Life in America

Dylan then vs. Springsteen now

In many ways, life in America is far better now than it was in 1961. Certainly it was if you happen to be Black, female, or gay. As a nine-year-old, I had to practice tucking my little plump body under my school desk for when the atom bombs came. (I was a goner, for sure.)

Nearly half the population smoked, and as Stephen King observed in his time-travel novel November 22, 1963, food tasted better because of all the sugar and fat and smelled worse. And yet, there was a wonderful spirit of optimism in the land, We believed things were getting better in this country and the world and that we could and would make them better.

The Peace Corps. The Alliance for Progress. The entire Kennedy Administration, and most of all the Civil Rights Movement. The searing topical protest songs of the early 1960s by the likes of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan came from an underlying sentiment tha we could fix this. We had beaten the hell out of the Nazis, hadn’t we? That summer of 1961, a mixed-race baby was born who would come to identify as Black and who, one day, we would identify as President of the United States.

Now, of course, the worst president in history is in the White House, and we put him there twice. Even those of us who fight the madness are largely seized by despair.

And yet, and yet, I think we were right back in the early sixties. We can still do this. In her must-read Letter From an American last night, Heather Cox Richardson concludes by quoting the boss, Bruce Springsteen:

The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people, so will survive this moment.”

So, as Captain Kirk said to the crew on the starship Enterprise, let’s make it so.