Pajamas Media

1968 Revisited

As hard as it may be to believe, the 1968 Democratic National Convention was just twenty-three years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon - who, as a twenty-four-year-old, longed to be in Chicago that year - now finds the era's self-indulgence and proximity to the greatest horrors of recorded history "oddly disquieting."

October 16, 2007 - by Roger L Simon

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I wrote earlier that OJ Changed My Life, but, of course, 1968 changed my life too - though I was in no way exceptional in that. A fair swatch of my generation claims to have had their view of the world altered that year whose signal importance has become a clich√©.

The question is why. At the time we all thought there were two reasons - opposition to the Vietnam War and rebellion against the cultural values of the Fifties. Most still see it that way. But I wonder if there is more to the story.

Looking back on that year now, I am puzzled by two rather curious and related phenomena - one, 1968 (about to have its forty year anniversary) seems relatively far away, yet its values continue to dominate our culture; two, 1968 is considerably closer to World War II than it is to today. Almost shockingly from a larger historical perspective, the Chicago Convention was a scant twenty-three years after the liberation of Auschwitz.

What does that proximity to the greatest horrors of recorded history mean - a period when fifty to sixty million people across the world were murdered or killed in global war, some of those millions in the most mechanized fashion ever, brought to concentration camps in freight cars and then gassed? For many years I ignored this proximity or, more exactly, didn’t notice it. A good liberal/lefty, I accepted the received wisdom of the era and did my best to adopt the proper attitudes, like the proper music and films and so forth. I made love, not war. But events and the passing of years have caused me to contemplate the cause of it all.

So what am I driving at here? The Fifties, as is generally acknowledged, were a natural era of calm conventionality - decompression after a period of extraordinary, almost incomprehensible violence. The generation coming home - the so-called Greatest Generation - wanted nothing more than peace and quiet, a return to normality. Why wouldn’t they have? But their children needed something else. They hadn’t participated in the war, weren’t direct victims of its horror but rather spectators at a storytelling. Nothing could be as bad for them as what their parents had seen with their own eyes and they knew it. In a sense the younger generation were weaklings, outsiders. They needed something of their own.

Also worth noting is that many of the iconic figures of 1968 - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Alan Ginsburg, Bob Dylan, even Daniel Cohn-Bendit of the May ‘68 “events” in Paris - were Jewish. And if you look at their birth dates, these men were not “Boomers” as conventionally defined. They were born before or during, not after, World War II, but none of them suffered directly from the Holocaust (although in many cases their relatives did).

So through these men - and others obviously - the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll was born. What’s interesting about this ethos is that it denies evil - just love each other and we will all be fine. And yet how evil was the Holocaust. Even so, “Zimmy,” born while the ovens were in full operating mode, doesn’t sing about it. He preferred the “times they are a-changin’.” Moving right along, as the saying goes. We don’t want to contemplate evil - in fact we don’t believe in it. “Turn in, tune in, drop out,” as Father Timothy said, also opining within a couple of decades of the Shoah. In his case, he and Richard Alpert (another Jew) were blasting us into another dimension as early, I think, as 1961. (They were ejected from Harvard in ‘63.) Evil? Who cares? Let’s be at one with the universe.

Now, to be clear, not being a conventionally religious person, I - and I am sure others - am not completely comfortable with the word “evil” either. So allow me to redefine this Manichean term as pathology for those of a more scientific bent. It was this pathology that 1968, unconsciously, sought to deny. Nothing in human life could be as the extremes of World War II - people could not be that pathological (or evil, if you prefer). All they need is a little love. So let’s go out and have as much fun as possible, drop acid, get naked and boogie. (Also, unspoken, we may all die soon anyway. Look what happens - lots of people die young.) Meanwhile, underlying the lyrics to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a song which for decades brought tears to my eyes, is this almost willed denial of these forms of mass mental illness, these large-scale political pathologies, as if you could destroy a virus through a sing-along, rather than inoculation.

Now I am not saying everything was wrong about the “1968 Revolution”. I still like the music and it helped spur women’s and homosexual equality, among other things. But it did create a blindness to this pathology/evil that explains a lot of our dilemma today. The “Boomers” were the younger sisters and brothers of the ‘68 people who were the objects of envy. The tortured Abbie may have killed himself, but his ideology - in a highly watered down, bourgeois form, of course - lives on through them in the pages of the New York Times and similar institutions. The Chicago Seven were, after all, the “cool guys”. Everybody wanted to be like them. I know that was true for me. I remember well sitting in a tiny London flat - I was twenty-four and in Europe trying to write a novel - watching the Convention on the BBC. Oh, how I wanted to be there! And soon enough - I was, marching and protesting and enjoying that life of sex, drugs and rock and roll (well, to some extent - I have my Puritan side).

