From Free Love to Fascism

A Primer. And a Reminder.

ONE MINUTE, you’re barefoot, smooth, shirtless, with arms outstretched, long curly hair blowing in the cliffside winds of Big Sur on the stunning California coast, and the next your hair is half gone, your body coarser, your skin deeply grooved, and you’re bundled up against the cold and the current onslaught against decency and the democracy you took for granted.

IF PROVIDENCE, timing and the right breeding magic smiled down on your mama sometime after Pearl Harbor and before the 1960 election of JFK, you were oddly charmed and otherwise fortunate enough to live your young life parallel to the arrival of the Beatles and the Stones, the Summer of Love, Woodstock, and a whole lot of half-naked, shaggy haired, uninhibited play time.

Rebels with and without a cause, many of us were some species of free birds: coast-to-coast hitchhikers, temporary commune dwellers, goofy stoners, guitar-strumming troubadours, and cockeyed, daisy-crowned insurgents in a generally staid society. Sure, there was the buttoned-up half of young adults, but untold legions of us were colorfully dressed, less-than-dressed, and at least a dozen varieties of pure freak. Okay, impure freaks.

What was all that craziness, jubilation and excess? Freedom, baby.

So how does it feel now, as America slides from far-Right populism and garden-variety mean-spiritedness into a bizarre cult of personality and something unfamiliar, something that smells like a stale pile of manure and even fouler American-style neo-fascism? It feels… not great. For us, it’s half bad trip, half national nightmare.

Exhale. The blur of decades spins all our bygone moments into impressionism and turn reminiscence into improbability. And yet, let’s remind and comfort ourselves that what happened way back then, 50 and 60 years ago, is not completely gone.

That rebellious, sex-positive, multi-ethnic, culturally heterodox and mostly left-leaning energy circulated throughout the culture (some say infected) for decades, and exists to this day in most major U.S. cities. It surely lives on in the animating spirit of Berkeley, Boulder and much of modern Brooklyn. You’ll find it, with ease, in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Austin, Texas, the hippest parts of Topeka, Kansas and everywhere in Key West, Florida.

{Let’s also be aware, that if things go south and start to crumble -- a strong possibility with an Administration that resembles a cross between a crime syndicate and a cheering squad for dictators, one in particular -- they will find a way to blame liberals. Think about the play and film Cabaret. The 1920s and early 1930s in Berlin and other German cities could be wildly libertine and outright decadent. So, when things got ugly in Germany, the Nazis were happy to blame not only the Jews and the Communists, but the wild and decadent (especially gay men and women; homosexuals were also taken to the death camps). Crooks and authoritarians rarely accept blame for their screw-ups.}

OUR ORIGINS. I am the son of a bronze star medal recipient. My father helped to liberate Italy from Mussolini and his radical national fascists, and for bravery in battle he received a commendation. {The story: In April 1945, as part of the Army’s 84th Chemical Warfare Battalion, Dad, while under fire, decided to hop in a jeep, and was told, Stay put, Stern! My gruff old man replied to his commanding officer some version of take-a-hike and then drove off to deliver munitions to fellow soldiers. His insubordination was later deemed heroic}.

Anyway, my father was one of close to 16 million of our fathers, grandfathers and now great-grandfathers who put their lives on pause and on the line to fight the Dark Forces of Italy, Germany and Japan. In only three and a half years (six for the Brits), these fine young men and women saved Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, the Philippines, and parts of Asia. They defeated fascism and they sure as hell changed the world.

What do we owe them? I’d say just about everything.

How did we thank them? Many of us became hippies, Yippies, radicals and rebels in the 1960s and 1970s. The coins of freedom they handed to us were spent in some pretty bizarre and carefree ways. Of course, we had fun. And if you were a teen or 20-something from 1965-1975, fun and outrageous experimentation were what mattered. (Yes, I know, if you’re a teen or 20-something today, those same things matter – that and nearly infinite gender expression).

