.
The Sixties--meaning the cultural and political revolution of that era--didn't just happen. It was the result of a convergence of small and large events, realizations and actions, on a great many issues. And it all took place AFTER JFK was executed, and in the midst of the MLK and RFK executions, not to mention the slaughter of some 2 million people in Southeast Asia. It wasn't a healthy society. It was a very sick society, only a few years from the very sick McCarthy era. The youth movement, the music, the notion "make love not war," the civil rights movement, and the equality movements for women, gays and others, and also the Native Americans' movement, were all eruptions of health, in an very over-militarized society that had never really demobilized after WW II, and in which the corporate/military porkbarrel was just finding its way to permanent status as the chief welfare recipient of the country, and an albatross on the backs of working people. The youth rebelled. Blacks and others demanded equatable treatment. The times they were a-changing, but not really very substantially on the deepest-rooted problem: our military economy. The youth (and I was one of them, so I know) were not really very savvy, and did not understand what they needed to do next: dismantle the war machine. The US economy never got back onto a peaceful footing--like Europe did and Japan. Although there were some tempering influences--a much freer press, more or less honest elections (at least, transparent ones), and some pretty good Democratic leaders (even with the execution of the strongest of them)--the entrenched corporate/military establishment won the day. I am sure it is their operatives--operatives of the war profiteers--who killed JFK, MLK and RFK (peacemakers, all). They further cemented their power, got rid of the one president who wanted to curtail them (and who succeeded somewhat in curtailing their more nefarious activities in South/Central America)--Jimmy Carter--and proceeded to their next war, illegally and in direct defiance of Congress--the war on Nicaragua--under Reagan. That illegal war had consequences--not terribly serious ones, but some. A bit of jail time for some of the Reaganites. But Reagan got off scot free, and the Dems colluded with the Reaganites, at that time, to re-write the tax code in favor of the rich. The end of the US middle class began then.
These corporate/military cabalists created a situation that was ripe for a fascist coup: a huge military machine, like a ripe peach, ready to be plucked and terribly misused. And here we are today. The American people are so used to the war machine, they can't imagine living without it. They had settled for it being used TEMPERATELY. They agreed to the rules--no torture, no unjust war, no domestic spying. No more Vietnams or Iran/Contras. The fascists have now broken all the rules--and the people, I think, are bewildered by it, and feeling very powerless, indeed, and are only just now wising up about the voting system. The turning point really came with Carter and the oil companies. They created a phony oil crisis and basically drove him from office, with Reagan inflicting the coup de grace, by negotiating with the Iranians to keep hold of their US hostages until after the '78 election--and all this with the complicity of the--by this time--war profiteering corporate news monopolies.
I fault myself, as a youth, and my generation, for not seeing far enough, beyond the very real social revolution, to the much deeper problem: the military basis of our economy, and of course its oil component. We had some momentum in the '60s to change things. The killing of our leaders, and the end of the Draft, took the steam out of all of it. And then, as now, the supposed liberal establishment, was very collusive, both as to helping cover up the assassination plots, and to maintaining high military spending.
I don't know what the answer is. A "return to the '60s" is not it. Going BEYOND the '60s--way, way beyond that era's consciousness--is what is needed. But we need to be less lofty, in a way. We need to do some practical, hard, strategic work, specifically on election reform: re-establishing the bottom-line conditions of democracy. The people have NO power right now, let alone the power to bring about revolutionary reform.
The '60s was not all glitz. But the glitz is what the corporate media promotes, and what gets highlighted in history books. Slogging down to summertime Alabama to help out with the SCLC voting rights campaign was not glitzy. It was hard. Working with poor kids in VISTA was hard work. Getting your head bashed in Chicago or Century City was not fun. The assassinations were awesomely traumatic. The continuing carnage in Vietnam was crazy-making. Talk about helplessness!
We did have hold of a dream, though--the dream of peace and justice. It was a beautiful thing--as awesomely beautiful as the assassinations were traumatic. And the Beatles burst upon us close upon the first assassination, of JFK. A few months later. I tend to think of them as almost the same event: the horror of that death, at the hands of ugly men who wanted war with Cuba and Vietnam, who thirsted for blood--followed close upon by "I Want To Hold Your Hand," this exquisite harmony among men, and the best thing men could be doing: singing.
I hope and trust that the young people of today will find their solacing song, their heartbeat, their beauty--out of the sorrow and grief they are suffering, for what America could be, and for what the greedbags and warmongers are preventing it from becoming. I hope the '10s are better than the '60s, with even better music and smarter people, who can bring about the profound changes that we could only dream of.
My advice: Again, be practical and strategic, for the moment. Get back your right to vote. There is a window of opportunity to do it. Do it NOW. And then the music will come.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