But now, when we live an era of another virus whose ability to spread is bred in its ideology, thinking back on the self-indulgence of this is oddly disquieting, though I don’t mean to flay myself for what I did or what I was then. We are all creatures of our times. And I am glad for the experiences I had.

Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger.

29 Comments

David Thomson:

“But it did create a blindness to this pathology/evil that explains a lot of our dilemma today.”

The lefties of the 1960s refused to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. They opted to remain perpetual juveniles. Their ultimate self-delusion is that evil people really don’t exist. One merely needs to be nice to them, and they will gladly reciprocate. This is especially true if their skin is dark. Much of the opposition to our military involvement in Vietnam was based on the bizarre belief that America was conducting a racist war. The generation of the some 40 years is incapable of maturely handling issues pertaining to race. Needless to add, this hinders the West’s existential fight to the death against Muslim extremism.

Oct 16, 2007 - 3:04 am william jonas:

Is this round 2 or round 3?
I guess Mr Simon cannot live comfortably with the David Horowitz model he is trying to embrace. Or perhaps he doesn’t completely reject the pull of the left. Living on the west coast and trying to sort out personal issues must be very difficult. Good luck Roger Simon.

Oct 16, 2007 - 5:53 am Nancy:

I can completely relate and you are completely right. I was 20 and was supposed to be a runner for one of the print magazines - my cousin was a journalist who ultimately testified at the Chicago Seven trial. I went to high school in Skokie, graduating in 1966 - not one word of the Holocaust was mentioned. The trauma was too fresh - yet many of my friends were children of survivors. I now live in St. Paul and plan on attend the RNC - it’s never too late to try to put things right.

Oct 16, 2007 - 6:00 am David Thomson:

Another scary aspect of the lefties of the 60s is their anti-intellectualism. These people are downright intellectually lazy. Facts do not matter—-only ideology. They adamantly refuse to study the issues. At the very most, they might spend a little time reading writers that do not threaten their childish worldview. Coincidently, this very morning I have learned about the idiocy of those blasts form the past, David Crosby and Graham Nash complaining about how our soldiers in Iraq are allegedly killing “mothers and sisters.”

Oct 16, 2007 - 7:30 am laury:

That proximity to the Holocaust is eerie. Hadn’t thought of it before.

Oct 16, 2007 - 9:15 am Fred Mecklenburg:

Not true that Dylan didn’t sing about the Holocaust: “Though they murdered six million / In the ovens they fried / The Germans now too / Have God on their side…” (With God on Our Side, 1964).

I don’t think he ignored evil in general, either. Then or later. The opening line of “Desolation Row” (”They’re selling postcards of the hanging…”) is one of the most devastating lines in American literature. Not necessarily to disagree with all your points here, but this one I think is incorrect.

Oct 16, 2007 - 9:36 am Roger L. Simon:

Thanks for the correction to my Dylanology, Fred Mecklenburg. I am “in transit” at the moment but will revise the article accordingly this evening.

Oct 16, 2007 - 9:47 am michaelJ:

I found it interesting that (unless I missed a line in his piece), Roger does not even mention the protracted Civil Rights Movement and its obvious connection to the anti-establishment, anti-war sensibilities, broader momentum towards social justice, etc. of the late 1960’s.

The “peace, love, and understanding” generation fought a nasty domestic revolution for racial equality … did you miss that too?

It was on tee-vee, even in Europe where you were studying.

Oct 16, 2007 - 9:59 am m hyman (Montreal):

While I sympathize with your general argument, I think you are unfair to Dylan. In the very album containing “The Times They Are a Changin’” (which you cite)is a song, “God On Our Side”, with the bitter line, “Though they murdered six million/In the ovens they fried/The Germans now too/Have God on their side.” Nor is quite a coincidence, perhaps, that the “psychedelic” Dylan (who even then seems more like one who holds a mirror up to his chaotic times than one who cheers it on) becomes in time the born-again Christian moralist, author of such non-relativistic lyrics as, “The enemy is subtle/ How be it we’re deceived/ When the truth’s in our hearts/ And we still don’t believe.” (There are many other examples.)In short, Dylan gives every evidence of being an artist struggling with the enormity of evil, almost as much as any other, and in any other time (cf. our own Leonard Cohen here in Canada.)
So I wouldn’t confuse Dylan with Abbie Hoffman, nor would I reduce his point of view on the basis of one misunderstood song, “Rainy Day Women 12 & 35 (Everybody Must Get Stoned).”

