In my youth I encountered the excitement and romance of revolution.
My cohort of people marched on Washington. There were a million of us.
Our music was revolutionary. The Beatles. Jefferson Airplane, up against the wall, motherfuckers! They said "motherfuckers", sang it. How free. How exhilarating!
The government wanted to send us off to fight a war of decadent colonialism, America stepping in for the French in a hopeless effort. They wanted to draft us, a form of enslavement. It wasn't just ok to resist this; it was a moral requirement.
The colleges were in on it. Strike and protest them.
We could return to a Walden Pond of simplicity. Back to the land, live in a commune, smoke grass, exit the great machine. Some people picked up and did it.
We could change the world. Good journalists like Woodward and Bernstein could speak truth to power and bring justice. A good lawyer, a good journalist, a good politician even could change the world for the better.
We had our own cars, small ones, especially VWs.
Some guys wore beards--a symbol of independence.
We had a military cadre of bad-asses who carried guns: the Black Panthers.
We had tee shirts quoting Jefferson: "when any form of government becomes destructive of those ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government."
I still sort of believe it, but I have discovered that the world doesn't want to be changed, so I drifted into the humdrum workaday life of hoping to make some tiny difference, one person at a time, maybe, while attempting to live my life. Some would say I grew up. Forty five years ago I would have said that I lost my soul--which is possibly what happens when one grows up.
Now to the Tea Party and Harney County. There is another group out there now with a revolutionary fervor, and they are on the opposite side of the revolution in consciousness I described above. They have the same romantic idealism but they are primarily in opposition to the counter-cultural impulses of the 1960s and 1970s.
I saw them up close at the South Carolina Tea Party Convention and I read about them in a remote part of Oregon, in Harney County. They share some of the same convictions that some of us in my generation felt 50 years ago:
The society and particularly the government is deeply corrupt.
There is a deep sickness in fundamental values in the culture which is reflected in the government.
It is OK, indeed required, to resist and to overthrow this.
They celebrate rural life and a rural culture that is counter to urban "New York" values.
They have their own vehicles: pickup trucks.
Lots of beards on guys. Big, big beards, Duck Dynasty beards.
They have their own politicians expressing their views, the anti-establishment group of Republican candidates: Donald Trump the nationalist, Ted Cruz the ideologue, Rubio the next generation rock star, Ben Carson the gentle poet.
And they have their own version of the Black Panthers, the militia men who display flags like "Don't Tread on Me", and bumper strips that declare government can take their guns only "From My Cold Dead Fingers", and then the people who take things to the next step, the Freedom Fighters who occupied the Wildlife Reserve in Harney County.
These people declared their romantic idealism: LaVoy Finikum, the man killed during the arrest of the occupiers of the federal property had declared he would not let himself be arrested: "I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box. There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them." His words were repeated with respect among his Facebook friends. Give him liberty, or give him death.
The Republican presidential candidates treated these men gingerly. Rubio and Cruz have acknowledged and supported the grievances of western ranchers who want access to mining, ranching, and timber assets, but there had been a shift in the optics since the first occupation by Cliven Bundy in 2013. In that occupation armed white militia men were shown pointing sniper rifles at uniformed law enforcement people and their cause was celebrated by talk radio, Fox, and the candidates. But in the aftermath of Ferguson and Baltimore, and lines being drawn between protesters and police the candidates have made their choice: support law enforcement.
But we have observed something--the dog that did not bark. There are no candidates out here in Oregon. And no statements of support along the lines of those given the candidate support given to the Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, or to the earlier standoff with the elder Bundy. The protesters stood alone and began to look foolish then lonely. No candidate could support people taking arms against law enforcement people who were acting with apparent restraint.
My cohort of people marched on Washington. There were a million of us.
Our music was revolutionary. The Beatles. Jefferson Airplane, up against the wall, motherfuckers! They said "motherfuckers", sang it. How free. How exhilarating!
The government wanted to send us off to fight a war of decadent colonialism, America stepping in for the French in a hopeless effort. They wanted to draft us, a form of enslavement. It wasn't just ok to resist this; it was a moral requirement.
The colleges were in on it. Strike and protest them.
 |
| Fighting for Freedom, back in the day |
We could change the world. Good journalists like Woodward and Bernstein could speak truth to power and bring justice. A good lawyer, a good journalist, a good politician even could change the world for the better.
We had our own cars, small ones, especially VWs.
Some guys wore beards--a symbol of independence.
We had a military cadre of bad-asses who carried guns: the Black Panthers.
We had tee shirts quoting Jefferson: "when any form of government becomes destructive of those ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government."
I still sort of believe it, but I have discovered that the world doesn't want to be changed, so I drifted into the humdrum workaday life of hoping to make some tiny difference, one person at a time, maybe, while attempting to live my life. Some would say I grew up. Forty five years ago I would have said that I lost my soul--which is possibly what happens when one grows up.
 |
| LeVoy Finikum, militiaman and Freedom Fighter, killed yesterday |
I saw them up close at the South Carolina Tea Party Convention and I read about them in a remote part of Oregon, in Harney County. They share some of the same convictions that some of us in my generation felt 50 years ago:
The society and particularly the government is deeply corrupt.
There is a deep sickness in fundamental values in the culture which is reflected in the government.
It is OK, indeed required, to resist and to overthrow this.
They celebrate rural life and a rural culture that is counter to urban "New York" values.
They have their own vehicles: pickup trucks.
Lots of beards on guys. Big, big beards, Duck Dynasty beards.
They have their own politicians expressing their views, the anti-establishment group of Republican candidates: Donald Trump the nationalist, Ted Cruz the ideologue, Rubio the next generation rock star, Ben Carson the gentle poet.
 |
| Duck Dynasty revolt against a corrupted culture |
And they have their own version of the Black Panthers, the militia men who display flags like "Don't Tread on Me", and bumper strips that declare government can take their guns only "From My Cold Dead Fingers", and then the people who take things to the next step, the Freedom Fighters who occupied the Wildlife Reserve in Harney County.
These people declared their romantic idealism: LaVoy Finikum, the man killed during the arrest of the occupiers of the federal property had declared he would not let himself be arrested: "I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box. There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them." His words were repeated with respect among his Facebook friends. Give him liberty, or give him death.
The Republican presidential candidates treated these men gingerly. Rubio and Cruz have acknowledged and supported the grievances of western ranchers who want access to mining, ranching, and timber assets, but there had been a shift in the optics since the first occupation by Cliven Bundy in 2013. In that occupation armed white militia men were shown pointing sniper rifles at uniformed law enforcement people and their cause was celebrated by talk radio, Fox, and the candidates. But in the aftermath of Ferguson and Baltimore, and lines being drawn between protesters and police the candidates have made their choice: support law enforcement.
But we have observed something--the dog that did not bark. There are no candidates out here in Oregon. And no statements of support along the lines of those given the candidate support given to the Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, or to the earlier standoff with the elder Bundy. The protesters stood alone and began to look foolish then lonely. No candidate could support people taking arms against law enforcement people who were acting with apparent restraint.
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