The Times They Are A Changin - Or Are They?

Posted by WilliamPitt in General Discussion

I tell myself all the time, "Things have never been this bad before."
I am then forced to remind myself, "Things could get worse." They often do.

And then I came across this passage this morning, which was written many years ago.

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Now, what? While the new wave flowered, Lenny Bruce was hounded to death by the cops. For "obscenity." Thirty thousand people (according to Paul Krassner) are serving time in the jails of this vast democracy on marijuana charges, and the world we have to live in is controlled by a stupid thug from Texas. A vicious liar, with the ugliest family in Christendom...mean Okies feeling honored by the cheap indulgence of a George Hamilton, a stinking animal ridiculed even in Hollywood. And California, "the most progressive state," elects a governor straight out of a George Grosz painting, a political freak in every sense of the word except California politics...Ronnie Reagan, the White Hope of the West.

Jesus, no wonder Lionel had a stroke. What a nightmare it must have been for him to see the honest rebellion that came out of World War Two taken over by a witless phony like Warhol...The Expanding Plastic Inevitable, Lights, Noise, Love the Bomb! And then to see a bedrock madman like Ginsberg copping out with tolerance poems and the same sort of swill that normally comes from the Vatican. Kerouac hiding out with his "mere" on Long Island or maybe St. Petersburg...Kennedy with his head blown off and Nixon back from the dead, running wild in the power vacuum of Johnson's hopeless bullshit...and of course Reagan, the new dean of Berkeley. Progress Marches On, courtesy, as always, of General Electric...with sporadic assists from Ford, GM, ATT, Lockheed and Hoover's FBI.

- "The Ultimate Free Lancer," by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, November 1967

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That was written forty-three years ago, possibly to the day. I was struck by how much of that two-paragraph passage sounds so eerily familiar. A "stupid thug from Texas" cuts too close to the bone, especially given George's recent return to the public prints.

The passage helped to remind me: yes, it's bad now. It's been bad before, too. In so many ways, there's nothing new going on right now.

This fight has been going on for a long, long time. The names change, but the ugliness has remained fully intact.

I knew this, but I guess I needed a reminder.

Did you?
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