Oct 16, 2007 - 10:03 am Roger L. Simon:

MichaelJ, thanks for your comment. I have written in many places about my admiration for the Civil Rights Movement, in which participated in the South, several years before I went to Europe. And I wasn’t “studying” in Europe, as you said I was actually trying to write a novel about the deserters from the Vietnam War whom I met in Stockholm. I never finished the book.

Oct 16, 2007 - 10:12 am Chip:

Imagine suggests the triumph of wishful thinking over human behavior, material needs, and ideological differences.

Put another way, it’s the dumbest song I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. Every time some ex-hippie says Imagine’s really a blueprint for humanity, a few chunks of grey matter die in my head and I throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Oct 16, 2007 - 10:42 am Monty:

Imagine

An absolute dirge of a song, written by an obscenely rich man pretending to scorn material posessions.Let’s not forget the hypocrisy of those times.

But something strange was happening to the parents of our generation also. Only some were prepared to stick to their principles and moral standards. Many were rather mesemerised by “the kids” and our activities, and didn’t want to appear authoritarian. That wasn’t vanity on their part. Their generation had defeated Hitler only to see the red army impose the most oppressive regime all across eastern Europe. Any form of liberalism looked better than that, including self-indulgent licentiousness.

Oct 16, 2007 - 12:24 pm John Moore:

Very nice analysis, Roger.

However, from my experiences of the era as a conservative hippie (oxymoron?), things looked a bit different.

The left saw evil, and the hippies saw evil, and the evil they thought they saw was “the establishment.” The establishment that tried to send them to war, that disapproved of the hedonist lifestyle and philosophy of the times. That evil was seen in a religious sense - the Manichaen evil - although few of the counter-culture were religious.

Vietnam was *now*, and whatever *we* did there was evil (never mind the atrocities of the Vietnamese Communists, which never reached the collective consciousness).

These were the aspects off evil. Communism wasn’t evil (even though Mao was contemporaneously killing tens of millions, and later in the era the Vietnamese and Pol Pot had their turn). The VietCong were noble revolutionaries against imperialist America. Hitler was just history, someone of our parents’ era.

Sadly, this viewpoint has persisted in the form of an anti-Americanism by the “grown up” lefties of the ’60s and others they have brainwashed. It lives in the echo chamber of the Main Stream Media and the now dishonored halls of academia. The naive kids of the ’60s (who were led by people well versed in Marxism) are today’s leftie establishment.

Oct 16, 2007 - 2:11 pm njcommuter:

When they first started saying “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” people over thirty had some memory of the Second World War and the Depression.

I’ve long thought that this was a divide, and our failure to teach what our fathers faced did us great harm. A less “enlightened” civilization would have known better.

For what it’s worth, my high-school class did learn about the Holocaust. In Religion class, in a Catholic high school, we saw Night and Fog. We also saw The Pawnbroker, not exactly the usual fare for high-school students.

A Progressive is sure that things could be better. A Conservative knows that they could also be much, much worse. He has proof. It’s called History.

Oct 16, 2007 - 4:37 pm tioedong:

Ummm….
Some of us lived in the sixties but were not part of it.
I was in medical school. My main contact was treating drug overdoses and STD’s…

The culture wars started back then, you know…and the way the Democrats are acting, they are busy trying to lose the blue collar Democrats by dissing them again, just like in 1966…

Oct 16, 2007 - 8:19 pm Corey Wayne:

I got this in an email today and I think it is something we should all think about…

Yes, we’re an imperfect country…and some of the media delights in that,

pointing it out to us repeatedly. But here’s a pleasant read about America

and our unselfish motives around the world. Enjoy.

When in England at a large conference, Colin Powell was asked

by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just

an example of empire building’ by George Bush.

He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has

sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to

fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land

we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that

did not return.”

It became very quiet in the room.

**************

Then there was a conference in France where a number of

international engineers were taking part, including French and

American. During a break one of the French engineers came back

into the room saying “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush

has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help

the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?”

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers

have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred

people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency

electrical power to shore facilities; they have three

cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a

day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water

from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen

helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and

from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many

does France have?”

Once again, dead silence.

*****************

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that

included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian

and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself

standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel

from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in

English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral

suddenly complained that, ‘whereas Europeans learn many

languages, Americans learn only English.’ He then asked, ‘Why

is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences

rather than speaking French?’

