In the midst of this historic election, I can’t help but wonder whether an Obama presidency might represent a “finale” to the 60s movement that we never had. I mean, it has only been in recent years that the 1960s have been ramticized by youth and marketers eager to capitalize on its popularity. Obama's rise to the presidency is an American story brought about in large part by the revolution of thwe 1960s. But it wasn’t romantic by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t about selling hamburgers and cars in cool clothes. It was real. It was a difficult period in our history. We nearly had a nuclear war with Cuba and Russia. Kennedy was assassinated. There was the civil rights showdown on segregation in schools. The 1965 riots. Then a worsening Vietnam War and mandatory draft of young men, many going to their deaths for a war that had no direction and could not be won. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Robert Kennedy as well. Americans began to leave their churches, pareticularly, the Catholic church. Young people began resisting and demonstrating. Then there were the Kent State shootings of eight students by the Ohio National Guard. For a kid growing up in the 1960s, it was a lot to absorb.
By the mid-1970s, the Vietnam War, the 60’s activism, and Nixon presidency were over. The country seemed at a loss for direction. I was in college then. Our chief concern was in the nuclear arms buildup in trying to keep up with Russia. I recall numerous pieces in the news then how the world might end by 2008. I actually dropped out of pre-med in part because of a lack of confidence that I (and we in the U.S.) would not have a certain future. As it turns out, we did. But the manner in which it was done has become one of short sighted, weak leadership.
The country merely “moved on” from the 60s. We didn’t get it! It's like we took a “stupid pill” and forgot everything we had gone through between 1962 and 1974 - threw away our notes, and forgot to formalize conclusions that we could follow in years to come. As a result, the 70s were extraordinarily dismal economically and culturally. The leadership of both major political parties was “milk toast.” I mean, “disco” became the highlight of that critical period. That should tell you something. In 2008, we face history with the opportunity to elect a black President. Yet, some in this country who might oppose a black President for the color of his skin never "got it" from the 60s.
By the 1980s when Ronald Reagan took office, he brought a new and different course to economic and military progress. The country was amiss in problems in the Middle East and Russia. Reagan introduced trickle-down economics that sparked a new economic era, but it included cuts in needed government services and in exchange ushered in a new more accomodating view of U.S. corporate mergers and acquisitions, the real beginning of today’s deregulation that in my view led to the excesses that brought down our financial markets and economy in 2008. Despite economic prosperity in the 1980s, it was “politically incorrect” to bring up the 60s in reflection. Political candidates and business leaders frequently denounced their 60s involvement in order to become successful businessmen. Still others ended up on the street as Vietnam War Vets with PTSD and similar disorders. They and others became the illegitamate offspring of a difficult, revolutionary, and defining period in American history. Depending on who you asked, you would hear either good and bad views of this period.
By the mid to late 80s, the country had seen fairly widespread growth and prosperity, except for the forgotten war vets and increasingly crowded and poorer inner cities like Los Angeles and New York City, that had been left out of the economic expansion as companies took jobs and fled the inner cities in huge numbers for the suburbs and first wave of outsourcing with cheap foreign labor. At that time, no one figured there would be a sizable unrest just a few years later in the 1992 Los Angeles riots. We weren’t looking for it. We had Bruce Springtein, the very successful 1984 Olympics, the expansion of professional sports, the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Russia right behind it. But per the stresses released in the 1992 riots, there were siginificant pentup issues, and arguably abandonment. Also, by 1992 the U.S. and particularly California, was in the grips of a sizable recession.
Somehow - we got through the 1992 riots and that recession. And by the late 90s, we had the tech boom, NAFTA, and more outsourcing of jobs. It wasn’t real apparent, but there was a growing divide between the middle class. A lot of people lost money when the tech boom went bust, yet it gave us insight into new and creative funding of economic expansion, including, new and creative tools to fund the economy, particularly, “derivatives.” Real estate values soon began growing at a never before seen pace. Life in the U.S. between 2002 and 2006 was all about money, and how an average Joe Homeowner could pull from their home, like an ATM or slot machine. But with this period, was increasing homelessness and poverty, and failed opportunities to invest in our nation’s infrastructure and new technologies. We “jacked off the dogs to feed the cats” so recklessly, that when we woke up, we realized the dogs had died and much of everything else was starving. By 2007, an ugly handwriting was on the wall. But, Wall Street gurus responded with increasingly brazen attempts to spin and create money. Then came the news of Bear Stearns, and the 1st governemt bailout.
For too long as a nation, we have ingored the obvious, our people, our infrastructure, our sick and needy - and all in exchange for leveraged riches for just a few. And now our ways have caught up with us. But, I must correct myself here. I was NOT a part of this reckless economic expansion. Since 1992, I’ve been undergoing a series of brain surgeries to get a shunt to correctly relieve fluid pressure on my brain. During this period, my life, health, and recovery were blocked by Wall Street and FDA level failures and coverups of safety issues with a popular CNS shunt device. Yes - I was sold out for Wall Street riches - just like many of you. Brain shunts are big business. In order for me to have any hope for a future, I had to become a health advocate, FDA policy and law expert, a neuroscientist, an expert in artificial intelligence, and an inventor of a diagnostic shunt test. But no matter what I did, it was never good enough. On every occassion, I had to fight Wall Street influences. In fact, I directed my 2 most successful surgeries. But, it’s taken me 7 surgeries in all, including, my recent successful surgery in May of 2008 that finally relieved the swelling on my brain, albeit after 16 years. Why 16 years? It took that long to convince the powers that be on the right way to implant shunts, as well as numerous supportive scientive papers I had written. I nearly got my shunt of today implanted back in 1998. On that occassion, the FDA stopped me. Then, on numerous times since, each and every neurosurgeon I saw was somehow affiliated with a (Wall Street) shunt company, whose shunts all failed me. So - I am kind of like those in the inner city. Like those being drawn in or brought here illegally to work for cheaper wages than a residing American. I am an American, disenfranchised and deprived of life and liberty by today's Wall Street and its influences. Now, as much as half of the country has also been disenfranchised albeit by the same dishonest mechanism. Yes - in September/ October 2008, shit hit the fan in the U.S., and government and business leaders who had prided themselves on deregulation, low taxes, and outsourcing were brought to their knees - and in the balance, a nation waits, eager for any hope of new leadership. And, then came Senator Barrack Obama.
Yes - I had a vision today of what was, and what could again be. A proud and homogenious America, an accomplished nation. I saw Barrack Obama at the helm. I believe the excitement that so many see is that of an Obama presidency and the prospects that we might once again reconnect with our past, perhaps in a revolutionary type of way as I expect the change and resulting progress to be unharalded per any other era in our history. And we need this. We need this to help us better understand who we are as Americans, and the course we must plot in moving ahead. With the ascention of Barrack Obama as our favored next President, I couldn't think of a better "finale" and tribute to an era and movement I and others knew as the "60s."
So, with this critical election so close at hand, I again choose "us," just as I did in the 1960s.
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