Bring the Sixties Out of the Closet

This article in Alternet, spoke volumes to me. I have been feeling angry, scared for my country, and feel strongly that this is not the country I grew up in, or the country I served in the military. This country is going someplace strange and frightening while most people are sitting my either clueless or feeling helpless. What do we do? How do we get people to wake up? I don't know.

It has been interesting that most of the peace marches, and activist relatesd activities I have attended where peopled by baby boomers of a certain age, those of us who came of age in the late 60's mostly. Why is that? Because we remember the draft, and we know that at some point the draft will come back, although it will have a much more "friendly" name, in order to sell it to Americans. We remember being spied on by the FBI, students shot at Kent State, and more. Our country is going to hell in a handbasket, on its way to intolerance, theocracy and a destroyed constitution while we sit on our dead asses.

So this opinion piece posted on Alternet really spoke to me. "Bring the Sixties Out of the Closet" by Don Hazen:

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the '60s (actually the period from '67 to '73) -- that political era so filled with possibility, so much a part of the blood and souls of millions of aging baby boomers like myself. The period was profoundly effective in the changes it provoked, yet is so persistently pilloried for its exaggerated excesses. One reason I find myself looking back is the pervasive feeling of political impotence so many of us feel at this moment in history, and our seeming inability to act -- to be noticed, to make a difference.

There are some present-day chilling parallels to the repression of the Nixon era -- and of course many differences -- but there is a feeling in the air that smells like the '60s, that sends paranoid vibes through the body politic. The events taking place -- warrantless wiretapping, political corruption, torture, the war in Iraq with its disgusting profiteering while tens of thousands of people die -- demand a response equal to the situation, Yet we sit without a clear path showing us our step.

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