Has Bob Dylan Totally Lost His Moorings - Or Is He Just Stoned?

That's the question I had to ask as a quote from an interview was replayed on this morning's CBS 'Early Show'. The quote, directly from Dylan's mouth, came in an interview with Joe Smith, mogul of Capitol Records (which makes one wonder if Dylan was simply spouting capitalist pabulum to appease this hotshot, or confirm his own perceptions. It's something one can't entirely dismiss).

Dylan's exact words:

“I can’t imagine people making such a big fuss over the Sixties. Unless things are so dull now they just have to think of some time when times were better.”


Leaving one to wonder if Dylan even lived the Sixties or passed through them in a semi-stoner haze. (Seemingly forgetting that much of his music provided a coherent set of anthems for revolution). Can Dylan be serious, or is it just easier to talk shit now, because nearly 70% of existing Americans never lived during the 60s and likely have no historic memory of this pivotal decade (which has shaped our own history) or even a learned acquaintance, say via course exposure.

I mean yeah, why make a "fuss" over the decade that saw two signal pieces of legislation passed (The Civil Rights Act in 1964, and Voting Rights Act in 1965) that basically conferred the practical basis for the exercise of rights to a minority of the population, that hadn't been manifested for over 100 years?  Oh, and then there was the legislation that gave us Medicare,  which nearly 45 million seniors depend on now and without which they'd likely be dying in ditches, unattended and impecunious.

Let’s also be clear that only an idiot, or semi-comatose stoner fool would opine that people reference the 60s now as “some time when times were better”. Are you effing kidding me? A decade of upheaval with four major assassinations – including of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King – essentially the entire solid core of American liberalism at that time. (Accounting for how we veered into namby-pamby, free market Neo-liberalism as a capitalist, whore substitute for the real McCoy).

Is Dylan even remotely aware that the year 1968 is perhaps the most critical turning point in World history over the past fifty years? Wherein we beheld the flourishing of a youth revolution not only in the USA but overseas, from Paris to Prague to Africa? Is he remotely aware of how that youth revolution was ultimately destroyed in this country, via the vile Nixonian-Hoover established program of COINTELPRO, whereby FBI agents passed themselves off as protestors and actually sabotaged, disrupted the protests to turn public opinion against them?

To be frank: Does Bob Dylan need a re-education class, or more likely, one in remedial American History? Any twit who believes, seriously, that too many people make a "fuss" over the 60s doesn't have clue one about their importance to what events have followed, or how many aspects of American history have been deformed because of failing to support and reinforce the positive changes. Also, the decrepit notion (fostered by the Neoliberal media) that the 'Sixties' are mainly a "Boomer obsession" and are best left to dry up in national memory. A concept and meme promoted by cultural, political and historical Neandertals oblivious to the axiom that "past is prologue".

Is Dylan aware (or does he recall)  that up until the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in August, 1963 we were all subjected to monster hydrogen bomb tests in our atmosphere? (I can still recall a 100 megaton Soviet H-bomb test in Siberia that had radiation traversing most of the globe). Is he freaking remotely aware how the world – the human world – came within minutes of possible nuclear annihilation in October, 1962? That was when we last had a President with the balls – the sheer cojones --- to tell his military Joint Chiefs to put a sock in it, as he ignored their advice to attack and bomb a nation that actually had 93 armed IRBMS aimed at us and ready to fire? (Readers can read more of the background details in this earlier blog: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/50-year-old-jfk-tapes-released-what-is.html

How fast memory fades, or maybe it's that Dylan’s success (mostly parlayed out of the 60s’ protest culture, e.g. his song 'The Times They Are a Changin') made him so fat, rich and happy he could afford to forget. Talk about cultural ingrates!  One wonders then if he just jabbered out the words to his various tunes under a stoner haze, and he himself never processed what they meant. Or maybe successive stoner hazes induced a permanent forgetfulness

Then there was the 1963 Kennedy assassination itself, which many corrupt Elites in this country are still trying to sweep under the rug, because they know the perverse subtext underscoring the event: that it meant the violent overthrow of the last truly liberal president in order to open the way forward to a permanent national security –war state. One that has now bled down our coffers to the point of rendering this country one election cycle away from being a third rate banana republic - say compared to China, which has used 14 times less on military expenditures, and now features perhaps the most enhanced economy on the planet (and is one of our main creditors) while it is able to now implement a creditable manned space program - while we're reduced to hitching rides with the Russkies to the International Space Station!

