Translated material
The sixties are retreating
La Stampa columnist Lucia Anunziata: "revolution of flowers" transformed into the power of conservatives
In the primaries of the US Democratic Party, the exhaustion of the political establishment, born in the 60s, is clearly visible. "Sixties" step on the heels on all fronts. That's why Barack Obama has a chance
Lucia Anunziata columnist for La Stampa - exclusively for The New Times
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The song Good Vibrations by the famous Beach Boys is over 40 years old. It's a pity that all that's left of their fantastic vibrations is more like Parkinson's disease. The legendary rock star Marianne Faithfull appears as a grandmother in the recently released film Irina Palm: her character is a little erotic, but she is already a grandmother. Exactly the same is happening with politicians who rose on the wave of the turbulent sixties.
Bill Clinton, the president who brought the baby boom generation to the White House, has four bypasses on his heart. Another president from the same generation, but from the right, George W. Bush, will soon retire. Following Tony Blair. Benazir Bhutto, a 1960s woman who came to power for the first time in the Islamic world, is murdered. And Bob Dylan became his own icon in Martin Scorsese's No direction home: Bob Dylan. This film is a terrible commercial operation with memories and songs of the former hero. Heavier by twenty kilograms and older by forty years. Other plump conformists, self-confident, are filled with absolute incomprehension of their own departure from this stage. Nor does Hillary Clinton understand this.
Farewell to the sixties
Abby Hoffman 1 said of this generation: "We were young, we were crazy, we were arrogant, but we were right!"
God knows if we were right or not, time will tell. The truth will be revealed when the new global generation, who grew up in the same environment, on the same music, realizes their mortality. Not physical, but spiritual. Our time can turn a hall of fame into a funeral hall, and for the sixties this challenge may be the most difficult test. Goodbye 60s, rest in peace!..
Naturally, this is advice, not treason. It’s just that if the generation of the 60s actually has the creativity and analytical skills that it once boasted of and conquered the world, now it should be the first to understand that it is being stepped on its heels, and on all fronts. This is a sign: it's time to leave.
Change is the most burning of all the problems of the development of the West. And in this matter, the baby boom generation, to which Hillary Clinton belongs, rather plays the role of a traffic jam for the Obama generation – a traffic jam that does not allow new ideas to pass due to its current conservatism and belonging to the elites. Such an evolution may have been inevitable: revolutionaries in their youth, conservatives closer to retirement. The trouble is that they do not understand that their time has passed. That you just have to leave.
There are, of course, political events that primarily reflect the spirit of the times. Sarkozy, for example, owes his luck to this wave. But not only him.
In England today, the Tories are seizing the banner of novelty that falls from the hands of the aged Laborites, who are also symbolized by Prime Minister Brown, frozen in the past.
In Germany, the sign of newness is a woman in power, even if she belongs to the old political school. What is new here is the combination of a high position and the sex of a politician. And this, by the way, clearly demonstrates the end of the Cold War culture, when only “macho” men played muscles.
The Obama Phenomenon
This same counterpoint is even more pronounced in the country most deeply marked by the spirit of the 1960s, the United States. In the primaries of the Democratic Party, the exhaustion of the political establishment, born in the 60s, is clearly visible. The rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is a brilliant example of the struggle of values that originated in the 60s. The struggle of a woman and a black man is a kind of internecine war in the name of renewing the Democratic Party.
Obama's phenomenon is that he returned the original meaning to the word "activity". It is multifaceted: youthful, feminist, "white" and "black". We have not seen such a combination for many years. We are seeing a difference from the usual, from what has driven the American Democrats for many years. The image of Obama is attractive to many people: his age, his post-ideological line, the image of a Washington outsider without a lot of money. The fact that he does not want to speculate on the difference between "whites" and "blacks". The fact that he never changed his attitude towards the war in Iraq for the sake of political expediency.
The split also occurred among the African American elite: on the one hand, the powerful TV star Oprah Winfrey 2 On the other, Hillary Clinton. But Hillary is backed by blacks Angela Davis and Andrew Young. 3 , the heavy caliber of the Democratic Party.
Leaving go
After all, what did the nomination of Hillary Clinton, wife of the former president, mean? It would seem that it should have actively promoted the feminist idea, but in fact it simply showed how much the Democrats have become similar to the Republicans.
For Hillary Clinton, politics is a profession and a business based on the mechanism of power and big money. Hillary, in fact, proposes the transformation of the institution of the presidency of the most democratic country in the world into a model of succession and nepotism, just like the Bush family. Only if for the Bushes power is transferred from father to son, and from son, perhaps, to brother, then for the Clintons it is from husband to wife.
Paradoxically, the case of the Clintons is an example of the transformation of the reformers into a little agile establishment, striving primarily to maintain the status quo. It is no coincidence that accusations of excessive compromises, a thirst for privileges, and inefficiency are heard louder and louder against them. And these accusations, I repeat, are addressed precisely to that generation - to the generation of the 60s, from whom, it would seem, by virtue of their fate and the wave that brought them to the top of politics, one could expect changes, mobility, serious reforms. But the passion is gone. The values that they once defended have also sunk there. They took first place in the ranks of the privileged class. And they mothballed there, guarding these places.
What have Western politicians, journalists, professionals who came from the 60s turned into today? It's a pity to look at them. Having allowed the new generation to seep into the system, they nevertheless fiercely guard the passage to the top, they dominate this system, emphasizing in every possible way: only they can and should play the first violin. Although they keep this violin worse and worse, but they play it more and more out of tune, here and there forgetting the notes or completely rewriting the musical text. The reluctance of the generation of the 60s to give up power is also manifested in the way they select a replacement for themselves: only their own kind, “their own”, selected by them, approved and introduced into their privileged circle. Will Barack Obama be able to break this circle?
Lucia Anunziata is one of the most famous journalists in Italy, in the 70-80s she was a war correspondent in Latin America and the Middle East. For many years she hosted the most popular talk show on Italian television, in the mid-90s she headed the information service of the state television channel RAI. She left the post in protest against the actions of the government. Author of several books and many articles.
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1 Eddie Hoffman is the creator of the Yippies movement, one of the ideologists of the Flower Revolution, who called himself an "anarcho-communist". He was one of the leaders of the US left-wing social and political protest in the sixties and seventies, opposed the US political machine, founded the famous "guerrilla theater", made controversial films and wrote books, among which one of the most famous is Steal This Book. He was arrested many times. Died in 1989.
2 Oprah Winfrey is actively participating in the current presidential race in the United States, campaigning for Democrats to nominate Barack Obama as their candidate in the 2008 elections.
3 Left radicals of the 70s. Angela Davis led the famous Black Panthers.