A Summer of Love?

Whether it’s a Suez Crisis, a Cuban Missile Crisis, war on the Falklands, in the Balkans, Caucuses, Middle East, Far East, Africa or wherever, decent human beings have always found a way during my lifetime to say a big flat ‘No’, ‘Enough’ or ‘No More’. We are at one of those junctures right now, where lives are being wasted and abused around the world, and men in suits are wringing their oily hands with glee at the thought of the profits it will all bring.

In 1967, the ‘Summer of Love’ was by modern standards a small expression of how some young people wanted their world to be. It wasn’t a demonstration against anything much, so much as a statement by a relatively small group of people – an estimated 100,000 (but probably more) – in a small area of San Francisco. The Summer of Love gained international attention as a hippie event, but more widely has been seen as a turning point for youth, self-determination, and for the way people want to live, have a right to live, and ultimately for our relationship with our political leaders. 

The cause may not be the same, but this weekend’s impressive  protests across the USA and beyond mark a turning point in the way that good Americans relate to their political leaders, with the current President polluting the high office with his fascist agenda and fickle, disposable friends and followers. He is damaging our world for his own ends, and like all fascists, he’s using soundbites and other empty media gestures to garner the support of people who have the mental capacity to vote but not necessarily to think about the consequences of their vote. 

This President’s rise was borne as much out of the weakness of the Democratic Party as any kind of strength of his own. His own strength amounts to plain and simple bullying. The signals had been there since way before Sarah Palin opened her mouth with “I can see Russia from my house”. This is Imperialism borne of idiocy, super-Capitalism borne of a way of life that few normal people would ever experience: extreme wealth matched with limited connection to normal life, and worse still, the assumption of religious endorsement for their warped agendas. If there is indeed a God and he approves of these people and the vile things they’re perpetrating on our world, then he’s a shit, and the angels should be taking out their banners and demonstrating on the streets of ‘Heaven’ to remove him.

Good Americans voted for this President either because previous administrations had promised much and delivered nowhere near enough, or because they were taken in hook, line and sinker by the stage managed lies, spread by an increasingly subservient, right-wing media. Biden should have handed over to a younger leader swiftly after winning the right to lead the world. He was way too old and infirm to deal with the onslaught that the current gangster President and his henchmen were intent on delivering. By all accounts, it was a very narrow victory and that should have put Democrats immediately on their guard. Instead, they took their eye off the ball. I’m not actually sure they saw a ball at all, and they were certainly blind to what was coming. To many good Americans and people around the world, it was staring them in the face. The Democrats are culpable, and recognising that has to be the start of any fightback.

Hopefully, it will now have become more obvious to a larger majority of good Americans that the current regime (because ‘administration’ doesn’t feel like the right word) really does not have their best interests at heart. Following the playbook of your long time arch-enemy while upsetting and often deriding former friends, does seem to be a rocky road to ruin. So if ever there was a need for a political ‘Summer of Love’ around the world it’s here and now in 2025: the normal person’s Project ’25’ – because this current state of affairs cannot continue, and if you remain silent, you are part of the problem.

Peace.

John