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied ‘Maybe its

because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it

so you wouldn’t have to speak German’

You could have heard a pin drop!

Oct 16, 2007 - 8:20 pm michaelJ:

Roger,

You should finish that novel!

I will be seeing Bob Dylan this coming Saturday, on his never-ending-tour.

He’s still singing about why you need to finish your novel.

Truly.

Don’t let the old man down.

Oct 16, 2007 - 8:37 pm ordi:

Chip and Monty

I agree Imagine is one of the WORST songs of all time!!

I think both your comments were to nice regarding it’s message. It reiterated the Communist Manifesto.

In the book Lennon in America, written by Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon commented that the song was “an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but because it’s sugar-coated[clarify], it’s accepted.” Lennon also described it as “virtually the Communist Manifesto”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(song)

Imagine

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Oct 17, 2007 - 2:13 am Dar:

Thank you for the essay, Simon. I was 23 in 1968, just out of the army. I had marched on Montgomery in 1964, was drafted in ‘66 and like you, had absorbed some of the virus, (some remains!) Lately, I too have marveled at the proximity of those events in the 60’s to WWII and have sought to find in the temporal proximity some explanation for the extremes to which it was carried(Haight-Ashbury). I do think you have to distinguish between the civil rights movement, which really was the work of “the greatest generation” and the anti-war -hippie- phenomenon, which was the work of knotheads like Abbie Hoffman and Ginsberg. The text of “Imagine” is instructive because it supposes that evil or selfishness or anti-social pathology will just go away if we wish it so. Imagine now, a group of people who believe that if you will just join them, everything on earth will become heavenly. Give them political power, and you will find yourself coerced into joining them. Should you prefer a more realistic assessment of the human condition, you will be given the typical Daily Kos treatment. That’s rational (to them) because you stand in the way of heaven on earth!

Oct 17, 2007 - 7:05 am BMoon:

Could there be a spiritual connection between the erasing of the Holocaust from the consciences of the 60’s generation, and their angry, threatening marching in the streets and besieging of universities? I think we underestimate the influence Nietszche had on the 60’s generation, as well as his influence on Nazi Germany, where Hitler proclaimed he wanted to create a generation “devoid of conscience.” HItler made Nietzsche the national philosopher of Nazi Germany, whose viral infusion of anti-capitalist, anti-intellectual, anti-religious ideas into the post-WW2 era, such as “truth is fiction,” “transvaluation of values,” and, of course, “God is dead,” had their corrosive effect with frightening results. As the British journalist and prophet, Malcolm Muggeridge, observed, if God is dead, then “somebody has to take his place. It will be either megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner.” The 60’s somehow managed to combine both and we have not recovered.

One more missing element from the picture- the Jesus ‘movement’ changed the course of literally hundreds of thousands of young nihilists like myself from that era, and we eventually put Reagan into office. My first vote was for him. It all points to another, earlier reformed ex-nihilist’s words, who became a believer in Christ after watching the horrors of Nietzscean fascism in the thirties. “The world turns and changes, but one thing does not change…However you disguise it, one thing does not change: the perpetual struggle of good and evil.” - T.S. Eliot

Oct 17, 2007 - 7:33 am Heroic Dreamer:

Interesting observation about the proximity to the Holocaust.

The rest is self-indulgent. Like your generation! Gee, wish I could have been in London writing a novel in my twenties! Anguished, caring, deep. Getting laid.

You don’t believe in evil? You are living with your eyes closed. You are old enough to open them.

Oct 17, 2007 - 7:37 am Salamantis:

It’s interesting how John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was bookended by his later song “Watching the Wheels” After John Lennon ‘turned on’, he tried to ‘tune in’ with Imagine. Failing that, he decided to ‘drop out’, and proclaimed this decision in Watching the Wheels:

People say I’m crazy doing what I’m doing

Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin

When I say that Im o.k. well they look at me kind of strange

Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game

People say I’m lazy dreaming my life away

Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me

When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall

Don’t you miss the big time boy you’re no longer on the ball

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

Ah, people asking questions lost in confusion

Well I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions

Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I’ve lost my mind

I tell them theres no hurry
I’m just sitting here doing time

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

Oct 17, 2007 - 10:12 am Caligula:

What a selfless display of love and a tireless display of your obvious self-loathing of a period in time with which you deny any pretense of caring about, let alone trying to understand. Well, lets see the crusades were only about 1000 years ago, yet we still have those uppity brown people complaining about us white folk trying to push some god stuff down their throats. It was closer in time then say that rapture that is about to occur in a world of fantasy and imagination.

