Apathy
The seventies were a strange decade. It commenced with political involvement and ended with disco. Why did most of my generation who was coming of age in the seventies not follow the example of our older brothers and sisters? Apathy was not always pervasive in my generation.
I remember heated discussions regarding the war, the environment and Watergate among other items. I had friends who worked for
McGovern in 1972.
I remember a party stopping so we could all watch Nixon resign in August 1974.
Then suddenly everything changed,Those same people who worked for McGovern in 1972 voted for Reagan in 1980. Ideology had turned to money. In 1976 I ran the speaker’s bureau at my college. I was excited to book Ed Muskie to speak. We couldn't give the tickets away.
Later that year I succumbed to pressure and booked the Amazing Kreskin.
We sold out that show. In all fairness to Kreskin he was
and probably still is a charming man, who put on a great show, but it wasn't what I signed up for.
By the end of the seventies people weren't protesting they were going to discos. Torn dungarees had been replaced with leisure suits. Crosby, Stills and Nash
were replaced by KC and the Sunshine Boys. What happened?
Do you think if we had even a small percentage of the involvement of the sixties Clinton would have been impeached for lying about an event so inconsequential that the judge ruled
it irrelevant? If my generation had not commenced a spirit of apathy. Do you think that we would have elected (assuming he
actually won) the mental titan now sitting in the White House? Do you think that a senate made up of McGovern, Muskie, McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy etc . . . would have given this President a blank check to go war based upon a pack of lies?
I'm not advocating going back to the violence of the sixties or early seventies. But I am advocating telling our representatives that enough is enough. It's time to stop backing down on war funding. It's time for the Democratic leaders to stand up, not waiver. I may not get the opportunity in the general election, but in the primary, I will not vote for any candidate who does not have a quick plan for withdrawal from the quagmire that this administration and congress have gotten us into.