All God's children just want to be free

Like a lot of other Americans, I contracted a case of PTSD on 9/11. In addition, I clearly recall when Iran fell in 1979, parading US hostages around the streets, burning US flags. I remember waking up one morning to news account on my radio-alarm clock of a failed attempt to rescue US hostages, the effort made, or at least backed, by Ross Perot. That night on the news, the Iranians offered the west a news clip of the remains from that adventure: they dropped a charred human foot from a shoe box onto a desk top.

So I didn't think it would be too upsetting to watch Iranians rioting and all that. More like, "Isn't this what you voted for?" to borrow a phrase from Comrade Osama. Why not hijack a couple airplanes and blow up a few buildings while you're at it?

But it is depressing. More than half the population of Iran is under 30 years old. They don't remember the Shah or the glory of humiliating the USA. They grew up under the harsh control of the mullahs, so you'd think they'd be used to towing the line. Somehow, they aren't.

Which makes me believe that yeah, it's probably true: All God's children just want to be free. Or all of any God's children....

Of course, Comrade Osama is so deeply entrenched in his own political machinations, so calculating, that he won't come out in favor of human freedom. Too controversial. He's hedging his bets. After all, what if the mullahs just start breaking heads and everyone goes home? Apparently the Supreme Holy Butthead has brought in his version of tactical squads from outside of Iran, just in case the Iranian police and military balk at shooting at their brothers and sisters.

Then there's also the question about exactly what the hell Comrade Osama does believe in. His own success, for sure. His godlike silver tongue, for sure. But then I've been around for a long time, and especially around Chicago politics. I think I've finally figured out just exactly where he's coming from: 1968.

During the 2008 election campaign, many people made a lot of noise about Comrade Osama being a cohort of William Ayres. I wasn't sure who William Ayres was. (I was probably stoned at the time.) But then I heard that William Ayres is married to Bernadine Dohrn. Oh-h-h-h. OK.

Let's go back... On the very northern edge of Chicago, north even of the CTA "turnaround" we used to call it, the yards where the subway trains would, literally, turn around and head back south, there was a neighborhood called Juneway Terrace. It was maybe a couple miles square and a maze of big old-fashioned court-styled apartment buildings. Most of these apartments were studios or one bedroom, though some might have been two-bedroom. Overlooking the lovely old Calvary Cemetary, which is actually in the suburb of Evanston, where I grew up.

Anyway, Juneway Terrace, the street, was one main drag through this neighborhood. The area was built apparently for "newlyweds and nearly-deads." People got married, spent a couple years in this rabbit warren of tiny apartments, then moved on to bigger and better things as they established their careers and started a family. Or, having gone through all that, they sold their suburban houses and re-settled as retirees in Juneway. It was convenient to shopping, public transportation, even Lake Michigan. And cheap.

So now comes the 1960s. Northwestern students had made up a large component of Juneway Terrace residents -- those students who lived off the Evanston undergrad campus, anyway. The apartments were cheap. Other young people, including many draft dodgers and runaways, also found Juneway Terrace. By the late 1960s, Juneway was more or less the Haight-Ashbury of Chicago, although Old Town usually is credited with this. Old Town was fashionable and expensive, though, the preserve of college kids who let their hair grow to collar-length, then donned their costly fringed jackets and love beads on Saturday night, hoping to score a dime bag and some free love for the weekend. They weren't really committed. They had homes to go to.

Preceding the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Weathermen and Yippies sent out people whom I can only call "pre-event planners" to find temporary digs for out-of-town protesters. They were very active in the Juneway neighborhood. Everyone with an extra bedroom or spare mattress on the living room floor volunteered to house a Yippie or two during the Convention. The Yippies also routinely totally trashed the premises, including destroying refrigerators and smashing toilets -- these appliances belonged to "the man" -- but that's another story.

