A Hopeful Note from the Grateful Dead

Jerry Garcia's politics were not all that political; as the article explains, he disdained politicians and avoided their campaigns for power and office. He had what strikes me as a hopeful vision of America:

Mr. Garcia lived among artists and built up a community around him that was, psychologically and in some ways practically, impervious to government power.... He admired those who also lived beyond the government’s authority — the Black Panthers and the Hells Angels, to name two groups — though Mr. Garcia did not so much confront the government as simply refuse to accept its authority over him.

The government’s power, he insisted, was “illusory,” a myth that took real form only because people accepted it. “The government,” Mr. Garcia said, “is not in a position of power in this country.”

I think there is something to that. The government is not entirely without power, but it extends much less far than the government itself wishes it did. We see little enough of them here in the mountains.