KEY POINTS:
An Open Letter to the New Elite
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticise
What you can't understand ...
Remember that? Of course you do. It was your anthem. And ours.
Not for you, not for any of us, the dreary bombast of God Save the Queen. Because we knew he couldn't. A fiction can't save an irrelevance. We knew that. We knew everything.
Because we were the Baby Boomers, the generation to whom all truth had been revealed. Born after the soldiers came home from a war whose end (at least in Europe) has passed unheralded this week, we had something that no one before had ever had.
We had Bob. And Bob had us. From the moment we heard him, wherever that was. Perhaps in some secret sanctuary of a coffee bar, back at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, nearly 50 years ago - or yesterday, if you prefer.
They all had dim lights, red bulbs, lumpy brown mugs and big chunky candles oozing wax. And there was always a singer (was it you?) some earnest young man or ravishing, straight-haired girl, perched on a stool, guitar in hand, wistfully wondering where had all the flowers gone "Long time passing".
As it has.
Well, maybe not. Because you haven't changed much, have you? None of us has, really. Most of us are still where we were then. We still want a hammer. We still want a bell. We haven't forgotten the lyrics. Or the slogans.
"Power to the People! Smash the State! Off the Pigs! Make Love, not War!"
Be honest, elitists. You chanted those mantras. We all did. We believed them. And we made sure "the establishment" heard us, every time we marched for Equal Rights, Gay Rights, Women's Rights, Black Rights, Land Rights, Left Rights (but never Right Rights, oddly enough).
Oh yes, we showed the world. We told them what we wanted. Revolution! And we told them when we wanted it. Now!
And when we'd finished, the fascists and reactionaries, the oldies and the straights were left in no doubt that Bob was absolutely right ...
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command ...
Trouble is, they still are. They were last weekend. In Christchurch and in Wanganui. The only difference is, there's no "establishment" to blame.
Unless you've got a mirror.
Because the Baby Boomers are the establishment now. We are the oldies. We've become the people we marched against. This is the world our revolution has created.
And it's every bit as flawed and dysfunctional, as failed and unjust as it ever was. The flaws and the failings may be new, they may be different but that's all. Their effect is every bit as sad and serious as anything the stuffy old codgers who once insisted we cut our hair and pull our socks up and stand on our own two feet ever inflicted on the world.
If we were honest, elitists, if our generation could shed its blithe conviction of infallibility, we'd acknowledge that. We'd acknowledge that if we must have a Human Rights Commissioner then we should have a Human Responsibilities Commissioner, too.
Plato understood that. So should we.
In fact, there's a lot we should understand. Most importantly, the fact that no remedy is without consequence. If every problem is, as they say, a solution in disguise, then every solution is also a problem in embryo.
And many of your solutions, elitists, are now much more than embryos; they're patched gang members firing randomly at other people's homes.
They're young men (and women) so indifferent to the welfare of others that they'll drive powerful vehicles into a crowd of strangers. This is human nature shaped and influenced by the society it inhabits; a society we have done much to create, elitists.
This is the promised land, Baby Boomer-style and if we weren't so persistently preoccupied with the ghosts, demons and battles of the past, we'd accept that anomie is now the real enemy and that we have done much to make it so.
Our attacks on the old shibboleths - manners, duties, standards, culture, tradition - have helped to create a fractured, fractious, self-centred society where privileges are enshrined as rights and rights come free of any equivalent responsibilities.
Responsibility is far too old-fashioned and parental a notion for us to contemplate. Or require. Of ourselves, or anyone else. Gripped by Peter Panic, terrified of growing old and even more terrified of becoming, perish the thought, unhip, we've chosen instead to be the world's first everlescents; adolescents in perpetuity, continually preoccupied with the causes and crusades of the past and just as resolutely determined never to consider the consequences of the changes we campaigned for.
Yet we should. In fact, we must.
And so must you, elitists. You were there. You demanded "Power to the People". Well, now you've got it. You are the people with the power. You are "the establishment".
If Bob was in that coffee bar today, he'd be singing about you ...
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin' ...
Again.
