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Blog 546 – 02.15.2017
Blowin’ In The Wind

One of the great songs of my youth was Blowin’ In The Wind as sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary. The youth of the nineteen sixties had developed a conscience and causes like, the civil rights and the antiwar movements mobilized a generation to protest and to become active in politics. By the nineteen eighties most everyone had given up on making any real lasting changes. It seemed to be all about making as much money as you could and spending it like there was no tomorrow. People quit saving and charged their credit cards to the limit and just got another one. The US government spent billions on a strategic ballistic defense program, called Star Wars, that was a joke but bankrupted the Soviet Union nonetheless trying to keep up. The American public watched horrified as nuclear aniliation was graphically depicted in the TV movie The Day After. Our government’s response to fear was the Star Wars program. The public’s response was like the government to spend like there was not going to be a day after tomorrow.

The nineteen sixties were a more idealist time in America. We saw our young President shot down in Dallas just a month after announcing that he was going to bring the U.S. Military advisors home from South Vietnam. We saw Martin Luther King, Jr. shot down in Memphis for peacefully protest for Civil Rights for people of color. We saw Bobby Kennedy shot down in California when many believed that he might be the next President of the United States and bring about the progressive changes that many hoped to make happen. The continued protests did help improve civil rights and they did help bring about the end of one war but civil rights problems still exist and wars still go on.

The answer, my friend is still blowin’ in the wind but it still needs our voice to be heard.  I saw yesterday that the Turner Classic Movies channel is running the movie Network this Saturday evening at 10:30 EST. I have quoted the line from the movie several times talking about protests, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” They say that anger is the first step up the ladder of emotions from the bottom which is despair. If you are angry at what still goes on and despair that things will ever change get angry and do something about it, lend your voice, lend your hand. The Wind is still blowin’ and the times they are still a changin’ but where it blows and how they change is up to us.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
Child of the sixties,
David White