Anyway, so this was the Juneway Terrace I knew. Hippie Heaven. More affordable than Old Town for the "real" hippies, not the college students and others who operated on daddy's dime, but the "real" hippies, known only as Raven or Swamp-rat, usually draft dodgers just passin' through, often in search of clean underwear if they hadn't foresworn the use of underwear entirely, and owning nothing but a guitar that they probably couldn't play very well. You could always find a place to spend the night in Juneway, always make a drug connection, and the neighborhood cops were pretty well known to everyone. Not always well-liked, but in a couple cases, the local cops tipped off a favorite hippie pal about a forthcoming drug raid so that the hippie pal could avoid arrest. There was a certain amount of familiarity and sympathy.

So what does this all have to do with Comrade Osama? When I heard the name Bernadine Dohrn, bells went off. It must have been about 1970 or so, when the cops started actually shooting at college kids at Kent State and all... a big rumor went around that Bernadine Dohrn had a bomb factory in one of those apartments in Juneway. It was a rumor -- make no mistake. The bomb factory probably never really existed. But it was a big deal at the time, sort of like a hippie security blanket: OK, so they're shooting at us. But we have a bomb factory. It was almost scary.

No one knew exactly where the bomb factory was -- and believe me, in the Juneway neighborhood, it could have been anywhere. The whole idea was just impressive. And a little scary. Made you think again about where this all might end up.

So I got to thinking about all of this, in terms of Comrade Osama's place in the vast continuum of contemporary history.

Comrade Osama is a 1960s radical. He's still working for the marxist revolution. No coincidence he was a pal of William Ayres and apparently of his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, as well. Comrade Osama grew up on tales of glory of blowing up Draft Board offices and setting Lincoln Park picnic tables ablaze to piss off the pigs. Running up and down State Street breaking windows. No end to these wonderful achievements.

And you know what? Since then, marxism has failed in a genuinely monumental way. Good grief, let a couple people through the turnstyle in Hungary or Czechoslovakia or someplace, and suddenly the whole USSR collapses. Its satellite nations are suddenly floundering for support and moral backing, or lighting candles and singing about freedom.

My God, Ronald Reagan won, riding in on a high-spirited palomino, the cavalry charge sounding in the background.... All God's children just want to be free.

Actually, history has passed Comrade Osama by. Most of the old Juneway neighborhood was torn down and now really is not much more than CTA rail yards. It was easier to tear it down than to try to rehabilitate it. Sorta like the USSR.

Yet Comrade Osama, Ayres, probably Dohrn and many others of my general age group persist in clinging to the old 1960s social stereotypes and dreams of huge, faceless, populist uprisings. They're kinda like what used to be called Red Diaper Babies. Actually, Red Diaper Babies -- kids who grew up on the dreams and aspirations of 1930-style marxist revolutions -- were the people who hoped to lead the unrest of the 1960s. (See anything by David Horowitz.)

However, hippies were never easily led. Most would rather just fire up a joint and groove out on Jimi or Janis. I mean, think of Woodstock as a training camp for 1960s militant radicals. I mean, like, if you get, like, really stoned, and take off your shoes, and sort of like spin around looking up at the stars, and Country Joe is on in the background, it's like, so beautiful, man.... That's about as close as they ever came to making a revolution.

People who were radical college students in the 1960s are the ones who've written all the books about it, filled with righteous rage and love for the underdog and all that. Honestly, though, most of the hippies I knew just didn't want to work on Maggie's Farm (per Bob Dylan) all their lives. Most didn't know much about Vietnam, except that they didn't want to die there. They sure weren't marxists. Many of them grew up to be entrepreneurs, rethinking gym shoes and toasters and creating the Digital Revolution. In Chicago in the mid-1960s, hippie guys would ride the CTA trains passing out flowers. An ad for a head shop (where you could by blacklight posters and things like bongs) was taped around the stem.

Guiding and directing ticked-off and/or disenchanted people is kinda like herding cats. Or, more cliche, like teaching a pig to sing -- it doesn't work and the pig resents it. They even resent it in Iran, where they don't know anything but tight authoritarian control and continuous badgering.

All God's children just want to be free, no matter how much health insurance, green cars, and moral sanctity you try to shove down their throats. In fact, government control of any kind only irritates them. Not that Americans will take to the streets unless they really have to. More like, the United Socialist States of America is just making itself irrelevant. We'll all just go underground.