Will Bunch: Children of the 1960s watch in pain as the story of our lifetime is erased
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trump-presidency-1960s-civil-rights-20250126.htmlNo paywall link
https://archive.li/HAPSG
My almost pathological obsession with what historians now call “the Long Sixties” — especially the years between JFK’s assassination in 1963 and Richard Nixon’s Watergate downfall in 1974 — includes way too much time still listening to the jangly pop anthems that blared in mono from WABC on an AM car radio back when I was in middle school.
More than a half-century later, now coming from something called Pandora and a magical device in my jeans pocket, I so often hear the hidden messages of hope and, yes, naivety buried behind layers of power chords and a Farfisa organ like some archeological dig.
One song that’s become a soulmate to my personal AI algorithm is Three Dog Night’s 1972 No. 1 remake of “Black and White” — a 3-minute-and-24-second window into what it felt like to be a 13-year-old in a moment that was supposed to last forever until it didn’t. The song was actually written in the 1950s (lyrics by actor Alan Arkin’s father, David, sung first by Pete Seeger) to celebrate a nation that was finally overcoming its grim history of racial segregation in the classroom.
“A child is Black/A child is white/Together they learn to read and write,” is how the Three Dog Night version begins, but the line that really gets me when I hear it nearly 53 years later is when they sing, “And now a child can understand/That this is the law of all the land.”
*snip*
= new reply since forum marked as read
It describes the rage and grief that I feel.
Many of us fought so hard for social justice, and healing of the life support systems of our planet .
The quote from Heather Cox Richardson, about how the pendulum of justice periodically needs a good hard push to swing the other way.
That's where we are now.
It is painful and discouraging because our generation is old now, dealing with the health problems and lower energy of age. And, unlike the oligarchs who seem to want to enslave us, we don't have bottomless pockets of wealth to fight back with.
I began voting before the end of the Vietnam war. I have never voted for Republicans nor any other conservative candidates. I knew that the sexiest, racist and classist bigots and haters have never gone away. I just do Not understand how anyone can just shrug and not bother with voting when it is the one chance we who aren't filthy rich get to have a say about anything. 
There's plenty of proof out there. But, the owners of the country will yank their money away from anyone who comes out and says that.
The major media outlets have always belonged to the wealthy. Thanks to the obstacles being removed for a certain group of people to buy all of them, we have ended up being barraged by the only opinions that the oligarchs will allow to be disseminated. Too many people have been brainwashed into feeling hopeless, with no insight into how that benefits the ownership class.
The information to counter the brainwashing has always been available, but obtaining it requires time, effort, and sometimes spending money.
During my teenage years, all kinds of alternative news papers sprang up. They may not have always been accurate, but they encouraged us to explore past the strangle hold that corporate McGreedia has on the public discourse.
Back in 1984, when I felt so angry and disillusioned by our fellow voters because Ronnie Ray gun ( deliberately misspelled) won the election in a 'landslide', I went searching for the reason why people would do that. It felt like a rejection and a throwing out of all that the struggles of the 1960's had stood for. I was angry and heartbroken. I believe it was an article in an alternative newspaper that the writer mentioned a book: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander. That book opened my eyes to exactly how the media had been hijacked and why progressive and alternative views never even got a hearing, let alone caught on with the general population. If you add in the fact that AM radio stations all got bought up by conservative owners, and that hate, bigotry, sexism and resentment of social progress got blasted into people's cars every day while they were commuting to work each day, it becomes sadly easy to see why we are where we are.
The Left just doesn't have the huge megaphone to continually blast our policies and how they can benefit the majority of people.
Big swathes of the country have low quality internet service, or in some areas, none at all other than maybe the public library. I can't afford satellite radio or Sirius XM, and I would expect that a lot of people can't either.
Deliberate disinformation, lack of information, brainwashing in conservative churches which never seem to lose their tax exempt status because of engaging in politics, and Citizens United, which allows gargantuan amounts of dark money and even interference by foreign governments to pour into our elections. Well, the results of that, and more, is how we got where we are today. 
We are horribly controlled by our purchases, our entertainment, and the fact that they managed to convince plenty of people that a 'want' is just as important as a 'need'. Not to mention all the crap in advertising about how our 'time is too precious' to waste on things like taking the time to learn about products and trying to find cheaper prices.
And, we fell for it. Which is not that surprising. We also don't seem willing to change it.
has me so demoralized and bereft for all we tried to achieve. I think you and I are the same age and I too have given the effort my entire life and I have no idea where to go from here. I don't think I can live in a country that places so little value on life of the planet and all sentient beings, I am flailing.
Oh, btw, Welcome to DU my friend. May peace come to the planet in spite of them. 
Trump doesn't want to take us back to the 1950s, he's aiming for the 1850s so those uppity Black people can be enslaved again. 
I have been immersed in the '60's of late... my partner created and is directing a play to be presented Saturday...
"We Had a Dream" I have had to go over all the speeches and photos from the time (to present, all the ups and downs)
it is a powerful play, and I know I will cry as I try to assist with the production Saturday.
https://chestertownspy.org/2025/01/09/we-had-a-dream-to-commemorate-the-march-on-washington-at-church-hill-theatre-on-february-1-2025/
edit: oh, I just noticed a typo in the ad that I hadn't seen before... of course the date is 1963!
Many of them (us) were the children of the segregationists. While some college students sat at lunch counters to integrate them, the people harassing them were often the same age.
According to the AP, 51% of people 65 or older voted for Trump, and 52% of people 45-64 voted for him. These figures indicate that over 50% of "Children of the 1960s" were delighted to vote for the orange felon and his promises to drag the country back to at least the 1920s.
Yes, I always thought we hippy-dreamers were the majority, but I honestly think we're only 50% of the population, and have been right along. This kind of wistful memory of the past does no good to dwell on, though I suppose grieving your dreams is valid. But really - it took you over 50 years to realize your dreams weren't being implemented into law? That they were just feel-good SCOTUS decisions, which, as we now understand, doesn't mean shit to men who happily go back to the 16th Century to find supposedly legal precedent to overturn Roe? Not helpful, but good on you to finally catch on, Mr. Bunch.