Yes, this nation and people need a day or mourning. America should mourn, but not for Martin Luther King. They should mourn because moral values are at the lowest level since the decadence of Rome....Funny, isn't that what we're hearing today? And really, weren't they saying that 100 years ago? Isn't there some famous quote of one of the Ancient Greeks writing about the decaying morals of the Younger Generation? Ah well, the more things change...
...Drug addiction among the youth is so widespread that we are treated to the spectacle at great universities of faculty-student committees solemnly decreeing that this is not longer a matter for correction...Oooo, "correction"! That sounds so S&M...! Sign me up!
...At countless universities the doors of dormitories are open to mixed company, with no supervision... Dress is immodest. Pornography floods the news stands and book stores. 'Free Speech' movements on campuses address themselves to four-letter words... We are knee-deep in hippies, marijuana, LSD, and other hallucinogens. We do not need any of these; we are self-doped to the point where our standards are lost...Okay, first the idea of being knee-deep in marijuana sounds like Heaven on a Stick to me! But putting that aside, can you imagine if the people who wrote this editorial could leap from 1968 to 2008. I think it's a fair bet their heads would actually explode. Can you imagine a traveler from 1968 dealing with South Park, Cinemax after Dark, online porn, The Daily Show, Comedy Central in general, Janet Jackson's Nipple Scandal, Weeds, Deadwood, Avenue Q, Harold and Khumar, The Aristocrats, and of course, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle...?
...If you are black, so goes the contention, you are right, and you must be indulged in every wish. Why, sure, break the window and make off with the color TV set, the case of liquor, the beer, the dress, the coat, and the shoes. We won't shoot you. That would be 'police brutality.'...Except of course when we shoot you for no reason coming out of your own bachelor party the night before your wedding. Or when we drag you from the back of a pickup till you're dead. Or when we leave you to die in New Orleans...
Then again, we did let O.J. go...
...If you are white, you are wrong. Feel guilty about it. Assume the collective guilt of all your progenitors, even if neither you nor anyone you know is a descendant of salve owners. Yield the sidewalk to the migrants from the South who have descended on your cities. Honor their every want, because the 'liberals' tell you that it is your fault they have not educated themselves, developed responsibility, trained themselves to hold jobs, or are shiftless and dependent on your taxes.Gee, that sorta sounds like the arguments coming from a lot of the Right Wingers today, doesn't it (though they usually dress it up in less obviously racist language)? Not McCain himself, of course. That would be unseemly. He leaves it to schmucks like Hannity, Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, and the Lesser Crazies... They even have the same trick of de-humanizing with labels: then it was "migrants;" now, it's "illegal aliens." And these terrible creatures don't "move to" a city; they "descend on" it. These Pundits of The Dark Side know that if people of color are just "people," they're not scary enough to rouse the rabble!
Then as now, half of America is always afraid of Anarchy, that those who are oppressed will rise up and up-end everything we hold dear. In retrospect it's hard not to see the original Planet of the Apes films as a fable about race fear in America. They feared that chaos would erupt (which it often did in 1968) and Order (i.e., White Defined Order) would never be Restored. The same fear is with us today -- many Americans told exit pollers during the primaries that race did play a part in their decision. Is it possible to see that as anything other than racism? If someone votes for Hillary over Obama, and says race was a deciding factor, doesn't that ipso facto make them racist? The pollsters have reported those numbers but are afraid of drawing the obvious conclusion...
When Don Imus can call black college women "nappy headed ho's," then the song "Colored Spade" in Hair feels as timely as tomorrow morning's headlines. Which is a shame.
The more I compare 1968 and 2008, the more depressing it gets. We really haven't come very far since then. Maybe we can blame Nixon and Watergate for short-circuiting the good work of the Sixties, but we gotta blame ourselves, too. And our fear.
So what do we do now?
On with the Groovy Revolution!
Kerouac
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