The ’60s Are Back, and They’re Pissed Off
The ’60s are turning 50. Not the 1960s, but the era we call the ’60s, whose highest highs and lowest lows were nearly all in the second half of that decade and the first half of the one that followed: the founding of the Black Panthers (1966), the Summer of Love (1967), Nixon (1968), Woodstock (1969), Watergate (1973).
We were a teenage nation then, lolling on the lawns of Golden Gate Park, puffing on grass, protesting Vietnam. Now we have grown thick around the middle and gray around the temples, our indignation reserved mostly for our property taxes. The days of acid, and of rage, seem so very long ago. Eldridge Cleaver, the ferocious Black Panther who advocated the rape of white women as a revolutionary act, died a Republican. The Yippie leader Jerry Rubin went to Wall Street. Bob Dylan made an ad for Victoria’s Secret. It’s all right, ma. I’m only investing in renewable fuels.
But just as they seemed ready for a valedictory round of “Send in the Clowns,” the ’60s have returned with surprising vigor, eager to make one last point before shuffling off the stage, the uncle whose rambling stories have started to make sense.
When, Colin Kaepernick, a backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, began refusing in mid-August to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” citing racial prejudice in the United States, The Ringer, a website that covers the culture of sports, declared, “1968 Has Been Rebooted.”
Last winter in Chicago, crowds turned out to protest the unjustified shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teen, by the police. Bobby Rush,
