Appreciate

Paul McCartney takes the subversive power of rock and roll into the post-human future, but with a poignancy at the end that speaks for all human music.  Watch it, you'll appreciate.

The Day Everything Changed

When President John F. Kennedy was murdered on November 23, 1963, the course of the future changed in the U.S. and around the world. Fifty years later, that's clearer than ever. On that day I felt that the course of my life would change, and fifty years later, with that course nearly run, it is a certainty. It was the day that everything changed for me. My life would perhaps not even resemble what it is today had President Kennedy lived and completed his second term. Not just because of him but because of what he would have done and not done, as opposed to what others did and did not do.

 I've avoided nearly everything on the Internet about this anniversary, and absolutely everything on TV (since I don't have it to watch.) I have video from that past, but I haven't watched that either. I've confined myself to two new books--two of the many published this year, and the tens of thousands published over the years about JFK.

 JFK's Last Hundred Days by Thurston Clarke ( Penguin Press) is a day by day review of those 100 days in 1963, with lots of background from earlier years. Clarke makes good and careful use of what's been published over the years, by historians, journalists and a lot of participants in the Kennedy administration. He's used the archival material that's been gradually released by the Kennedy Library. He integrates the most credible of the revelations about JFK's dalliances and his medical history. So for someone who hasn't trusted much or read much about JFK since the first generation of biographies, this book turned out to be the right book to read.

 The second book is If Kennedy Lived by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam), an alternate history built on the premise that President Kennedy did not die on this day fifty years ago. However it is basically built on historical fact, and much of it is about pre-11/22/63. These parts of the book match Clarke's book almost exactly. There are a few pages based on recorded conversations that are nearly identical.

 Clarke's premises is that,even though JFK's own excesses always threatened to catch up with him, 1963 was the height of Kennedy's presidency, and probably the best year of his marriage and fatherhood. He was looked forward to running for his second term, and had found his main themes. On a speaking tour in the west ostensibly about conservation, he found that whenever he mentioned the nuclear test ban treaty and the need to end the arms race, he got a huge response. The pursuit of peace was going to be one major theme.

 The second was a national effort to address the problem of poverty. He'd proposed a tax cut and other measures to help the middle class and the economy in general, he was committed to civil rights (especially the voting rights act) but poverty was going to be a new focus.

 Clarke chronicles the painful dance that Vietnam policy had become, but he is certain--as most in the position to know were certain--that in his second term Kennedy intended to end American military involvement in Vietnam.

 None of this surprises me, nor would any of it had surprised me on November 23, 1963. I learned that he'd been shot by a p.a. announcement from our high school principal. Then I had gym class outside. I learned that he was dead from a boy coming down the stairs to the locker room as I walked up. Hours later I was walking home with three friends, two of whom remain just about my only friends from high school. Clayton and I usually walked across the fields from Central to Carbon Road, where he would go down towards his grandmother's house and I would go up and across to my house. Johnny V. was with us that day--he lived on the street above mine. And as it happened, my debate partner Mike and I had previously arranged to work on our debate case, so he was coming home with me rather than taking a school bus to Latrobe where he lived.

 As we walked and talked we could not believe it was even possible that Lyndon Johnson could be President of the United States. That turns out to be the Kennedys' view as well. JFK is quoted in both of these books as believing LBJ would be a disaster. In our shock, and forgetting all constitutional provisions, we speculated on how Bobby Kennedy could take over for his brother. Surely that's what voters wanted.

 Everything changed in America because of the assassination itself. For me, it was the first significant death I had experienced. There hadn't yet been one in my family. But beyond the losses that arguably changed the psyche of the country, I saw a major focus of my life begin to fade.

 In my own very small way I had organized classmates and worked on the Kennedy campaign in the 1960 election. I got myself to Washington for the Inaugural and through luck and pluck managed to be one of the first ordinary citizens to shake President Kennedy's hand, two days after he became President. By 1963 I had already participated in another campaign and had very interested contacts in the local Democratic party and the still powerful unions. I was writing on world affairs (and from a very Kennedy perspective) for the school newspaper. I followed every scrap of news in print and on TV I could about the administration, wrote letters to officials and generally felt I was practically part of the Kennedy administration.

Though I tried to continue the Kennedy legacy and remain involved in politics, even working for LBJ's campaign against Goldwater in 1964, that first impulse on November 22, 1963 gradually came true. Without JFK's judgment, without his ability to communicate, without his style, things fell apart. And everything else began to change.

On the morning of November 22, 1963 in Dallas, it rained. But by the time President Kennedy got in his car for his motorcade, the sun was shining.

 Greenfield's story begins with one small change: the rain continues. Because of the rain, the plexiglass bubble top is attached to the presidential limo, so it is no longer an open car. So when the motorcade slows down to make a turn off Dealy Plaza, a gunshot shatters the plexiglass and wounds the President. But he survives.

