Way back in 1969, Arlo Guthrie was among those who used the word "weirdos" to embrace himself and others like him. You can hear him do so here, in this intro to the infamous "Motorcycle Song."
That spirit of '69 has created a culture whom the weird is normal. Beto eating dirt after losing to Ted Cruz isn't even the weirdest thing about the current crop; as the author notes, even taking your mother to a porno film is not.
It's difficult to appreciate how weird it has gotten, because our culture suppresses the discussion of it. Thirty years ago it was 1988. The view of sexuality that had obtained for a thousand years or more was still broadly accepted. The military was staffed by straight men for the most part, as it had been since the introduction of formal militaries; some women performed non-combat roles, as they had since the second world war. Marriage was between a man and a woman, chiefly for the purpose of procreation and child rearing, according to a doctrine at least as old as Aquinas and arguably as old as Aristotle; people who divorced and remarried multiple times were still thought a bit scandalous. Cheating on your wife would end Presidential ambitions if it became widely known, because it was viewed as a betrayal of a sacred oath -- and the sacred oath is all that really restrains a President.
Perhaps some of those changes are for the better; I don't raise the issue to discuss that point. What I raise the issue to discuss is how rapidly everything has changed. Many of the things that are being treated as normal right now would have been unthinkable in 1988. As the cited piece suggests, Kamala Harris may eventually become the middle-of-the-road choice for nomination; if she does, both candidates for President will be acknowledged adulterers. It's not even really an issue anymore. Why should it be, when Harris et al are running on pledges to destroy the Constitutional systems their sacred oath would require them to protect? The hope isn't that her oath might restrain her; she, and the rest, are being sought out specifically to violate that oath.
Like many, I have a great deal of affection for the music of 1969 -- for the beauty which first flowered in the spirit of throwing off the old rules, and trying new things. Some of you have more affection for some of the changes that have followed, some less. But it is clear that tradition and normality have completely lost their force. Everything can be swept away in this wind; anything to be saved must be saved by main force.
It's a dangerous time. An interesting one.
1 comment:
Woodstock was called the birth of a nation, but I see it as the death of the 60s rebellion, which went mainstream soon after. Because it was overpraised - is still overpraised - I have been among the deplorers of the changes wrought. Yet there is probably much worth praising that I no longer notice, taking it for granted.
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