Some dissonance to embellish an otherwise undisturbed self-anointment.
Inexorably the intensively self-admired 68ers are ageing. The passing of time does not keep the eternally youthful from continuing in their bad old childish habits. Therefore the gorilla-style breast beating continues. It is followed by preaching about how we should behave and why their shining example is to be replicated.
Some aspects of this self-celebration are remarkable. However the exercise unmasks the self-adored as being by now to be twice the age of thirty. Thirty is a magic number taken from the haunting pasts self-advertisement. Just in case you forgot: The then and now infallible youths excused for misbehavior because kids do strange things" - used to trumpet that above thirty no one is to be trusted.
This in itself reveals much about the skewed perspective that handicaps the source of the acclaim. Remember it was not the malicious writer that pretended earlier or now that by reaching the age of thirty the culprit becomes a reactionary leper. The 68ers themselves had announced this with incessant emphasis because it constituted one of their dogmas. In time that tenet aged as does wine in an open glass; it is known to turn into vinegar.
Possibly the un-Ritalin treated eternal kids knew something we simple barefooted and despised normals" could not grasp. Or alternatively the 68-ers have again but unwillingly served the sanely skeptical with another example of their lack of a vision except for the blurred image of a hallucinated pseudo-present. According to their own standards the then and now infallible are by their own earlier assurances at sixty doubly not to be trusted. This gives confirms those that have always doubted the movements apostles. These unbelievers have therefore questioned the legitimacy of the self-anointed while they nurtured reservations about the rationality of the trumpeted noble causes.
Getting old is supposed to make you wise. Trust me; having come of an age at which the adage is supposed to bring all the advantages of the implied prejudice this is dubious. Selectively and intermittently age and wisdom can accidentally correlate. That happens in case that the accumulated experience is evaluated with calm objectivity. However this does not happen inevitably. A fruit left on the tree can ripen. Or it can rot. Age will not heal the original mental ailments of those that enjoy their rewarded delusions. The 68ers were according to their own pretentions fully wise by their standard as teens. In a distorted way this might even be realistic. Since then some of the flag-bearers of that self-glorified crowd do not seem to have matured any further. This leaves them as wise at 70 as they were at 20. A child-prodigy is at the age of ten as smart as are most adults. If that same person does not grow by the time he becomes a grandfather then he is at that ripe age only a stunted kid. That might be a lot but it is certainly not outstanding. Early achieved genius-grades include the cases of those that even if wearing Che Guevara beards easily converted into Muhammad style - had displayed early the mentality of pre-teens entering puberty.
Justifying in part the praise awarded in ritual acts of self-adoration the recent decades had made the movement successful to a degree. That came about because the bearers of final and nonnegotiable" truths have shown themselves self-servingly flexible in their praxis. The wise and the clever are able to change their spots the way leopards cannot. In Europe they wished to make chop sui" out of the state. By now they have discovered the advantages of safe and overpaid government jobs. Concurrently they also learned to love the taste of the power the office confers upon the crowned person behind the desk. Therefore the 68ers now man the national bureaucracies. They also lead socialist parties as they claim to defend the self-defined true interests of the toilers". Lest we forget the graduates of the movement also run Eurocracy which are the central administrative organs of the nascent European super state. Many of the reasons why the EU is becoming unpopular have to do with the self-interest-defined goals set by administrators that generally do not mesh with the popular will. This is the reason why conspiratively but realistically Europe" is not put to the test of the voters.
Time has achieved that the spoiled rioting youngsters of yesterday have become bearded kids and mutated ultimately into grayed or bald characters. Some among these have become professional paragons of virtue. However even if celebrated by their likes as secular saints they have not mastered besides generously wanting to distribute what others have created the virtue of the truly great. That is the ability to look back assess and to admit original errors.
This reassessment that is owed to the world has not taken place. The omission of what is becoming a commission means that outsiders must provide the missing link between past claims and present realities for the 68ers. If we take the major causes espoused by the movement then their package proves to have been mistaken. The stand in favor of Hanoi and Ho-ho Ho Chi Minh" has been morally discredited by the Boat People" that as victims fled the practical consequences of the implementation of the 68ers theory of heaven. Todays Viet Nams flirtation with capitalism in the economic area is hardly an endorsement by those made into victors by the movement. In this regard an exception occurs: the movement has managed by exploiting the means provided by their hated American system to defeat the USA abroad. Thanks to that Peoples Cambodia" has become synonymous with self-afflicted genocide. Chinese reforms discredit those that used to consult the Little Red Book. Marcuse the Prophet is forgotten or is now a quaint memory of the unkind who remember the follies of the past so as not to repeat them. And where is the USSR the guardian of peace" and the hope of mankind?"
Not admitting such defining errors reflects badly on the warriors of the claimed noble cause. Even more serious is that regardless of the record the 68ers are sufficiently uncritical and deluded to advocate the repetition of old errors in a new form that is adjusted to current conditions. Such causes that can be used as a moral pedestal and once that is done their advocacy allows the propagators to tell others how to live. This quality allows threadbare claims to continue to have an attraction. Outstanding among these is the Greens crusade with a built-in collectivism that makes it into an undergraduate division of the Reds battle-front. Significantly durable among the errors of repetition is to resort to violence in the context of democratic systems in which the will of a plurality becomes the systems policy. In doing so the pretention remains that those who campaign by throwing stones and by trashing neighborhoods merely assert the good" which is opposed by the forces of evil. For society to resist and to retaliate through its police and courts is an abuse of the morally empowered. That outrage is to be condemned and resisted vigorously.
The extent to which the last Mohicans of 68 remain credible is to be attributed to the failure to assume power by leading the masses" that were reluctant to follow. (This amounts to a practical argument for popular sovereignty and direct democracy.) Out of power the seamy tyrannical side of the movement could not assert itself. Nevertheless the antiauthoritarian" movements dictatorial streak which caused it to endorse and support totalitarians is revealing. The message is that had they been able to grab control of governments they would have abused power in the same manner as their chosen idols have.
