born at the wrong time?

When I was younger, I used to wish I had grown up in the 1960s instead of growing up in the 1970s. My brothers, 6 and 9 years older than me, turned me onto the Beatles and the Stones and, to some degree, the Who. My 2 female cousins, 9 and 11 years older, gave me hand-me-down tie-dye shirts and fringed leather belts and worn bell-bottom jeans adorned with patches of peace signs and rainbows. I had a black-light poster on my bedroom wall with the words "Make Love Not War" in the shape of a peace sign. I'm sure I didn't know the true meaning of that phrase; I just thought it meant people should be nice to each other and not go to war.

I was 7 or 8 years old and I wanted to be a hippie. My brothers and my cousins thought it was cute -- or maybe annoying -- but I was serious. Hippies listened to that cool music and wore those great clothes. If I were 10 years older I'd be a good hippie, I just knew it. I'd grow my hair long and iron it straight and wear a headband, maybe with a daisy tucked behind my ear. I'd sit in the middle of Central Park and recite poetry and smoke pot and go behind a bush and exercise my right to free love, and maybe I'd take a hit of acid and dance naked in the rain on the Great Lawn. I'd give a cop the peace sign just to piss him off. I'd go to rallies and yell things like "Stop police brutality!"

Yeah, those demonstrations. I wanted to be a part of that too, something bigger than myself. I wanted to be an activist, to make a difference, to protest against the war and racism and segregation, and fight for feminism and reproductive freedom, even though I really didn't know exactly what all those things were. I just knew people were speaking out against injustices, questioning the authority of our government. It would have been so cool to be right in the middle of that, maybe even get arrested.

As I got older I realized that although those demonstrations brought about great change that made things better for this country, it wasn't fun or cool. It was a fascinating and pivotal and important time, but it wasn't an easy ride. So many ideas borne out of love for this country and a yearning for peace and equality turned to anger and hate and escalated to all-out violence. Good intentions got twisted and the results were bullets and fire bombs. People died. This wasn't supposed to happen, this cruel irony of peace turning to violence.

We The People challenged the establishment out of what we believed was necessity. We risked dividing our country for what we thought would be a greater good. But it was a long time before the divisiveness was healed. Some of it still isn't. It's easy for me to say now, nearly 40 years later, that it was worth it, because even though I was alive, I didn't really live through it. I didn't experience it. And for a long time that made me sad.

Now I may get to experience some of the tumult I missed the first time around, and it's terrifying. We're becoming a nation divided. There is anger and fear and ignorance at every turn. It's been there, under the surface, maybe still from the '60s, maybe even from before that, but it's different now. This time it's being fueled, not stifled, by our government. And it's getting out of control.

There is a powerful man breeding ignorance and divisiveness, instilling fear in this nation -- fear that is unfounded, fear that he knows is unfounded -- in a desperate quest for even more power. Elected officials are riling crowds and creating a great divide that we are all sure to fall into if something doesn't change. They've condoned by their silence the ignorance and hatred and potentially explosive violence that could very well be the end result of these subtly sown seeds of fear. It seems to be gaining a life of its own, and only now is this powerful man making a weak attempt to ease his conscience and avoid the moral accountability if someone ends up dead because of it. Would that also be for the greater good?

It's hard to believe what I'm seeing and hearing. It's truly surreal. And truly frightening. Because as much as we would love to cling to the belief that "That couldn't happen again," it could, and it might. If it hasn't already. We're not as far removed from that divisiveness as we'd like to think.

Right now, the campaign itself is on the back burner for me. So is the fact that in 20 years I might retire to a nice double-wide cardboard box, covered in newspapers for warmth and eating ouf of a Dumpster. Because that's 20 years from now. Today is what worries me.

For a long time I was sad that I missed the radical '60s. But here I am. It's 2008. I am 42 years old. I am sitting my living room alone, crying, afraid that I might actually get to witness fear and frustration turn to social unrest and then into outright violence. I really don't want to be a hippie.