 In this story, President Kennedy is re-elected, and much of what Clarke's book suggests would happen does happen. The voting rights act, medical care for the aged (Medicare) pass, JFK makes further agreements on nuclear arms with the Soviets as well as selling grain to them (and in the process keeps Khrushchev in power), he begins the process of resuming relations with Cuba, and relations with (Red) China. And above all, he does not commit ground troops to Vietnam. There is no Vietnam war.

 But where Greenfield's book is best is in suggesting the ramifications of these policies, and of the difference it would have made with Kennedy in office when various cultural changes occur (as represented by the Beatles, Tom Hayden, Gloria Steinem, etc.) There would be an Students for a Democratic Society, campus protests, etc. But they would not be so violent in any sense. Young people would join SDS and go South for Freedom Summer. But they would also join JFK's domestic Peace Corps, in droves. Politics and government as public service was a Kennedy tenet, and one he wanted to emphasize in his second term. But LBJ destroyed that, temporarily for some, pretty much permanently for me.

 The Vietnam war, more than any single factor, deformed my life and in various ways and to various extents changed the lives of my friends and contemporaries. Vietnam plus LBJ plus the draft gave the 60s the edge of anger, desperation, despair.

 There were right wing crazies in the early 60s, saying about JFK pretty much what they say about Obama. But they were marginal. There were dangerous currents in the U.S. reacting to racial issues, but JFK was a quick study, and in 1963 he was aware of the new realities of the inner cities and suburbia. There was press horseshit then as now, but despite political dangers (JFK knew the South was lost for a long time because of his support of Civil Rights) the arc of history was strongly progressive. With a different 60s, there very well might have been a very different 70s, 80s and 90s. And a quite different 21st century so far.

 There's so much about why JFK could have been especially effective in a second term (while neither Clarke nor Greenfield expect he would have piled up the electoral votes that LBJ did against Goldwater in 1964, they agree that JFK would have won comfortably against Goldwater, and brought with him a Democratic congressional majority) that is hard to explain without knowing how different a time it was (though Clarke's book does a pretty good job of this.) But that's precisely the point: he was right for the times.

 As things turn out, I find myself in no position to be heard even if I tried to explain this. But I was there, and I know it. It was the turning point of my times and of my life.

RFK on The Future

On the 45th anniversary of his assassination, some words on the future, from speeches made at various times and places by Robert F. Kennedy.

 "The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present."

 "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the great enterprises and ideals of American society."

 "We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be enobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land."

 "If we fail to dare, if we do not try, the next generation will harvest the fruit of our indifference; a world we did not want - a world we did not choose - but a world we could have made better, by caring more for the results of our labors. And we shall be left only with the hollow apology of T.S. Eliot: 'That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all'."

For As Long As We've Got

Power Shift 2011 is a gathering of 10,000 or so mostly young people organizing for action to confront the Climate Crisis and related environmental crises.  Leaders of the group met with President Obama, and the report of this at Climate Progress elicited the usual political grumbling and the inevitable debate on whether the Baby Boomers ruined everything.  A bit unusual however was that it appeared boomers were taking both sides.

While one commenter wrote "my generation has failed, and too many of us have become indifferent or selfish." Another:  "If there is to be a future,the youth of today are going to need to shame us grey hairs into making difficult decisions by staying in our faces forcing us to confront the truth. If our Youth are to have a life, then us Grey Hairs from Presidents & Legislators, Business Leaders & Faith Leaders, Opinion Makers & Everyday People need to be confronted with the facts that how we live in the present is consuming their ability to live in the future. It is encouraging to see our Youth refusing to let us steal their future."

But another commenter countered: " I think we deserve more credit than “failure”...  That the fight took longer than any of us realized in the 60s and on does not mean we have failed. Look around. Civil Rights. Gay and lesbian rights. Women’s equality. Human rights around the world. Respect for the environment. And so much more. I agree none of the above is complete and can be considered a total victory but all are far from failure. The battle lines are getting closer to “Black” and “White” and that is why the rhetoric is sharper. Guns get drawn quickly. A cornered foe fights dirty. Big money spent hundreds of millions of dollars to control the power and the best they could muster is the Tea Party with an uninspiring IQ average. Yes, we have not won, but we are far from losers."

My own point of view is that while this also sounds like a dialogue within a single conscience, there is plenty of "failure" to go around.  As much as I'm heartened by this organization and this conference, I've heard a little too much nonsense about "powerful" organizing techniques, and I'm afraid there's lots of evidence that artistic efforts and "messaging" haven't been very effective yet in furtherance of Power Shift's goals.  That doesn't mean they should stop trying.  It just doesn't make their efforts automatically superior, or the final answer.    