Meanwhile in the same assassination, setting up a working class guy as the stooge, the decoy, the CIA chosen patsy (to protect extremist right wing militarists and disaffected anti-Castro Cubans) and doing so after eliminating Lee Oswald in a planned second hit,  then forming a bogus “commission” to pass judgment after he was six feet under and could no longer speak for himself. And not content with the immediate cover-up, painstakingly constructing an anti-conspiracy meme that conflates whacko plots (like black UN helicopters) with actual conspiracies such as the JFK hit, to discredit anyone who might challenge the orthodoxy handed down from on high.

No wonder I can still recall (and treasure) the words of my dad, a World War II vet, in the last conversation I had with him before he died in July 2009 (after he learned I was writing a book on the JFK assassination):

“Just promise me your book will clear the name of a working class man. Don’t let those murderous bastards have the last word! I didn’t fight three years in the Pacific to have them replace the right to free speech with filth and lies to kill a president they hated!”

I promised Dad then I was committed to the fight, and I have been so since I have myself beheld the vile actions of the ideological spawn of those vermin: blowing 73 innocents out of the skies off Barbados in 1976. Once you’ve seen the filth and vermin, you KNOW who is responsible – not only for Kennedy’s killing, but how much of this nation has been destroyed in its wake because of the resultant fear and loathing of government because of its complicity and dishonesty.

Plot if you will, the trajectory of government distrust (in polls) since the Kennedy assassination, and you will behold a steady downward slope that over 50 years is almost negative exponential, say approximating y ~ x * exp(-3/2). Little wonder then that the Neoliberal Elites and their lackeys, PR mavens, disinfo specialists and media hacks quiver and quake and contemplate all manner of propaganda ruses and subterfuge by which to keep the American people in the dark on this pivotal event - abetted by the National Archives no less!

Anyone who doesn't understand the signifcance of this singular event, and how it hurled this nation off a more moral and edifying path, has no business blowing smoke about the Sixties or accusing others of "fussing" over them. The critics are more akin to immature frat boys tossing turds into a high class party to which they're not invited. And yes, btw, they can join those other CIA-supplier cliques (mostly Yalie frat boys ....e.g from 'Skull & Bones') who have sought relentlessly to spread lies and disinformation about those critical years and the events that transpired ...mainly concerning the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X.

For those with a serious as opposed to dilettante interest in the Sixties, get hold of and read the book 'The Sixties' (Oxford University Press, 1998) by Arthur Marwick. If you are just interested in the Kennedy aspect, I have written more than ample blogs since 2009. Or, you can purchase my book, The JFK Assassination: The Final Analysis.

As for Bob Dylan, it appears perhaps he lived in the decade but didn't really live it. Maybe he took the words of one of his ditties ('Everybody Must Get Stoned') too literally in the sense of being stoned all the time!

The Pre-Medicare Era: Nasty, Brutish and Inhumane

As the discussion continues unabated about whether the Wednesday New York special election result was an indictment of Paul Ryan's Nazified plan to deny healthcare to seniors (I refuse to dignify it by calling it a "Medicare plan" far less a plan to "save Medicare") it is well to go back into recent history and what life was like before Medicare came onstream in 1966. To put it succinctly: life for the aged in this country was generally nasty, short and brutish - with few options or appeals to assistance if one became seriously ill.

Much of this is detailed in several chapters of the Oxford University Press monograph, entitled: One Nation Uninsured, by Jill Quadagno, which gets to the bottom of why there is such massive political aversion to any kind of genuine health care coverage in this country which doesn't drag in the profit motive. Medicare is discussed because it putatively paved the way to at least get a 'Leg into the door' on the all but closed-shop capitalist insurance front, stiffly guarded by the likes of the AMA.

By ca. 1960 there were some 19 million citizens over age 65, and some 185,000 physicians (p. 69). The options for medical care, however, were sparse though socially insured medical insurance had been in the pipeline since the Truman administration. But by 1960 the most serious countermeasure to it was the Kerr-Mills plan- which basically confined assistance only to the "aged poor". By 1963 only 28 states had adopted any of it, and barely 148,000 seniors were covered. Again, this out of a total population of 19 million seniors.

