The Last Man Alive

I grew up in the early 1970s. It was one weird era for a young person. The Nixon government was adjudged corrupt. The Viet Nam war ground down to a depressing halt. The Munich Olympics produced a very public and very upsetting mass killing of athletes. Serial killers roamed the planet pretty much dispatching people at whim. Music got increasingly slower, mellower, more self-involved, coked-out, and irrelevant sounding as if produced by a race of zombies. Middle-aged people were getting freaky, which was probably the most disturbing event to me of all of the preceding.

As an aside, I note that by the end of the 1970s, Gram Parsons, Chris Bell, Marc Bolan, Sandy Denny, Keith Moon, Pete Ham, Jim Croce, Nick Drake, the talented halves of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, Cass Elliott, and Judee Sill were all dead. They knew when to get out.

But something else happened to profoundly shape the generation I grew up in.

Optimism was beaten out of us. It was beaten out of us by Watergate, Chevy Chase and George Carlin. It was beaten out of us by Joan Didion, Jimmy Carter and Michael Crichton. By Robert Redford, Steely Dan and New West magazine.

But it was really beaten out of us at the movies. Big screen movies like "Three Days at the Condor." "The Parallax View." "The Planet of the Apes." And so many others like them, and worse. These movies were way beyond cynical. They were bad and bad for you. Sure, they amused and provoked the intelligent, stable and strong. But as for the rest of us? They left what I believe was a permanent and negative tattoo on my generation.

Let me explain. Here is but one example. There was a movie called "Z.P.G." You can guess what the initials stand for. It's impact? Both my elder brother and many other friends believe that the world is overpopulated. There are too many people on the planet. The earth would be better off with fewer people. How many? They won't tell me! But all of these people are so proud of the fact that they have not spoiled the earth by having little ones. They are proudly, smugly non-breeders.

Conversation with elder brother earlier today:

Brother: "I really don't like Sarah Palin. What do you think?"

Me: "I really like her. I don't agree with her on all her political issues, but she has a compelling story. I mean, five kids! That's remarkable."

Brother: "Yeah, she has too many kids. The world is overpopulated."

Me: "By how many? When we get down to just you and Chuck Heston, you'll be happy then I suppose."

So you can see what I'm up against. People who hate people. They want to have us managed like a crop, like an ant farm. They hate the mess, the disorder, the randomness. Sadly, these people tend to be intellectual, so they keep the capital, don't pass it on [irony, anyone?], yet criticize [I mean "damn"] the uneducated masses who breed without concern, reflection or consequence.

Again I say, Sarah Palin has touched a nerve. She has the audacity to reproduce.