I am a Baby Boomer (someone born between 1946-1964) who came of age during the Age of Aquarius, from the song “Let The Sunshine In” in the 1967 musical HAIR. Both these terms, however, have scant depth other than marketing labels for demographic segments who identified as hippie or counterculture. The terms do offer a handy shorthand for stereotyping a generation, so, think about this, fellow Aquarian comrades: The Baby Boom’s peace and love revolution has been transmuted into a culture war of greed and hate by one of our generational elders (born 1946, a Gemini), Donald J. Trump, 78, represents the counter-devolution. Thanks to him the world is meaner and more addled than it was when the times were [first] a-changin’.
Manifest Destiny is rad.
In the epilogue of Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric—an excellent chronicle of the pivotal moment when the folk music ethos transformed into the rock epoch, as portrayed in the film A Complete Unknown—the author notes inn 1965 there was “a clash of two dreams … the democratic communitarian ideal of a society of equals working together for the common good, and the romantic libertarian ideal of the free individual unburdened by the constraints of rules and custom.” I bought into that interpretation and was hoping it would be the norm for some time to come. Well, it came and went.
Last week I saw the aged leader of the United States sitting behind a grand table in a large D.C. sports arena. The WWE couldn’t have accomplished the stagecraft any better. Before a ceremonial dais, bathed in divine light, Trump tagged dozens of executive orders and decrees instantly expunging many critical progressive-era programs with the broad fever-line strokes of his branded fat-head Sharpie. I was gobsmacked by the obvious truth that progress doesn’t last forever.
Aquarians are on the verge of aging out, and we are being led into the new era of disenlightenment by a false prophet (and fake Village Person), whose forever-young narcissistic personality disorder has been normalized as a merry MAGA band of post-Boomer disciples spreads his mantra that “America First” is über cool. Meanwhile, the all-too-overt self-interested support of Gen X and Millennial tech oligarchs are standing in line enabling Trump to make whatever it is he really wants to make great again.
So, I wondered what the pioneer hippie diehards of m-m-my-my generation have evolved into, and I asked Midjourney—the current AI iteration—to visualize “what’s become of an Aged Age of Aquarius in 2025”. Thanks to Todd Carroll, this is what the computer keyboard prompt spit out. Wavy Gravy would be proud.
Images created by Midjourney.
The post The Daily Heller: The Twilight of the Aged of Aquarius appeared first on PRINT Magazine.