So, yes, there was a lot of outrageousness, a lot of rapid change, and otherwise a whole lotta shakin’ going on. Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, you name it… all rolled down the hillside into the valley with a velocity that shook the ground and bowled over a lot of straights. For large swaths of the country, they didn’t know what hit them.

Of course, some of it was noble and necessary, some of it was good and ultimately for the best, but some of it was simply self-indulgent and more than a little ridiculous. Life is like that. Significant social upheaval comes with no small amount of craziness.

But… back to today. We’re pretty damn disoriented, and it’s not just me who’s profoundly sad. We think (like the straights did back then), We’re losing our country! We could make a case.

Here’s a major question, kids: are we going to have to fight the fascists again? And here at home, as well as overseas? Also, are we fully aware how quickly all this horror can spread, like a large bottle of ink knocked over on a nice antique desk?

With blustery winds blowing down what we had thought were solid marble pillars, most of us on this team are thinking: It’s clearly not Our America. You know, the America that came to admire, side with and build statues to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The America that once expanded freedoms and cared about democracy not only here but around the globe. The America that bested the Soviet Union and won the long Cold War.

As for an America whose leader aligns with Vladmir Putin? That wouldn’t even make a Bizarro World comic tale when we were growing up. Besides, Superman would have punched that traitorous president into space, to be exiled on the dark side of the moon.

Many people -- Boomers for sure and some who saw the recent movie -- would like to know how the twisty pathway from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez led to Nixon, then to W. and, heaven help us, to Donald Trump and JD Vance. What were the pivot points? All those great manufacturing jobs being sent overseas for over 30 years? More women going to, and graduating, college than men? Twenty-plus awful years in Iraq and Afghanistan? An articulate, self-assured Black President? Opioids and obesity?

There’s twenty overlapping lines of causality. We can easily pick more. Too much immigration in too short a time? This place – the increasingly hostile Hatfield and McCoy battleground of social media? {Can we finally, and officially, call it anti-social media?}

“And you know something is happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” Dylan sang 60 years ago. These days, too many of us are Mr. Jones. Our contemporary version of that line is significantly briefer: WTF?

Another way to ask the question is: how did we go from youth rebellion and marches for social justice and peace… to this? The bent wheel of history or some boomerang karma? It’s possible that keen observers and historians, some writing now and especially those blessed with hindsight ten or fifteen years from now, will say something like: Same coin, different side.

That is, the rebellion we are now living through is from Middle America and blue collar America. And their idea of social justice is not only taunting the Libs, but grabbing back from the snarky Lefties, coastal and cultural elites, the Ivys and the so-called intelligentsia, the power and prestige they feel were taken from them, snatched by rich snobs, the mathletes and the smarty pants immigrants who win all the spelling bees. Basically, the larger liberal establishment. They could make a case.

The young rebels -- now graying Boomers -- are still here. We’re still influential. But those living in what was recently known as flyover country or otherwise ignored in a thousand rural corners, well, they will not be denied.

They are coming for what they feel are not only their equal rights, but their birthright, and fuck me, fuck you, they’re going to grab as much of it as they can as quickly as they can. What American youth did from the mid-Sixties to the mid-Seventies, they are doing these last ten years, and surely the next four.

Forget, for a moment, this Supreme Court, forget FOX, forget MAGA, too. Societies have a way of returning to a form of rough equilibrium. But the way there is bumpy as hell, hard, rebellious, and decidedly unpleasant for the other side. And it will likely get worse before it gets better.

If once all we needed was love, well, now we also need to protect ourselves. How you do it is up to you.

But here we are, still a bit blown away, coughing and trembling in this, our season of discontent, shaking our graying heads every damn day, listening to classic rock, watching Seinfeld reruns, and on the lookout daily for the more powerful voices. Not to mention wondering just how cold winters in Vancouver would be.

In the meantime, stay vocal, stay focused and stay connected with the good folk, of which there are many. I mean, we still outnumber them.