Was Kerr-Mills a terrific deal? Hell no! In many states that established a Kerr-Mills format there still weren't the funds to finance it. This meant the older person and his immediate family had to be put on the hook for the money allocated to any care. Thus 12 states had 'family responsibility' provisions (p. 60-61) which "effectively imposed means tests on relatives of the aged, deterring many poor, elderly people from applying for support"

The author cites as an example the state of Pennsylvania (p. 61) wherein "the elderly had to provide detailed information on their children's finances to qualify for Kerr-Mills". Meanwhile, in New York many seniors actually withdrew their applications on learning their children would be involved, and would have to cough up any extra money for care the state couldn't cover (ibid.). This also meant the adult children had to appear before state boards and answer direct questions concerning their assets and liabilities, how much mortgage they owed - if any, as well as bank account balances. Most seniors, naturally, weren't able to tolerate this level of humiliation and scrutiny of their offspring, not to mention being held liable. In other states under Kerr-Mills, the elder person had to sign away the deed to his home (if he owned one) to pay for all medical bills upon his or her decease.

THIS is what life was like for the elderly in the days before Medicare. What about any seniors not among the "aged poor"? Their only option was a miserly private insurance policy with huge costs and meager benefits. Policies typically covered "only a portion of hospital costs and no medical care" (p. 61). This left the elderly with 67-75% of all the expenses to absorb, which puts the plan about on the same level as Paul Ryan's scheme (the GAO estimates seniors will have to pay at least 2/3 of all expenses), if the latter is ever introduced - say if the GOP gains all three branches of government next year, which would be a nightmare come true! As an example, "Continental Casualty and Mutual of Omaha provided only $10 a day for hospital charges and room and board, less than half the average cost".

Of course NO prescription drugs were covered, all had to be paid for out of pocket. The average commercial plan - even given this miserliness- was quite expensive, ranging from $580 - $650 a year, when the median elder income was only $2,875. Thus, nearly 25% of income was gobbled up by first tier medical costs, which could easily expand to 50-75% of income if a number of prescriptions were needed, and medical treatments, hospitalizations. Quadagno also notes that (p. 62) "insurers typically skimmed off the younger, healthier elderly" thereby forcing insurers to raise premiums. Thus "many elderly were priced out of the market entirely". In many cases, the consequences were horrific, as illustrated by the case of an 80-year old granny who allowed an umbilical hernia to go unreated, with the result it ultimately protruded to 18" out of her belly and eventually ruptured, with her bleeding to death on the kitchen floor while baking a cake (p. 63). Nor were such events exceptional.

Again, there is no reason this couldn't happen under Ryan's plan, and there'd be every incentive for insurance companies to skim the healthier (and younger) seniors as in pre-Medicare days, and zero incentive not to. After all, with no government mandate for providing care, why should the profit -oriented insurance companies put themselves on a downward treadmill or "losing wicket" as we call it in Barbados? They wouldn't if they had any grain of sense. Without a mandate or order from the government, you can also bet your sweet bippy they'd reject any elderly person with a pre-existing condition. This would be the proverbial no-brainer for them!

Thus, by the time JFK proposed a government health plan linked to Social Security, in 1960, America's seniors were more than ready. More than ready to stop being parasitized by commercial outfits, or humiliated by the likes of states under the odious Kerr-Mills plan. The only main opponents were the AMA which (p. 68) "ran newspaper ads and TV spots declaring Medicare was socialized medicine and a threat to freedom" and blowhards like Ronnie Reagan who made idiotic recorded talks trying to scare people by asserting (ibid.): "One of the traditional methods of imposing statism on a people has been by way of medicine".

Fortunately, most seniors who'd actually experienced the dregs of capitalist medical bestiality didn't buy this hog swill. They organized under groups like the National Concil of Senior Citizens (see image) and turned the tables by imposing relentless pressure on representatives (the most intransigent of whom were Southern Democrats, to whom LBJ had to finally confront and read the 'riot act'). Eventually, the opposing voices were muted and Medicare was passed.

Let's hope enough older voters-people become aware of this history before they remotely allow any plan like Paul Ryan's to take them back to the conditions of 1960!