Boy Named Sue

Boy Named Sue


The story is this

After having exposed the deficit in the collective mentality running the government during the Vietnam war

… then not confronting it as a totality, exposing wrong-thinking, lies, inside manipulaters, and imposing unequivocal punishments (“Watergate” doesn’t count)

…but, instead, splitting those who resisted “the System” for different reasons: war protest – in the name of America; economic protest – in the name of oppressed workers (“leftists”); black protests – in the name of civil rights; student, women, homosexual, drug legalization movements in the name of freedom, democracy and removal of The Dead Hands of the WWII fathers from the baby boomers’s throats…

…left the deformed Vietnam war mentality in control and stronger than before.

It came back in the 80’s with Ronald Reagan, when Hollywood began putting on The America Show. Then again now, after the Clinton years, with a vengeance.

This broad story can be told through the psychodynamics of Father-Son relations. The male side of the process is where the deficit occurred, and is systemically neglected.
The dark Father had knowingly intruded into the son’s domain; challenged, but not excised.

***

The following is only a vignette, but serves as an illustration. A New York Times article “In Israel, New Reflections on Holocaust,” (A8, 5.23.’06) begns: “TEL AVIV – Shir Senora, 16, returned from a class trip to former concentration camps in Poland, haunted by images of fellow Jews herded into gas chambers. “They showed us where the gas was piped in and you realize that you yourself are in a gas chamber and your breath just stops,” he said. “We are taught about it, but being there it brings it all together in one place.”” This is the son, going back to the place of his father’s death.

That is what has happened in America

“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” the saying went; but few considered it applicable to the killers themselves, vs. the protesters.

The on-going cultural, social, political, religious psycho-historical processes resumed, with swerves, swept along toward the computer age, the revolution in communication, MTV and videogames. The next generation of youth had more to rebel against, and over, -- drugs, sex, rock ‘n roll, at ever younger ages -- but “the System”, previously regarded as dark, evil, in the shape of a Pentagon, was now the enabler of these essential youth commodities -- themselves becoming ever more deformed, bizarre, puerile, icky, bloody, violent – it could not be regarded as more evil than they. However much Judas Priest music glamorizes the nullity of the situation. (“Angel of Retribution” – for the “oppressed”? – c’mon –beautiful, haunting songs.)

The psychohistorical template called for the group mentality to absorb the Dark Father’s abuse. The rising up of that old child-sacrifice (=intent-to-kill) feeling on the part of WWII fathers, hearing the filicidal “Hell NO! We WON”T GO!” chants. Depraved, out-of-control brood suddenly rising up all around, scoring without heroism, surging ahead in “Me Now” enjoyment of life…would have had to make war, not love.

That is what was absorbed by the youth template, for the ever-maturing young males to deal with in the image of President. He was/is the one authorized to order them to stand in harm’s way, in the name of America. This authority was abused in Vietnam, particularly by Nixon. What was exposed at the Watergate show trial was the tip of the iceberg of what he and Henry Kissinger did in politically managing the Vietnam war. This is where the deep split occurred, well before Watergate. America was onto them. If Robert Kennedy hadn’t been killed, things would have blown apart sooner and better.