What Happened ? 1968-2008

Gay people don't seem to approach me . I don't think about it very much except television shows seem to have too many white guys that are gay or playing a part that is scatterbrained . I don't care for that nor do I relate to that. I don't really know too much about child molestation . It seems like the women , those teachers of recent years , would have been a lucky situation to bump into when I was a kid . I think I was into my fifth grade teacher but I don't really dwell upon the idea . The thing is that men do initiate boys into sex . This isn't a new practice but I don't think that the open homosexual community wants to talk about this old beast . If it were just men switching beds with men ,my feeling would be , "Who Cares?" but , truthfully , I don't trust men . I don't trust any men . Doctors , lawyers, senators , presidents ,musicians, or mechanics , they all are greedy , selfish men . It isn't like there aren't exceptions but our capitalist culture has gone down in our time . It is noticeable .Men don't seem to take pride in themselves . I have had problems with musicians who aren't who they say they are and can't do what they say they can do and boy, that is , unfortunately part of every career . Every day the news reports another man that does something , using people , abusing people , and part of the story that is sensational is the positions they occupied in their work . There were people around them who counted on them , who relied on their judgement , and who trusted them to do the right thing . For this reason , I don't trust the idea of equality or perhaps accepting the open life style of male homosexuality out of the closet . I think that it might have been better in the closet , not spoken about or characterized like a cartoon on television . Perhaps the word I am searching for is trivialized . Making this an every day occurrence seems more dangerous than the other things that have been invented like women as making as much money as men or black men becoming presidents ... This election does remind , for some reason of 1968 . I had to play a music convention in Chicago the week before the Democratic Convention that year and though I was invited to stay , I was glad I went home .It really had a lot of social implications , in fact a lot of the rallies and events were social occasions, a place to meet girls , talk t people . Some kids I met on the road playing in Wichita Kansas said they were going and wanted me to join them a couple of weeks later in Chicago. My party blew up that year . The Democratic Wheel that was Chicago and the big cheese ,Mayor Daley , became an embarrassment to the Nation but the climate of this Nation was , again , waving the flag during wartime and accepting the loss of our basic civil rights . The right to assemble was one of those rights . Do you remember the "Chicago Seven" ? They were charged with starting a riot , with the new law of the same year which was deleted in two more years .It was an embarrassment to this Nation and the rest of the world saw what was done and our phony rep as the land of freedom and equality was already crumbling like my trust in men . Abbie Hoffman appeared on our stage on several occasions . I do remember a rally on Ste. Marks Place , near the Electric Circus . He wasn't a violent guy , in fact , he well might have been portraying a child at the time in his simple manor and affectations belying his actual intelligence . We all were dressed in clothes that were childlike costumes , they weren't uniforms and weapons didn't go with the outfits . Most people weren't violent at all . Speaking of "Gay people ... (haha) Allan Ginsberg , the poet was a homosexual man . He also was on the bill in Ste Marks , speaking to the crowd as he was at "Bread for Heads" another rally we played two years earlier . He never bothered me . It never crossed my mind that he would be violent or force his will on anybody .He also was in Chicago 1968 and I doubt that he was instigating a riot . I wasn't a Humphrey man then either , but I did vote for him . I , at one time liked Johnson when I traveled through Texas in 1965 but that faded . I was rather excited about the prospects of Bob Kennedy and got involved only to have the affair cancelled because of his death .This year the situation is similar in that there is still the stepping on our "Inalienable rights" . We are too used to this , too accepting , too busy waving the flag and pointing at others like they are the enemy . People like Obama are not the enemy . The recent tactics by the Republicans , bringing in a doll to run as Vice President , calling Obama a socialist , waving the flag and promising the continuation of this phony war , and generally more of the same policies of the current administration are what was being promised by the Democrats in Chicago 1968 . The people outside , the sons and daughters , a new generation of people who wanted a change from the old "Machine" were treated like they were the enemy , like they didn't have the right to assemble , to gather as Americans to protest . This is what we have endured for the last eight years under the yoke and guise of terrorism . The terrorist are cartoon figures who are not as scary to me as the degrading of our form of government and our way of life . Yes , the "Hippies" went into the woodwork and became capitalist like their parents and a lot of them gave up the movement . The "Movement" well might have come to a close after Kent State . These occasions of atrocities perpetrated by our own government upon our own people have been forgotten by too many people . The movement of women to get control of their own bodies has also been taken for granted by women spouting moralist statements reminiscent of "Just say no" . Women cannot trust men to do the right thing . Men should not have any say in what women do with their bodies including if they decide to have an abortion instead of coming to term with an unloved , unsupported child for the rest of their lives . Roe vs Wade didn't come about in a second but the entire country leaned that way . There was a movie called "Love with the Perfect Stranger" ( Steve McQueen played the heavy ) . In the movie it illustrated the nightmare of trying to get an abortion before it was legal . The girl , Natalie Wood ,dies in the end of the movie. The Supreme Court will be changed drastically by McCain and hopefully evened out a little by Obama .The right wing had their shot for the last eight years and blew it , blew it real good . The change that came in 1968 with Nixon was proved to be even more repressive than what the Democrats seemed to be offering with Humphrey . That also was a very close election as the last two have been and probably the current election . There was a time that I thought that we could change the world . I don't believe that anymore but I think that the world is changing all by itself . I still hope to see this country get better in my lifetime . It is ill .It has been bad for so long that we have taken for granted that everything is OK . What is that saying ," I've been down for so long , I'm beginning to think it's up ." Man ,that is where we're at .