Charlie
...Xers, that decade is a stumbling block; to Republican conservatives, foolishness; but to aging baby boomers who once felt themselves called to respond, that era still recalls something dimly remembered of an expedition into the heart of consciousness. Something happened still not understood. A wave broke in August 1969 when the followers of Charley Manson slaughtered Sharon Tate, her unborn child, her house guests, and the next night repeated the bloody ritual by killing a prominent couple named the La Biancas.
Today, Manson is in solitary confinement in a maximum security foretress in California. Denied probation, he will die in prison. But even there he continues to attract followers and to dispense his message to the world. Even there, he continues to maintain a hold. As he well understands, we need him as much as he needs us. We need to believe that the demon is locked up and cannot get out. We need this to protect our own sanity. He remains, as he says, our mirror.
Terror manifests itself in many forms, most of them coming not from outside ourselves but from within. The external objects and events that scare us merely awaken fears slumbering in what Emily Dickinson called the cellars of the mind. The beasts under the bed, the monsters in the night shadows moving behind the trees are the projections of our own internal fears onto the landscape of the world. Enough real evil does exist to sustain our projections, but in the end even the projections are rationalizations, lies we tell ourselves to prevent having to face the real fear within ourselves. We need external demons to keep the demons in our souls at bay.
By the end of the sixties, for the baby boomers the beliefs of the old military/industrial combine had unraveled. The protective shell had been shattered and thrown away. With our protective social constructs crumbling, all that was left was the...
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