This is a Showdown Time
It seems that once every several generations or so there is a disruption in the normal social/political/economic space/time continuum. The 60's were such a time for us and much of the world (the 1930's were one that preceded it). France had it's student/worker revolt and Czechoslovakia had its Velvet Revolution. Prior to that moment no one thought both of those nations could be on the brink of major upheavals.
We had a mass mobilization for Civil Rights and the anti-war movement. With 50 years in the rear view mirror it easy to forget now how destabilized our nation became then as what had been the widely accepted status quo came under increasing assault. Cities burned and students were shot dead on campus by the National Guard. There was a police riot outside of the Democratic National Convention and chaos inside of it.
We have been lulled by time into a sense that what is will always be. For much of my adult life the Soviet Union was expected to exist far beyond the time horizon. N.A.T.O. was as solid as a rock. Western Democracies had killed and buried Fascism. The American Middle Class only grew, never shrunk, the American Dream seemed immortal and Racism, though not eradicated, was in retreat.
History as they say doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Sometimes it's as banal as retro fashion cycles (Moon/June) and sometimes as explosive as the collapse of empires (Evolution/Revolution.) The only thing that is constant in life is change. Like a 17 year Cicada it always breaks through. The status quo is never permanent, it just looks that way until it cracks. And fissures are starting to appear.
In 1955 it not only seemed wildly improbable that the U.S. would send a man to the Moon within 15 years, that possibility was literally inconceivable to 99.9% of our population. Even Sci-Fi fans were fixated on the 21st century for their far fetched space fantasies. We have been living in a Boomer world for decades now. It has never been monolithic, for the advancement of either good or evil. It has always been complex with multiple cross currents. But over time the playing field became familiar as did the players and the rules of engagement. What was in bounds, what was out of bounds, and what lay in the rough, became commonly understood. Feasibility was determined by those boundaries. And now those boundaries are starting to be erased as Boomers start to lose their grip on the steering wheel that defines normality.
The United States subtly slipped to the Right after the "Reagan Revolution" politically consolidated the social backlash to the "Anti-Establishment" Sixties. No, all of our gains from the 60's were not erased, and on the social front at least many of them continued to advance. But the economic power of entrenched special interests was fortified, the American oligarchy had its priorities clear and it acted accordingly. A massive transfer of wealth to a tiny fraction of our populous was accomplished, and the ideology that allowed for that transfer to occur was wildly propagated to the point where many of its assumptions ceased to even be challenged even within the Democratic Party.
We are witnessing the end of that era now. It will sound discordant and look messy to many. Points of unity that seemed assumed will slowly start to unravel. Capitalism Good, Socialism Bad, is just the leading edge of presumptions that will wholesale be revisited and re-litigated. And so will the assumption that there is nothing immoral about individuals accumulating mind boggling personal fortunes in a nation where millions can not afford healthcare or basic housing.
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Bravo!