#5. Boom! Boom!
Boomers and GenXers, don't waste time feeling anxious and depressed. We have to reboot, retool and resist.
I need you right now. I mean right now. I don't mean tomorrow. I mean right now.
Remember those lyrics from the Animals’ 1964 release Boom Boom? How about their immortal version of House of the Rising Sun that same year?1
No? Let’s widen the lens a bit. Even if Eric Burdon never floated your boat, if you were alive between 1946 and 1981 I’m looking at you, fellow Boomers and GenXers. Because the irreducible fact of the matter is that our country needs us, and needs *us* in particular, right the fuck now.
No, we’re not being bombed and massacred like Ukrainians but our democracy is under attack just the same, not by outside enemies but from inside our own house.
Clocks are ticking; alarms are ringing. You can feel it in your bones. America’s historic forces of darkness — from White supremacists and warmongers to Christian absolutists and neofascists — are marching in lockstep as never before in our lifetime.
Authoritarian extremists now have operational control of one of our two major political parties, and they are openly and methodically laying the groundwork to once again attempt to literally seizure political power in the United States, from the county courthouse to the White House, beginning with this November’s midterm election in just over 200 days, and culminating in two years at our next Presidential election.
And oddly enough this all goes back to when we were young.
If the hot-button issues congressional Republicans are running on this year sound familiar, it’s because they are.
Critical race theory, transexual children and political wokeness are simply this year’s version of [take your pick] dirty hippies, draft dodgers, bra burners, pot smokers, baby killers, rapists, welfare queens, feminazis, Willie Horton, illegal immigrants, the homosexual agenda, Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police, to name but a few.
This brand of gutter politics based on race, gender and lifestyle arose precisely in reaction to the social progress of the 1960s and ‘70s, as did the cast of characters orchestrating these attacks. And they are still obsessed with destroying what’s left of the counterculture of our youth.
Paul Manafort and Roger Stone helped revolutionize sleazy Republican dirty tricks in the 1970s. They’ve been highly compensated purveyors of GOP slime for almost 50 years since, and lobbyists for a rogue’s gallery of murderous foreign dictators.
If their names seem familiar today, it’s due to their current supporting roles as accomplices (and criminal defendants) in Donald Trump’s crimes.
Manafort and Stone’s long-ago business partner Lee Atwater (pictured at right in the photo) rose to the greatest heights of the three.
A bare-knuckled political operative in the Reagan White House, it was Atwater who crafted the Willie Horton attack on Michael Dukakis as manager of George HW Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988. Atwater then became chairman of the Republican National Committee, before dying suddenly at the age of 40 in 1991.
And then there’s Newt. Unlike those other avatars of smash-mouth politics, Newt Gingrich stoked the flames of resentment against the 1960s and ‘70s from within Congress itself for 20 more years. As Wikipedia delicately puts it:
“Political scientists have credited Newt Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States and hastening political polarization and partisanship.”
Gingrich made his motivations explicit in an interview with The New York Times in November 1994, as he was ascending to Speaker of the House and promulgating his infamous Contract With America.
“There are profound things that went wrong, starting with the Great Society and the counterculture, and until we address them head on we’re going to have these problems,” Gingrich said.
He denounced President Bill Clinton as “a very smart, very clever tactician whose core system of activity is a combination of counterculture and McGovern.” Speaking to what he thought was a private session with lobbyists, Gingrich said his campaign strategy was to portray Clinton Democrats as “the enemy of normal Americans.”
So there you have it: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich as the Four Whores2 of the Apocalypse, laying waste to the ideals of a generation, with Steve Bannon, their bastard3 offspring, now trying to push things much, much further.
I don’t know about you but it pisses me off royally.
So what happens to us now? Do you feel anxious, angry, depressed, overwhelmed and powerless at times?
As Joan Baez famously said: “Action is the antidote to despair.”
Somehow, we need to snap out of our collective malaise, stop doomscrolling and bitching on social media, roll up our sleeves and get to work. We can’t let these motherfuckers prevail!
Let’s start with what NOT to do. I’m all in with @MalcolmNance on this one. The next eight months are not the time for shitting on Democrats, complaining about Biden, or obsessing over any particular policy issue, no matter how righteous, if it further endangers the Democrats’ slim path to maintaining at least partial control of Congress for the last two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.
On a more positive note, let me propose two alternative courses of action for whatever energies you can contribute to the cause:
Choose an organization you trust and invest some of your faith, time and money, ideally a group with a track record of actually activating voters in the places where it will matter the most. For my money, such as it is, that’s SwingLeft, MoveOn or the new, Boomer-and-GenX-specific Third Act. SwingLeft in particular lets you simply enter a zip code and find effective ways to donate, volunteer in person or remotely, and stay up to date. If you are fortunate enough to live in an all-blue enclave, you can pick the nearest swing state or congressional district and focus your efforts there.
And by all means, become a Mary Kay for peace and justice! You are an influencer with the folks you know; reach out and influence them until it hurts. Reconnect with past and present friends, family and colleagues. If they are sympathetic, register and activate them as well. Multi-level marketing works!4
If enough of us will do this, we absolutely can keep Congress blue in November and keep creeping authoritarianism at bay. And always remember:
Eric Burdon and The Animals’ version of John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom was a 1964 hit in the US but nothing compared to their classic House of the Rising Sun, which reached number one that year in both the US and UK. The Animals (who once rivaled The Beatles and Rolling Stones in popularity) recorded seven more Top 20 hits from 1965-69: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place, It’s My Life, Don’t Bring Me Down, When I Was Young, San Franciscan Nights and Monterey.
Apropos the Summer of Love, which Burdon experienced up close and personal, he later said: “We really did believe we could alter the world on a large scale, but of course all good things end up being bent out of shape and twisted, and end up in the wrong hands with the wrong ideals.”
No offense intended to professional sex workers
Ditto for children born to unmarried parents
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P.S. Love the clip.
If this doesn’t convince me to get off my complacent ass, what ever could?
Great piece, Art. You connect some dots that I needed connecting.