Dylan had it right... Memoir Monday, pondering elections

 And I am speaking of Bob, not Thomas here, though perhaps there is some odd connection between them.

Fifty five years ago I'd recently registered to vote for the first time. It was exciting and I took it seriously from that day on. I think I have only missed one major election in all those decades, 1968  when I was in college at Flagstaff and so caught up in a mess of personal issues that I forgot to change my registration from the Verde Valley precinct I had lived in. 

I cannot recall the 1964 election being too contentious. LBJ was running to be elected in his own right after taking over from the fallen JFK just over a year earlier. Challenging him was Barry Goldwater, then a senator from Arizona. For the most part, Arizona has been a conservative state almost from the first. The only recent Democrat they went for was President Clinton. Not sure what this year holds.

Barry was supported and favored by the John Birch Society, many notches less given to violence than say The Proud Boys but still staunchly supporting the US Constitution and the "American Way"--whatever in hell that is!! In my rather enmeshed family, dad was determined Democrat and mom a Republican though she seldom said much about that. She'd followed the lead of her own father who was Republican even if a railroad man and union supporter.  I voted Democrat that year FWIW and have changed back and forth a number of times since. Now I go mainly Libertarian although some will call that wasting my vote. Still I do that to make a statement; I do not trust or really support either of the major parties and believe they are all "crooks" and much more interested in amassing wealth and power, both personally and for their close circles than governing by and for the people. 

There were protests and riots and such in the 60s. The Vietnam War was going on and a very disputed matter that was. The younger folks were well into "rock" which was becoming the anthem and music of protest and revolution for that time. Rodney King happened and Kent State and for awhile one might think real change was coming--but it really didn't, not much and not yet. Things settled back to a dull me first keeping on mode instead. 

Of course Bob Dylan and the earlier folk singers he emulated for a start such as Pete Segar,. Arlo Guthrie and others were about protest and justice and many ideas that resonate today. He sang, "The times they are a changin'." He was at least partly right; they were but not in one huge leap. Barriers fall in the 1960s that could never be erected again. Rules were wiped away and many were no longer intimiidated by the idea of challenging authority, whoever or whatever that might be. 

I was far from an activist but once out by myself in college and life I drifted a few notches in that direction. A very liberal or progressive professor influenced me there for a couple of years. After my marriage I found myself,  really for the first time, in a much more conservative environment and absorbed that to some degree. Now I live under a peculiar crazy quilt of ideology and follow issues and sometimes people much more than party or label. 

I am horrified by the degree of raw virulent hatred I see in almost every direction. This is NOT how we make the world or any lives better. Looking back some five plus decades I can see no other time when the divisions were so enormous that it seems no one can bridge or start to heal them. This is frightening. For myself I really do not care; I will be out of here and this in due time, probably another decade or even less. But for my kids and grandkids and great grands coming along, I am very concerned. I fear they will not know the America and the life I knew. It was not perfect but it was always looking ahead, building on the past while working to be better--for everyone. 

My life was often hard, growing up in a one family depression where we were considered and treated like  the same kind of trash as anyone else who was poor and insignificant; race or color etc. really had very little bearing. You were part of the Upper Strata or you were shit. That is wrong; I agree and I see that, but it is sad to realize most do not recognize this is a class war and only partly about race or other labelable characteristic.  "Identity politics" is a wonderful method to divide and conquer, to keep the dissident masses fghting among themselves instead of going after the real enemy--that ubiquitous Power Structure. Would that all of us "Deplorables" could see how much better off we'd be to play us versus them on a much broader scale and cease to fight among ourselves over unreal differences that many are conned, misled or even brainwashed into falling for. 

We need some more voices like Bob Dylan to point a way and challenge everyone; he is old now like me and not reaching the millenials and later generations very well. Maybe somone will emerge but unless a third or other party hatches an amazing new leader who captures us with his/her charisma, passion and dauntless drive, I doubt I will see this. Will I be able to vote in aother election come 2024? My crystal ball is very clouded but I see nothing bright and alluring. Progress is not possible without change but sad to say, all change is NOT progress.