I was talking with a friend and he mentioned that although these are bad times politically we baby boomers have lived through worse. He reminded me of the 1960s: A president assassinated, his brother and presidential candidate assassinated; a civil rights movement that ignited race riots in most of the major cities in the U.S. and the best known civil rights leader in the nation killed.
I started thinking back on a more personal level. My closest cousin was killed in Vietnam, a classmate came home with no legs, my Little League teammate was burned to death his first day in ‘Nam. Every one of those incidents had a profound affect on me and to this day are lasting scars of emotion.
The National Guard was turned loose on protestors and killed students at Kent State and Jackson State universities. There were violent protests about the war across the country with Americans deeply divided.
A presidential campaign convention in Chicago unleashed an army of policemen with free reign to beat those gathered in protest.
I thought about all the women who were forced into back alley abortions; many were physically scarred, all emotionally scarred, some died.
I thought about the young, mostly white people, who went into the South to register black voters and ended up dead.
We grew up with the Cold War, the Cuban Missiles Crisis, the Berlin War, the constant threat of nuclear war.
Those were bad times, but these may be worse.
I had a young man ask me, since I am old enough to have lived back then, if Nixon was as bad as this current president. I explained that Nixon was an evil man in that he let his ambition cloud many of his decisions. He was a dirty tricks campaign fighter from his first elected seat in office, where he used “Red Scare” tactics to tip the scales on his behalf. But, I told the young man no; Nixon was not worse than this.
These times are worse because now the oligarchs are out in the open. They no longer feel they have to work behind the scenes holding up puppet presidents to do their bidding. Now, oligarchs have no checks on their rampant greed. They own the Congress, the President and now the Supreme Court.
My friends who are political are hoping for a big “Blue Wave” to come Nov. 6; a wave to flip the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate. I hope they are right, but I won’t be surprised if the wave flattens before impact.
If there isn’t a major change in our political makeup after the next election, I have two possible explanations.
First, the electronic voting machines are not reliable. They can be hacked, they can be manipulated and those who make and control these machines are the same people that currently own and control America. It is to their best interest to maintain the status quo. I have my doubts about the honesty of voting in America, because even before electronic voting, corrupt ballot boxes were stuffed.
If there is no “Blue Wave” the second possibility might be that we in Sonoma County truly live in a bubble and have little or no understanding what the real America is like. If there is no major change in our Congress and if the voting machines are honest, then maybe this, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, militaristic, greed-driven culture is who we are.
Nov. 6 will be a very interesting day in American history. I make no predictions.
Gabriel A. Fraire has been a writer more than 45 years. He can be reached through his website at: www.gabrielfraire.com.
