Lost Children
By David Glenn Cox
So I got drunk last night, it had been a while. I was celebrating actually getting paid for what I would do for free. A pittance of what I used to earn but I consider myself damn lucky to get it. It was a victory of spirit, a victory of the burning aurora's behind my closed eyes.
I was steeped in liberalism from an early age, an unavoidable consequence of growing up in the sixties and early seventies in America before the darkness fell. My high school counselor recommended that I take the highest level of academic classes available. He then offered, "If they are too tough you can always transfer down, but if they are too easy you can't always transfer up." That's the way they used to think back in those days before the schools and teachers were held directly responsible for my academic success or failure.
That guy thought that I was the one responsible! It was an amazing time to be growing up in a drug fueled and literate generation. Smoke a joint and talk about the books that we read, "You read Kesey?"
Yeah, sure man, have you read, "Steal this Book? Brave New World? Kerouac?
The Catcher in the Rye?"
We would take the train to the Loop in downtown Chicago and cruise the head shops. We would buy underground newspapers as well as rolling papers. Downtown we could get in to see x-rated movies that we wouldn't be allowed to see even if they had ever come to suburbia. They had this hard and fast rule in the loop, you had to be eighteen or accompanied by three dollars to get in.
Naked images, sexual situations, bragging rights, young boys seeing things that they weren't supposed to see. This was our generation, we'd seen a President assassinated, several civil rights leaders and the President's brother gunned down. It became a way of life and you almost became desensitized to the violence, you know? Until, "We interrupt this program to bring you an special news bulletin."
We'd seen riots at political conventions and wars on TV splayed out in living color and we'd seen what happened to families that had received visitors from the army. All the older guys carried their draft cards and would laugh at us saying, "soon enough kid." We worried about getting into college, otherwise we were draft bait or we might have to take a job at the steel mill or in the car factory.
In the ecstasy of our youth we were bathed in our idealism, environmentalism, civil rights, women's rights and abortion rights. A generation in flux, a generation locked into a vortex of change. We smoked cigarettes and we smoked dope and dropped acid as we walked out on the ledge of life. Underneath that youthful optimism we were very jaded, we understood that green fatigues could soon be in our future.
We failed to understand the true meaning of Kent State or as it was called at the time, the Kent state tragedy. Looking back, it wasn't a tragedy, it was a massacre. It was reactionary forces snapping back, Nixionian forces shooting down demonstrators protesting an illegal war. Funny isn't it, when the Chinese shot down their own demonstrators twenty years later. The world media condemned it as the actions of a brutal government without even a semblance of freedom.
The American media called Kent State an accident, a situation mishandled and a breakdown in communication. After all, just because Nixon had invaded a neutral country with bombings and troops was no reason for the students to get all riled up. The National Guardsmen were defended by the courts and the school and the state were defended by the federal courts as well. Surprised? In this day and time there is no reason to be but back then it seemed troubling.
Troubling and numbing, not only could Federal troops shoot you down in the street but you had no legal recourse if they did. We had already learned from the My Lie massacre that the government had no regard for the lives of foreigners but Americans? Then their was the FBI's Cointelpro program to frame, incriminate and harass anyone who the government thought wasn't loyal enough.
These programs were wildly successful, the accused went to jail because the docile, well fed and gainfully employed populace wouldn't believe their government would do anything as heinous as that. Even as Nixon waved good bye from the helicopter following his Watergate crimes the bulk of the populace believed that the government had worked. The underlings took the fall and the ring leaders walked away.
The rich and powerful don't go to jail ,it is only an illusion of a justice system. Jim Morrison faced jail time but not Richard Nixon. We were young and naive' we didn't realize that the sun was going down in America. Ronald Reagan told us it was morning in America, that government wasn't the answer. As stupid as that argument might have sounded for millions of Americans it seemed plausible. Reagan was going to cut their taxes and lower the tax rate for millionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent.
Union jobs began to dry up as factories fled to non-union states Reagan told those unemployed people to, just move! Government help? Don't be ridiculous, meanwhile the Reagan administration was busy fomenting government overthrows and revolutions in Central America but America had just stopped listening. Perhaps it was mental fatigue, or MTV, or the tons of cocaine that washed up on our shores from the same countries where the CIA were covertly operating.
In the disco's, narcissistic dance music blared with messages of consumption, lust and style over substance. Read books? Look at my new shoes! Got any blow?
The crimes of the Reagan administration made Nixon look like a jaywalker. Nobody gave a good god damn, let's just dance instead. This was the "me" generation when Saddam Hussein was such a good friend of ours that we sold him nerve agents. Then we sold his enemy weapons funneled from Israel. Manuel Noriega was such a good friend of ours that the CIA kept their money in Noriega's Panamanian banks. Then when Noriega nationalized the banks he was fingered by the CIA as drug trafficker. They would know, after all they were his partner.
In this time I'd given up my own musical ambition and rock star dreams to play business man and junior executive. The last Horatio Alger generation where with hard work any boy or girl can be president. I'd bought a house and a new car as I made more money each year than the year before. I wasn't rich or even affluent that was just the carrot being held out in front of me.
As I watched Clinton prosecuted for a blow job I thought about Nixon's crimes and the Reagan White House pressuring NASA to launch a billion dollar space shuttle on a frosty morning for a TV stunt. Another accident, another massacre of innocents on top of more wars and incursions. American planes and missiles and nerve agents all excusable under the broad tent of traditional family values.
As we entered the new century I watched as any plausible belief in Democratic government disappeared under faux judicial robes that explained away their ruling as "just this once." A tragedy worthy of Shakespeare, a government worthy of Stalin, "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. "
The Democratic opponent dutifully resigned the campaign acutely aware of what happens to those who resist. Four years later the Democratic nominee couldn't resign from the campaign fast enough leaving his own Vice Presidential nominee standing stunned.
Eight more years of carnage and massacre, of subterfuge and infidelity. A government served up as a smorgasbord for special interests. The pretexts for war become flimsier and the carnage is glossed over. Media gladly portrays wrong as right, murder as justice just for a seat at the table. It was as if the entire nation became the living embodiment of that drunken frat boy sadistically burning the Freshman pledges.
A moonless night had fallen and it is better that we not see ourselves for what we have become. Our treasury plundered, taxes on the wealthy cut, taxes on corporations not enforced. A savage, lawless nation. A nation without pity, a nation that loves the god it urinates on. Pro-life, pro-poverty, pro-death, pro-corporations, pro-war. A country with no political touch stones, a country that does not even know left from right nor up from down.
We voted en mass for hope and change and got instead bipartisanship. Deals with the devil, dancing bears and circuses with no bread. A Democratic death cult afraid of its own ghosts. Republican lunacy at the eclipse of sanity, of dark madness at high noon. A nation bedecked with corporate clothes and corporate logos, of corporate food and corporate personhood. Where television says only consume and the music says nothing. Look at my clothes, look at my car, look at my money, look at my dick. A culture of cave paintings.
The President, after his party gets shellacked over the poor economy, flies off to India to promote free trade. He is reflective after the party's losses and promises to work closely with Republicans even though Republicans state their primary goal is to run him out of town. Clueless or toothless? Take your pick, as the wars go on, as the spending escalates, the robot bombs rain down on innocents, as the body bags come home.
I have absolutely no reason to feel hopeful or optimistic. I know longer recognize this country as the land of my birth so I got drunk last night, and read Woody Guthrie just to remind myself that liberalism is an all night struggle waiting for the dawn.