What happens when the spirit of "we are the world" clashed with the spirit of "we own the world"?
Imagine the world before the 1960s, before the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement, a world in which three of four human beings on earth were under some kind of colonial subjection. Harder to imagine is a world in which Americans were condemned, or self- condemned, if their spiritual quest strayed beyond behavior required in social institutions --families, schools, churches, communities and nations. It is a world in which you are never free to be just you.
If you can imagine this, it is easy to see why much of life since the breakup of that pre-1960s world has been over what to do about the forces that the breakup unleashed. Without fear of the dangers, some of us allowed our individual and national identities to get bound up with expanding and nurturing the unleashed forces and trying to unify them into a great big loving human family. A "we are the world" kind of identity, as our public poets sang in the middle of the 1980s.
On the other hand, during the 1980s there was the fear that the unleashed forces were spinning out of control, domestically and internationally. Contain them said the foot soldiers of the Reagan Revolution. Most .001%ers saw the Reagan Revolution as better for business, and communistic takeovers in any part of the world as bad for business. Such takeovers were even worst for creating a warm, fuzzy "we are the world" unity.
Communists did dream of a big world-wide family, but with all institutions --families, schools, churches, communities and nations-- controlled by violent, repressive big brothers, like Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, and the corps of sinister big brothers in the Soviet Union.
"We are the world"-type spiritual freedom did not stand much of a chance within the grey masses created in communist states. The compulsory materialism of communism was infinitely worst than the optional materialism of capitalism. So even we 60s revolutionaries benefited when Reaganites engineering an arms race which bankrupted and led to the collapse of the Soviet empire. Now the ferocious suits who surrounded Reagan in Washington could sing "we own the world," or soon will.
The two strongly opposed spiritual forces in America during the 1980s-- "we are the world" and "we own the world" -were set at odds, as they were in the 1960s. Reagan's handlers did not want him to meet with Michael Jackson, leader of the "we are the world" forces. Jackson represented so many of the excesses of the 60s revolution.
His image was that of a drug-using black superstar who even in the mid-80s was already becoming the world-wide symbol for spiritual freedom run amok. It was exactly the kind of image that the Republican Party used to stir up racism, sexism, homophobia, and Christian evangelical zeal for its victorious Southern Strategy.
Nonetheless the meeting took place. Jackson was invited to the Reagan White House. CNN called it "one of the most fascinating White House photo ops since President Richard Nixon met Elvis." Elvis was one of the primary figures in what can be call "The Racial Integration of the American Mind" that grew out of the 1960s.
Down in Arkansas, Bill "The Boy Governor" Clinton (so-called because he had become governor at 32 and looked even younger) was also using Elvis to racially integrate his mind. This clearly white guy would later claim that he was "America's first black President". During the 1980s Oprah became a kind of global earth mother and Bill Cosby became "America's Dad." The forces of spiritual unity struck back.
The question since the 1960s and certainly in the 1980s was: could the spirit of "we are the world" find peace with the spirit of "we own the world."
That may be the big, sub-textual question in the 2012 election.
The previous posts in this series are:
Foot Soldiers of the Reagan Revolution
The Coming of the Reaganites
Undoing the 1960s
Will the 60s Revolution Be Undone?
Should President Obama Have Gone the Way of LBJ?
New posts in this series are coming soon.
George Davis is creator of the series of world-sourced, interactive books, Barack Obama, America and the World. This series contains the background reporting, drawn from sources across the nation and around the world, that give deeper meaning to the ideas in this post.