And I also point out that the techniques these young people are using--including the theatre of large-scale demos--were pioneered by my generation during anti-war demos in the 60s and 70s.  (Check out those puppets.)

While I regret many things in my life, I don't think I've regretted for a moment not going to one more demo.  I did what I could, and I still do.  All the good fight is a process, and we all have our parts to play in it.  And if we follow the reference I'm pointing towards--Jacques' speech in As You Like It-- one determinant of our roles is age.  We did what we could when we were young.  I think we did a lot.  Some of this "selfishness" later on was people concentrating on raising their families, seeing their kids through the tumults of the crazy 70s and depressing 80s, etc.  And what we were part of did change things.  And some of it backfired.

But now we're older, and some of us are old.  We have perspective and specifics from our experience and history to contribute, if anybody cares to listen--and lumping us together with the people really responsible for "failure" isn't going to help with that.

  And we can help with things like courage and perseverence and lasting.  And that above all is what this is going to take. 

Bill McKibben pretty much said so in his heartfelt and cogent address to Power Shift.  He didn't mince words about the power that immense amounts of money has in this society right now.  And he didn't mince words about our chances, or what it would take.  He finished this way:

" So far, we’ve raised the temperature of the planet one degree and that’s done all that I’ve described, it’s melted the arctic, it’s changed the oceans. The climatologists tell us that unless we act with great speed and courage that one degree will be five degrees before this century is out. And if we do that, then the world that we leave behind will be a ruined world.

 We fight not just for ourselves, we fight for the beauty of this place. For cool trout streams and deep spruce woods. For chilly fog rising off the Pacific and deep snow blanketing the mountains. We fight for all the creation that shares this planet with us. We don’t know half the species on Earth we’re wiping out.


And of course, we fight alongside our brothers and sisters around the world. You’ve seen the pictures as I talk: these are our comrades. Most of these people, as you see, come from places that have not caused this problem, and yet they’re willing to be in deep solidarity with us. That’s truly admirable and it puts a real moral burden on us. Never let anyone tell you, that environmentalism is something that rich, white people do. Most of the people that we work with around the world are poor and black and brown and Asian and young, because that’s what most of the world is made up of, and they care about the future as anyone else.


We have to fight, finally, without any guarantee that we are going to win. We have waited late to get started and our adversaries are strong and we do not know how this is going to come out. If you were a betting person, you might bet we were going to lose because so far that’s what happened, but that’s not a bet you’re allowed to make. The only thing that a morally awake person [can] do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds.


I have spent most of my last few years in rooms around the world with great people, many of whom will be refugees before this century is out, some of whom may be dead from climate change before this century is out. No guarantee that we will win, but from them a complete guarantee that we will fight with everything we have. It is always an honor for me to be in those rooms. It is the greatest honor for me to be with you tonight. No guarantee that we will win, but we will fight side by side, as long as we’ve got."


So instead of fighting over who is responsible for failure, we pick each other up and we fight the good fight together.  And if there is anything that getting older teaches you, it is the meaning of "[for] as long as we've got."

Generations of the Future

The irony is inescapable--the generation that didn't trust anyone over 30 and trademarked the Generation Gap, is now the dread enemy of the young. But how real--or contrived--is this conflict, and for what sinister purpose? See the post below.

Now that jobs are scarily scarce, the fortunes of one generation is pitted against that of another: the young, whose plight is described in the New York Times, and the older (which apparently in Silicon Valley--let alone Hollywood--means 40), in this Daily Kos post, and the hundreds of comments.

This situation, plus the ongoing attention to the future of Social Security, again resurrects baby boomers as generational villains. Just look at the comments to this pedestrian Talking Points Memo story.

But there was this interesting exchange there, in response to the usual diatribe: "Raise payroll taxes or cut benefits for anyone who was of voting age during the Reagan Administration. Why do we have to pay for the excess of the Baby Boomers?"

The response in part:

They raised taxes for everyone of voting age DURING the Reagan Administration. Which is why there is a $2.5 trillion Trust Fund largely extracted from that 'Me Generation'. We got stuck with higher FICA AND an increase in Full Retirement Age.

Boomers currently range in age from 46 to 64 years old. In 1980 we ranged in age from 16 to 34. Anyone who thinks that political policy in the 1980s was shaped by people under the age of 35 needs to think again. Hell Boomers are not even in control of Congress NOW, most of the power positions still be in the hands of the Depression/War babies.

The whole 'Blame the Boomers' narrative was a cynical construct and a central part of the 'Leninist Strategy' to undermine Social Security put forth in a Cato sponsored paper of that same name published in 1983 and authored by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj3n2/cj3n2-11.pdf"
The centerpiece of the Leninist Strategy was to convince younger workers that Social Security was doomed, that the Trust Fund was a fraud, and that Boomers were at fault. The strategy on the whole worked to perfection with the results seen here."

