JFK and Bob Dylan Stated It
In his inauguration speech JFK stated: “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
A short time later Bob Dylan sang it:
“If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.”
And so the sixties became a decade of change. Kennedy promised the United States was committed and “unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” Democrats became Republicans. Republicans became Democrats as the fight for Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Equal Rights defined who we were and what we believed.
And Dylan sang it:
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
And here we are in the next century with the same questions. In the Middle East one group of people are raped and burned, and in retaliation children are made to starve, Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.
In the United States for the first time, a defeated president refused a peaceful transfer of power. That defeated candidate now promises revenge.
When Rome fell, it plunged the world into the Dark Ages lasting nearly 1000 years. Unlike Rome, the barbarians are not at the gates, they are within our country. And our country can choose whether or not it wants to enter the next Dark Ages,: Where justice and economics are based on power, instead of having a free market economy and an independent system of justice.
Our country and our world are in the hands of the generation which came after Kennedy. It is again a new generation. How we vote this November will decide whether people have rights independent of their religion, their gender identity, and the color of their skin.
How we answer the call will determine if our children and grandchildren will benefit from science, or fear science. Will measles come back, will the next pandemic go unchecked, will informative books be banned? Humanity is at stake.
So now we must hear these words again: “my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.“
“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled”
Bob Dylan
We need a voice for the 2020s the way Bob Dylan was the voice for the 1960s. Who will step up?
Get involved, find your voice, Vote Blue this November, and help others to do the same.
Just for the heck of it, this is a song Dylan wrote about the Kennedy Assassination: Warning: It’s a 17 minute song