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But now it's time for promises made, promises kept. But first a little background and some prophecy.
In 1990, an interesting movie, Flashback, hit the theaters. Starring Dennis Hopper as an aging hippie and Kiefer Sutherland as a conservative FBI agent assigned to bring him in on a fugitive charge, this comedy takes some interesting and even touching twists and turns before ending in a rather predictable climactic scene.
At one point in the film, Dennis Hopper makes a prediction about the nineties, "The nineties are going to make the sixties look like the fifties." At the time our son Roger...eventually to become the first Teen Movie Critic on the World Wide Web...was eleven years old and fascinated by his parents one time involvement in the so-called counterculture, especially the history of the turbulent sixties. He asked Willy if he thought Hopper's character was correct in this forecast.
"Oh, yes!" replied Willy, thinking that such a estimation was really a slam dunk. The eighties, under Ronald Reagan, had been much like the fifties. Reagen, emulating the early days of the Cold War, had gone on a military spending spree. It was becoming obvious that the War on Drugs, having cowed the population into silence about any possible positive effects of mind altering drug use, was an abject failure.
"Yes, indeed," Willy assured Roger, "all hell is going to break loose in the last decade of the second millennium!" Trusting Good Old Dad, Roger went away thinking that he too was going to be exposed to "interesting times," and, like all youth, he didn't quite understand what a mixed blessing...or curse...this could be.
The nineties started out right on track. The Soviet empire collapsed. The Gulf War exposed some of the new dangers in the post Cold War environment, both economic and military. The U.S. lapsed into a recession.
Then something wholly unpredicted occurred. The U.S. economy took an upturn. America elected the Lyin' King...or Prom King, take your pick...to the presidency. Then came the Internet. Ka-boom! Like all revolutionary changes in media, the Internet seized control of both the economy and the collective mind. The stock market began to take off like a rocket. The New Economy promised opulent prosperity into the distant future. The rich got obscenely richer, while the poor...for a welcome change...did not get poorer. Unemployment dropped to historic lows. Crime, especially violent crime, began a long downward slide. Drug use stayed high...pun intended...since...what the hell...the cops were...and are...notoriously inept at catching and punishing the affluent for THEIR vices. Sure lots of "Brothers" got popped for dealing to these nouveaux riches "Honkies," but times seemed good overall. In short, the nineties became a classic "don't rock the boat" decade.
But now we have entered a new decade, a new century, a new millenium and a new era. The Crown Prince has been elected as president. The stock market, especially in the high tech sector, is weakening...if not collapsing. The smell of recession is ripe not only in the financial markets but also in people's pared down buying of consumer goods. The War on Drugs is under assault, with Peter McWilliams and Steve Kubby becoming martyrs to the last ditch efforts of the Drug Warriors to save their jobs and stem the tide of change.
Then there is the Internet. During it's heady advances during the nineties, governments everywhere were reticent to step in and try to assert control. They did not want to kill this new golden goose. There were attempts by some of the more repressive states, like China and Iran, which attempted to plug the flow of freedom of speech into their bailiwicks, but they have been almost comical in their failure. But, now we have a new ballgame. The goose looks more like a crow or a vulture, tax receipts are beginning to fall so the taxmen and the control freaks...in the U.S. and everywhere else...are slobbering and drooling over ways to influence the truly corrupt...politicians...to try to wring more sauce from the dying goose.
It is time, they feel, to begin to put the clamps on "unwanted" speech. The children "must be protected from the evil purveyors of free sex." Nazis and skinheads must be suppressed, lest they compete with the "conventional" life-controllers...or worse yet...reveal the "secret" that they really aren't that different from the "good guys" in Washington, Paris, London and Berlin.
In the sixties, during the meteoric rise of the counter-culture...the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the psychedelic movement...the notion of the "open conspiracy" gained traction. The idea was that, unlike the lawyers and the liars, we had no need for secrecy and deception. Martin Luther King OPENLY called for equality of ALL human beings while exposing the evils of prejudice and segregation, Daniel Ellsworth and other governmental dissidents spilled "national security" secrets into the public domain and Timothy Leary dared to not only publicly advocate the use of LSD but advised the young to "turn on, tune in, drop out." As we grew up into the realities of "adult" life, we talked ever more openly of taking over the government, ALL governments, when "our turn" arrived.
But MLK got assassinated, Ellsworth barely escaped jail and Tim Leary didn't. They had all fucked with the bull and had gotten the horn. Tens of thousands of others, yours truly included, saw their dreams of a better...and definitely freer...society end in failure, disillusionment and tragedy. The control freaks and reactionaries, smug in the exercise of their self fulfilling prophecies almost shouted "WE TOLD YOU SO!"
Ah, but the dreams didn't quite die. We HAD made some progress. African Americans and other minorities DID get a lot more opportunities. After all, that was all MLK had asked for, a fair chance. The War in Viet Nam DID end. And youth, being youth, continued to turn on and tune in, even if dropping out had lost its glamour.
So what's next? Willy now confidently advises Roger, himself now a grown up, that the next decade will fulfill the promise of the nineties. Those "interesting times" that he so longed for in his teen years are about to arrive. And, because of the Internet, these next few years are going to be REALLY interesting. When Willy was a fugitive during the seventies, he witnessed and antiwar protest in Washington, D.C. which was attended by over one million people. That meant that the march, which started at the Washington monument and wound down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol building, took TWELVE HOURS before the people at the end made it to the front!
Now, as we, the people, struggle to keep control of this new medium there are already over 350 MILLION people gathered together in this medium marching ahead in cyberspace into the future. In five years, there will be more than a BILLION of us. Right now we are un-organized and a bit chaotic, but we know one thing for sure. We do NOT want this newfound freedom to go away any time soon. Oh, sure, as with any struggle for freedom, it always seems like those "other" people are taking advantage and "misusing" this liberty. That is why the control freaks can still get a rise out of us when they call for control of pornography or "hate" speech.
But, guess what. It ain't working. We paradoxically view the governments', ALL governments', failed attempts at limiting these extreme forms of speech as a VERY GOOD SIGN. Like canaries in a coal mine, the continued existence of these guys on the NET tells us that the atmosphere is still clean in our mine, still waiting to be filled with the combined voices of the entire human race! What we are mining is freedom. You know what? We keep finding new veins all the time.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Throughout all history, love and peace have always won out in the end. Tyrants rise and for a while it looks like they can not be defeated, but they always fall."
Good words.
So look for a series of open letters next week...they will be posted as "extras" on our Web site which will detail some of the changes WE suggest for the next year. We look forward to hearing from YOU as well.
Talk to you later...
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