By the summer of 1970, I was convinced the United States was on the verge of self destruction. There were numerous civil wars that threatened to rise up-and engulf us all. Black against white, young against old, Dove vs. Hawk among others. The culture of political violence had risen to obscene heights during the 1960s, having witnessed the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X and that Christian apostle of non-violence, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
That April, I had traveled to western Massachusetts with a friend who lived in Springfield. Learning of a Jefferson Airplane concert at UMass/Amherst, up we went to enjoy what had always been one of my favorite bands. But the Airplane wasn’t content to sing their old love ballads, having morphed into a more revolutionary aspect. They had recently released the album “Volunteers” which headlined the song “We Can Be Together” which, despite its bucolic title, was an anthem as threatening and provocative as La Marseillaise. The lyrics left no doubt that the Airplane had declared war on the mainstream and its continued perpetration of the Vietnam War. I was admittedly in an altered state which made me hypersensitive to the vibes behind the music. They got more intense as the evening wore on. UMass then was a center of radical ferment so the audience was right in sync with the group. As the energy reached its crescendo, I knew without a doubt that if Gracie Slick gave the word, the entire mob would rush out of the Curry Hicks Cage and burn Amherst down in the Name of the People.
The Kent State massacre happened a month later. That day was far more frightening than what I had previously imagined. The National Guard was out for blood and would have killed more had it not been for a brave professor who begged the students to go back into their dorms. A poll afterwards showed that a majority of Americans approved of the murders, an attitude mirrored by Neil Young’s cryptic lyric, “Should have been done long ago.”
Over that summer, I debated following the path of violent revolution but something instinctively warned me that I wouldn’t last long if I chose such an extreme route. Instead I joined the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune and stayed there for the next 14 years. By this time, the counter-culture had split between those who favored more aggressive political action and others who preferred a path of secluded spiritual endeavor. There wasn’t much love lost between these two diverse tribes. What united them was the belief that the United States was doomed if it followed its present course which seemed irrevocable. Therefore, we all eagerly awaited the decade of the 1970s which would herald the beginning of a brave new world.
It didn’t happen. Instead, we got drugs, sex and disco.
The Seventies has been nicknamed “The Dumb Decade” for its emphasis on excess and frivolity not to mention the worst clothing styles in American history. If there was a theme for that time period, it was “Let’s party!” and party we did until AIDS shot down the disco ball. Looking deeper, however, I believe that the violent tumult of the Sixties scared everyone to death and at the last minute, we decided to back away from the abyss. Underneath the goofiness, one got the sense that nobody on whichever tribe wanted to battle anymore. Time instead to pass the bong and shake our booties. None of this was novel. The decades of all our major crises were followed by the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties and the placid Eisenhower Era.
The brilliant journalist Heather Cox Richardson recently related a report observing that only 4% of the American people desire more political violence leading to a civil war. Which means that 96% of Americans do not. They’d prefer to live their lives with their families in relative normalcy without chaos, fear and hatred. As always, social media makes things worse than they really are. Most Americans issued a sigh of relief when Richard Nixon resigned in August, 1974, ending the trauma of a tainted presidency. We will exhale again if and when the poison of MAGA Trumpism has equally disappeared.
The question now is whether the United States will fall over the edge into self-destruction or once again, back away from the abyss. Will the 21st century version of bell bottoms, platform shoes and frilly shirts soothe our tired, troubled souls? Hopefully, time will tell as it always does.
Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and has written a monthly column for over two decades. He lives outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.