Roger Porter
May 22, 2011
I sit down to write this blog entry a day after Harold Camping falsely predicted the world would end in a biblical apocalypse known as rapture. I can’t really go in-depth as to why Camping chose May 21, 2011 as the last day for the human race because I, like the vast majority of people on Earth, refused to take Camping seriously so I tuned him out.
But what if we lived in an era in which a very large percentage of the American population was so disenchanted with the ways of government that they bought into Camping’s ideas? What if almost every young luminary had an idea about how to shut down this country’s government and create a new one that benefitted ALL the people? What if instead of rapture there was revolution? And what if people—similar to Nat Turner looking up from the slave quarters of the plantation upon a blood red moon—believed that the day of revolt was upon us?
I’m referring to that timeframe from the late 60’s to the late 70’s when people talked about revolution like it was a political party. There was so much change but there also seems to have been so much chaos and disillusionment. On one hand you have the formation of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense along with young people embracing peace and love but on the other hand you have the Jonestown Massacre and Charles Manson’s vision of Helter-Skelter. Either way it’s amazing to me to be able discover a time when radicals were brought to the table to have a discussion along with democrats and republicans. I believe this made a much more intelligent and open-minded society.
It always seems kind of funny to me when I watch John Stewart and Bill O’Reilly go head to head in a debate as if they represent two opposing sides of the political spectrum when in actuality they do not. The truth is that both of these individuals believe wholeheartedly in the American political system. In order to make it a true debate you would have to have one of them verbally spar with a real revolutionary; not a democrat, not a republican, and not an independent.
At any rate a friend of mine posted a video on facebook that got the wheels of my brain spinning in this particular direction. Pasted below is a link to the incomparable John Lennon on the Dick Cavett show. Check it out!