As the story goes, when John Lennon wrote "Imagine," he wasn't setting out to write an anthem. He just wanted to write a good song about all the things that stand in the way of people being truly happy and then ask people to consider what the world could be like without those things.
No heaven.
No religion.
No countries.
No possessions.
"No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world ..."
People laugh at that attitude now and sneer at all the "naive" people who would work toward that sort of world. Too many bad people, they say. Too many predators. Human nature would never accept that sort of world.
Besides, we didn't care enough to fight for it. Some people tried, and some people are still trying. They're still fighting the good fight against racism, sexism, corporatism, militarism and all the other -isms.
What do we do? We call them old hippies and laugh at their naivete. Can't they understand, we say, that people can't make a difference anymore?
But our voices barely matter and can hardly be heard anymore. If you look at the generation now beginning to retire, we didn't just give up on changing the world. We put the worst among us -- the greediest, the meanest, the most sociopathic -- in charge of things.
We may not be to blame for Richard Nixon. Most of us couldn't vote in 1968, and 1972 was a whole different story -- they called it "All the President's Men."
But only the very last of the boomers were too young to vote in 1980, so we have to take responsibility for Ronald Reagan, and there's no way anyone else was to blame for George W. Bush in 2000.
The worst thing of all is that we are in complete denial about the fact that between 1981 and 2009, for 16 years of that time we had presidents with no intellectual curiosity, no subtlety in their thinking and not enough basic intelligence to grasp the difficult issues.In Will Bunch's fascinating book "Tear Down this Myth," he quotes an aide who said that early in Reagan's time in the White House, he was having a meeting about a complex issue. As the discussion went on around him, it was apparent Reagan couldn't keep up and had no idea what they were discussing.
He wasn't a details guy. He had three basic beliefs -- anti-communism, smaller government and lower taxes. As long as the people working for him kept that in mind, they could pretty well do what they wanted.
Bush was actually worse. He pretty much left everything to his subordinates, and the neocons in his administration trashed our economy and our reputation in the world.
Did we care? Not much. We were rolling along in our careers, hitting our peak earning years and hey, how about that Viagra.
Stephen King pretty well summed up our generation in "Why We're in Vietnam," a novella inside his outstanding "Hearts in Atlantis":
"We're the generation that invented Super Mario Brothers, the ATV, laser missile-guidance systems, and crack cocaine. We discovered Richard Simmons, Scott Peck and Martha Stewart Living. Our idea of a major lifestyle change is buying a dog.
"The girls who burned their bras now buy their lingerie from Victoria's Secret and the boys who f***ed fearlessly for peace are now fat guys who sit in front of their computer screens late at night, pulling their puddings while they look at pictures of naked 18-year-olds on the Internet.
"That's us, brother. We like to watch. Movies, video games, live car-chase footage, fist fights on the Jerry Springer Show, Mark McGwire, World Wrestling Federation, impeachment hearings, we don't care. We just like to watch. But there was a time ... don't laugh, but there really was a time we had it all in our hands.
"When did we lose it? When did we settle for a ridiculously materialistic lifestyle that is so over the top sometimes we just have to laugh our asses off at ourselves?"
I figure it was sometime in the late '70s.
So you're blaming it on disco?
Nah, I figure it was mostly Nixon's fault. The more papers and tapes that are released, the more we learn about what really was happening in his White House, the more Nixon starts looking like some political version of an American antichrist.
He killed our national spirit, and neither Gerald Ford nor Jimmy Carter could bring it back. Carter talked some sense about things like energy, but he wasn't saying anything we wanted to hear.
So America voted for Reagan after a campaign that was little more than "U-S-A, U-S-A!" repeated again and again.A month later, Lennon was killed in New York City, and a world of "Imagine" was pretty much gone.
No heaven? Don't tell Jerry Falwell.
No religion? The '80s were pretty much the time religious tolerance started to die and fundamentalists of all sorts went to war with each other.
No countries? None that mattered except for the USA.
No possessions? Don't make me laugh. The '80s were the decade we started spending and never stopped.
In 2014, we're all about our possessions, baby. We've got more gadgets than we could possibly have imagined 40 years ago. Remember when big screen TVs first came along and you wanted one? Now if you're like a lot of us, you have more big screen TVs than you have people in your house.
Imagine no possessions isn't just ridiculous, it's all but impossible.
Did we change? Actually, the problem is that we didn't. When we had the chance to evolve and really change the world, we sat back and said one thing:
"No, that's too difficult."
Sad, but true. It's probably a good thing Lennon didn't live to see it, although we still have his wonderful song to remind us of how things could have been.
If we were better people.
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