The July 12 post, Tonton Macoutes, includes a thought-provoking comment from a recent deportee. I highly recommend reading it. It is from Donna.
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For a couple of years I’ve been a regular participant in a local “Coffee and Conversation” group which meets regularly and has a whoever-shows-up membership. This has translated, over time, into usually a dozen or so Democrats who may or may not know (or even agree with!) anyone else at the table. There is no particular agenda. The discussion is mostly political, but potluck. We all don’t have the same interests or opinions. Typical Democrats.
One of us started the tradition, and his main function is to announce time and place, and convene the next gathering. We RSVP, and then we just show up…or don’t…and talk about whatever. It may seem ragged, and it is, but it is a small “soap box” where people can say what’s on their mind, and perhaps learn in the process.
Last Saturday, our founder and facilitator, Jim, mentioned he’d been reading a couple of older political manifestoes, liberal and conservative, from some years much earlier in my lifetime. We didn’t talk about them specifically, but I asked for the links, and have found them fascinating and thought-provoking.
One is the conservative Sharon Statement, set in writing by about 100 young conservatives in Sharon CT in September, 1960. Names you might remember: Young Americans for Freedom; William F. Buckley
The second was the liberal Port Huron Statement set in stone, so to speak, by young liberals at Port Huron MI in Spring 1962. Names you might remember: Students for a Democratic Society; Tom Hayden
The statements speak clearly for themselves, and if you’re interested, it is easy to find out more about the groups, etc.
Each reader – I recommend reading both – will come to their own conclusions about the statements, then and applied to now.
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What most intrigued me about these statements was that I was a contemporary – at least in age – of those young people who adopted the statements.
In 1960, I was a sophomore in college, not passionate about politics. There were Republican and Democrat Clubs, but I was in neither. In 1960, was the Kennedy-Nixon Presidential election, but I was 20, I was not yet eligible to vote (voting age then was 21). I do recall seeing Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in person at a whistle stop before the Republicans picked Richard Nixon as nominee; and later watching the famous Nixon-Kennedy debate on TV.
In 1962, at the time of the Port Huron Statement, I was in the Army, in an infantry company, confronted with matters like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I read the statements as an 85 year old, wondering how many of the authors of the two statements are still alive, with over 60 years of perspective, and whether their statements would be relevant to them or even to the young firebrands of today. The gift we elders have is perspective of experience, something more abstract to those who follow. It is the nature of living. You can only get experience by experience. O course, we’re also old, so “what do they know?” Lots. But that’s just my opinion.
I also got to recalling how messages were delivered back in those days, compared with now. What were the advantages and disadvantages of each. For instance, what did “going viral” (or equivalent) mean in 1960, versus 2025.
On and on.
If you wish, and have the time, dive into the statements and apply them to yourself, the country we live in today, and what will be the reality of the U.S. 60 years from now.
Good reading. I’ll share my thoughts on this in early August.
Thanks, Jim, for bringing the statements to my attention.
POSTNOTE: As I publish this, I could of course add more content. For instance, yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the death of the civil rights icon, John Lewis. His life as an activist began about 1960.
Pick your own examples.
COMMENTS (more below)
from Marion: Thanks, Dick, I had read neither.
from Chuck: I read your piece. Very good! What has massively changed is the evolution of technology…without our mind’s capacity to keep up with the consequences, and our democratic polarization of elections stopping what little progress was made leading up to 2001.
What has never changed are the fundamental principles humanity has always had regarding the Golden Rule…which even other social species abide by…but we don’t . Our mind’s capacity to believe anything has now derailed civilizations progress toward global human harmony and environmental sustainability. Buckle up buttercup (a phrase I learned from my wrestling team) hard times are coming.
Below is a letter to the Editor the Wpost edited and then printed yesterday.
In his July 13 opinion column, “Why Americans are so prone to conspiracies,” David Von Drehle explained our conspiracy theory dilemma but didn’t offer any biological reasons for this tendency — or potential solutions to curb it.