Oct 17, 2007 - 2:30 pm tbrosz:

The inability of that generation to contemplate evil might help explain why Saddam and the abuses of his regime have pretty much been entirely written out of any discussion of the Iraq War.

Oct 17, 2007 - 5:09 pm Southern Beale:

Roger, I think your notion of history is distorted by late-night TV reruns. This piece strikes me as hilariously out of touch. You’ve conveniently overlooked those parts of the ’50s that didn’t make it into an episode of “Father Knows Best” — the McCarthy hearings, the “Red” scare and Hollywood blacklisting (something I’d think you’d at least have heard about), “duck and cover,” the Korean War, Rosa Parks, the Little Rock 9, civil rights and JIm Crow, etc. etc. etc.

You also seem to think that the Holocaust was isolated to just WWII. I guess it blows holes in your theory to remember that Jew were persecuted long before Hitler came into power.

Really, I’m surprised that you’d try to pull this piece of revisionist history by us.

Oct 18, 2007 - 4:52 am MarkD:

I’m part of the me generation, but only chronologically. History cannot possibly judge us harshly enough.

Abandon allies to communism? Check. Riot on campuses? Check. Create a welfare state by destroying black families? Check. Spread “social” diseases? Check. Corrupt our government and institutions of higher education? Probably permanently.

I was in college, and could have walked to Canada. I joined the Marines. No regrets here. I have only pity for the Peter Pans who never grew up.

Oct 18, 2007 - 7:30 am michaelJ:

Well, this one is for all the comfortable revolutionaries -

(Lyrics from Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War) –

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead

Oct 18, 2007 - 12:07 pm Roy:

I think the 23 years seperating Auschwitz and 1968 is the very point, as is the industrial nature of the holocaust. This could easily be seen as a “maachine of death.” The rhetoric of the early 60s radicals, and even the beatnicks in the 1950s, was all about the machine. The souless destroying machine that ate people and hope and dreams etc… I think the Jewishness of many leaders was directly related, just as the war experience, ie being part of a huge industrialized army, of many 50s writers was very relevant to the whole generation of 68 spirit.

Rejecting Industrial socoety the industrial state and the industrial ecomomy was the point. This is what unifies 68ers in both the West and in Eastern Europe, they were trying to reject the norms of modern society.

That they threw the baby out with the bathwater and also failed to recognize the huge real accomplishments of industrial society is another matter. But I think it was a real naivete that came from not having had the EXPERIENCE ofd the 60s. When you are doing something for the first time, or just believe you are because you don’t know the past, you make these sort of naive mistakes.

Oct 18, 2007 - 12:24 pm Patrick Tyson:

Some gibberish by a thing called “Three Dog Night,” about a frog named Jeremiah who wanted “Joy To The World.”

First Lennon, now this, I thought. Next we’ll have Glenn Campbell screaming “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?”

Of course this (scene and music) is all a few years later and Hunter is experiencing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right then, but he does look back a couple of times during that savage journey to the heart of the American Dream as he does what he can to beat against the current and he does so first in the next chapter:

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era-the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run … but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant….

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time-and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

…

You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning….

And that, I think, was the handle-that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting-on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum, we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave….

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark-that mark where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

I turned ten in 1968, but when I first read those words years later I thought, “Yes.” That’s my sense, from what I observed, of the times.

What was the high-water mark for this pre-teen boy? In 1969 a baseball team like no other (and not my team or even in my League) had a season like no other and won a World Series like no other and what I most particularly remember is the wording (was it blue on orange or orange on blue or both) on a sign in the stands: THERE ARE NO WORDS.

There’s been no time since when, to quote Hunter: You could strike sparks anywhere. Quite the contrary actually. There’s been a day or two here and there when you could strike a spark or two there and, even more rarely, here.

Two years after, you’ll have to pardon me, the great John Lennon (THE 1968 single had McCartney’s Hey Jude as its A-side and Lennon’s Revolution as its B-side) was murdered, a guy named Bob provided me, 24 then, with some lyrics that mattered:

Stood alone on a mountain top,
starin’ out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west,
it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin’
and my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin’

Roll, roll me away,
I’m gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin, gotta keep ridin’,
keep searchin’ till I find what’s right
And as the sunset faded
I spoke to the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We’ll get it right

This October I will, for the first time in 38 years, be rooting for the National League team in the World Series. Rockies in 4.

Oct 19, 2007 - 11:50 pm