Another Mark Heard From...

by Mark Axelrod

www.benchmarkrsi.com

Your Search & Placement Partners since 1988

• What did the movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s mean to you?
  That citizens can move the government in a direction displeasing to the powers that be. That the Constitution really does reign supreme in practice as well as theory...note the unanimous high court decision in the US vs. Nixon. Many people, thoughtful, serious people, anticipated that Nixon would close the high court forcibly, incarcerate the justices, do whatever he had to do in order to render that decision - which he knew would end his presidency - null and void.
  
  
• Did you believe in the ideals of that era?  Do you still believe?  If yes to the first and no to the second, how and why did your beliefs change?
  Read on.
• Did you sell out to the man or even become the man?  How do you feel about that?
  Some of each. My understanding of the "man's" place in the scheme of things is not as doctrinaire as it was in the 60's. I still see the welfare of large institutions, most notably large corporations and especially within that category the major banks, as trumping the welfare of individual American citizens and that will never sit well with me.
  
• Did you buy into the generation gap?  Yes. Did it strain your relationship with your parents?
  No. I always had a free and easy relationship with them because their focus was on the individuals' needs and they measured government's worthiness accordingly. I did (do) have the same focus.  How did it feel watching your own children pass through adolescence? It was moderately rough but none of us got onto the front page of the NY Times. My kids were not much into politics until they were beyond high school. That certainly was not the case with me and most of my contemporaries in the 60's when I was in HS, college, and grad school.
  
  
• Did you become your parents?
  Largely yes.
  
  
• Did you hit any of the major events?  Woodstock? 
  It occurred two weeks before Fran and I got married. Consequently, we had other fish to fry in that time frame. The peace protest in Washington, DC?  Alas, no. I say alas because I should have been there and not making the effort to be there disturbs me still. A point of clarification is in order here. I was not philosophically opposed to the war in a general sense. I was opposed to the way the war was fought. Long before Colin Powell postulated his famous doctrine, I viscerally understood it and accepted its correctness. Had we gone into Nam with the overwhelming military force outlined in the doctrine we would have gone in, done the job, and cleared out quickly. US mortalities and injuries would have been kept to a bare minimum and the cost in dollars and cents would also have been kept to an absolute minimum  Were you in San Francisco in the Summer of Love? That could have been either '67, '68, or '69....no? Makes no difference in any event as I wasn't there at any time in the 60's.
  
• What did you learn in those days that remains an integral part of your life today?
  That 60's rock rock. That we are obsessive-compulsive about being the world's policeman and it is doing us in...our dead and dreadfully wounded young people, our wealth and our overall well-being. Military adventurism and the concentration of a mind-boggling amount of our wealth in a mind-boggling tiny percentage of our population scares me to death. Think Rome.
  
• What did you learn, do, or think back in those days that you are quite happy are not part of your lifestyle today?
  This may be disappointing, but except for my lifelong, victory-less battle with overweight, I'm pretty OK with myself as a young person as well as now. I never broke the law. Is smoking pot against the law? Then and now I march to the drummer of human (i.e., individuals) needs far more than corporate/institutional needs, although I agree and accept that corporations have to do well so that people (by whom I refer not only to the shareholders) will benefit. In fact, I consider myself far more Christian in spirit than present-day hard right  types who wear their Christianity on their sleeves. I am certain that Jesus would take them right to the celestial woodshed if he came back to Earth. It always strikes me as ironic to the Nth degree that extreme conservative Christian fundamentalists (fundamentalists of any religion, actually, except, obviously, those who are apolitical) don't appreciate that if Jesus were alive in America today and a sitting member of the House or the Senate, he would be the most liberal member of either body...far to the left of Al Franken or Bernie Sanders in the Senate and far to the left of Dennis Kucinich or Barney Frank in the House. Jesus' entire life and his teachings focus on what we know today as liberalism. How's that for an inconvenient truth! Would the Bible thumpers try to convince Jesus that he was wrong? A fascinating question, to be sure.