This refers to the Cato Institute, a right wing so-called think tank. It makes perfect sense that this is a deliberate campaign, and that it seeks to foster generational war.

Other comments repeat the cliches: the Boomers were all radical dopers in their youth, and Me Generation conservatives ever after. The truth is less dramatic. Most of the boomer generation was always relatively conservative, or apolitical. It was just a very large generation, and even a minority could look impressive. And while statistically speaking, people tend to become more conservative in their political views as they age, there are still a significant number of Boomers who remain basically progressive, or at least open-minded on significant issues.

But it is to the interests of the very few who have most of the money and power to divide the many who don't. Boomers may be better off in some ways, but they are also victims of age discrimination (the most prevalent form of discrimination statistically), retirement funds destroyed by Wall Street and corporations cruelly ditching their retirement obligations, soon to be joined by state governments.

Feeding resentment is a time-tested way of creating conflict among those whose common interests are better served by recognizing who is pulling the strings, and who benefits from generations blaming each other.

But as for what is happening to the young and old alike, it is also evident that the American Dream, at least as fostered by commercials, is over. The energy-wasting, waste-creating, slaving for expensive symbols--that American Dream--is done. It is already a nightmare for millions of the formerly middle class. The future does not include a return to that Dream, but at best to a conscious participation in the creation of a better one. That minority of Boomers may find this a familiar future, though on the horizon a lot later than we thought.

Some want to make the Climate Crisis a generational fight (debated in the post below). Photo: Al Gore, one of the 60s generation at the forefront.

The Wrong Enemy

The future has lots of enemies--greedy insurers, egomaniacal Senators, Climate Crisis deniers, petrified (in both senses) industrialists...so why on Earth would a someone want to invent a new one?

In this Worldchanging post, Alex Steffan declares that the war for the future is generational, young against old, apparently because of polls (which he doesn't bother citing) that say the older demographic believes in the Climate Crisis less than do the younger. The key graph:

"And this is what most older observers seem to refuse to understand: The world looks dramatically different if the year 2050 is one you’re likely to be alive to see. To younger people, Copenhagen isn’t some do-gooder meeting; it’s the first major battle in a war for the future. Their future."

It's not unusual for a younger generation to anoint itself the hope of the world, in opposition to the old people who have so far screwed things up. We did it in the 60s. Maybe with more justification, maybe with less. But it's like a lot of broad-brush categorical statements: even if it is in some sense true (and it is also always in some sense false) it alienates your potential allies within the group (older, male, white, etc.) you condemn.

Of course, scientists, writers, artists and even politicians in all of these categories are demonstrably in the forefront of the fight to address the Climate Crisis and to build a sustainable future. Some of them are from the 60s generation, like Al Gore, and others are even older, like the foremost climate scientists in England and the U.S. (James Hansen for one. James Lovelock, more radically that just about anyone, is in his nineties.) Steffan might be forgiven for youthful exuberance for ignoring this, except that later in his post he writes "if I were ten years younger" he would join the young "on the barricades."

Yes, in a statistical sense, there is a divide--older voters in the U.S. not only tend to be behind the curve on global heating, but on race, gender and social issues as well. Younger U.S. voters also tend to be more diverse racially and in other ways. But those are percentages, not numbers of people. And even the numbers aren't altogether relevant. There are millions on one side, and millions on the other.

What Steffans basically contends is at the heart of the difference--the dividing line that makes the older the enemy--is their relation to the future. The young will live to see it, and the old will not. Therefore, the young care more about the future.

There is some visceral truth to this idea. But only to a degree, and not enough to condemn the imaginations and commitments of older people. Older people are often parents and grandparents. Many older people do care about the future, partly because they are older. Past a certain age, older people are often less interested in the present than in the past and the future. They care about legacy, and about the planet that has borne their lives, and about their descendants, their grandchildren. There's hardly anything they care about more.

But speaking for my generation, many of us have made a lifetime commitment of caring about the future. And we have the scars to prove it. We were always a minority, even within our own generation. Just as you probably are within yours.

I doubt that every young person is worried about 2050. It takes imagination as well as motivation to think about the future, in any sense beyond the very narrow, and very short.

So my advice to Steffans and the others looking for enemies: you've got enough real ones, you don't need to invent--or create--new ones. The old are easy to scapegoat--the older, the easier. Yes, the biggest human barriers to change are usually older than 30. You have to be to be elected to the Senate, etc. Most of them are also right-handed. But then, maybe you are, too.

I echo Steffans' concern that the young will become discouraged and disheartened. Maybe older veterans of other fights can help with that.