Human creativity is connected to our minds’ powerful capacity for pattern recognition; we have the capacity to believe literally anything. And we don’t always question what we see or hear from others within our beloved tribe. We assume there are obvious connections even when there are none. Our past successes have built unwarranted confidence and a limited ability to understand reality. Our brains, originally wired to assist our families and tribes to survive and thrive, must now adapt urgently to cope with the acceleration of global chaos.
Conspiracy theories will continue. Some are justifiable — and sometimes, they may even be true. But Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson has articulated a concept very useful for healing our species’ current detachment from reality: the difference between our personal, political and objective truths. In our current era of accelerating truth decay, relearning how to think and how to relate to the real world as it truly is matters now more than ever.
Chuck Woolery, Rockville
Below is a much longer and poorly written letter I originally submitted. They did a fine job of editing and condensing it – but left out some details that might deepen our understanding of our mind’s inherently flaws.
David Von Drehle explained our conspiracy theory dilemma (Sunday op-ed) but didn’t offer any biological reasons or potential solutions.
Our conspiracy beliefs are primarily driven by several flaws in our Pleistocene mind within our brain.
First, our species uses reactionary thinking instead of the deeper thinking it is capable of.
Second, our creative genius plus our opposable thumbs has enabled humans to swiftly advance our ability to survive and thrive – The two most important things that every life form is hardwired for.
Our mind’s creativity is connected to its powerful capacity for pattern recognition, enabled by 5 (maybe 6) variable sensory receptors. (Note that plants have about 20 different sensor mechanisms and they have existed for about a billion years longer than primates). Our mind has the capacity to believe literally anything. And we don’t always question what we see or hear from others within our beloved tribe. We assume there are obvious connections even when there are none. Thus, our mind’s past successes have built unwarranted confidence and a limited ability to understand reality.
So, over the last 6000 years, human populations have expanded as our minds created certain concepts like religion, politics, trading systems. These helped bond and protect our growing tribes. But these concepts too often lead to killing others or insisting they adapt.
Primates will always fight and compete! But only the human species has created weapons of mass destruction and a mindset that can justify mass murder or genocide on a scale our human DNA was not hardwired for.
So now our minds are in control, not humankind’s original spirit of ‘being human’ and resolving conflict without mass slaughter, which originally was not a conscious option. Yet that is what we are now choosing.
Our mind’s original purpose of assisting our family and tribe to survive and thrive must now urgently adapt to avoid our current acceleration of global chaos, massive suffering, and preventable deaths.
We must collectively grasp that our family is humankind. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and other wise souls, using deep objective reasoning, have summarized that we will either live together as family or perish together as fools.
Charles Darwin recognized in evolution that things are always changing. Life forms that fail to adapt become extinct. Of the billions of life forms ever existing on our Goldie locks planet – 99.9% have gone extinct. Unless we quickly recognize that all humankind is genetically 99.9% the same – with an intelligence that has now created non-biological super intelligence – our family’s only chance of survival is one or both sources of intelligence finally gaining collective wisdom. And then, deciding to stop defending the various concepts that once worked but are now our greatest mental problem.
Conspiracy theories will continue. Some are justifiable and sometimes true. Neil deGrasse Tyson wisely framed a concept very useful for healing our species’ current detachment from reality – and our insanity of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome. He observes three types of truth. Our personal, political, and objective truths. The first two have flaws that should be self-evident to any deep-thinking being. And the understanding that objective Truths are never governed by majority rule. Truths like gravity, 2+2=4, unalienable rights, and a child should not die before their parent(s). In our current era of accelerating truth decay, re-learning how to think and how to relate to the real world as it Truly is, is now more than ever.
In summer 1965 we were, in a very real sense, poor. I had to leave my job, and move to a place I’d never been before, with no intention of ever being in Minneapolis. Life was a pretty frightening survival experience. Here are my recollections, written in 1981 for our son, of that time in 
