Woodstock Nation Turns 40

Nobody got Woodstock as right and as wrong as Joni Mitchell. Forty years ago, Mitchell sat in an apartment in New York and watched on TV while on Max Yasgur's dairy farm, young Americans were pounded for four days with almost incessant rain and with some of the most innovative music of their, or any other, time.

Mitchell wrote her iconic song "Woodstock" that branded Woodstock as the Garden of Eden, the youthful emodiment of the innocence that politically polarized, racist and war-mongering America lacked. Mitchell was right that the Woodstock Nation dreamed of returning to Eden. She was wrong because nobody can get back to the Garden of Eden--and it's dangerously naïve to try. The lesson of American history since Woodstock is the struggle with the fall from innocence.

Woodstock has been endlessly analyzed and a new spate of books, documentaries and exhibits is coming out yet again. But it is Mitchell's song that best captured the hopes and dreams of Woodstock Nation. And it is Mitchell's song that reveals why America never did become Woodstock Nation, and why it never well.

The young Americans, and the performers, who came to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on that muggy weekend were not only making a musical statement, they were making a quintessentially political statement. They wanted to protest the injustices of race and war; they wanted to be a different nation, a nation of peace and kindness. And, for the most part, they were. Despite the rain and the horrendous traffic jam, despite bad drug trips and no real bathrooms, they did act decently to each other. And the music was extraordinary.

This is what Mitchell's song "Woodstock" reveals, this longing for a return to Eden, to the innocence of Adam and Eve before their disobedience and ejection from the peaceful garden. It is a remarkably religious song.

"I came upon a child of god," Mitchell begins. This "child of god" reveals that not only is he going to "join in a rock 'n roll band," but he is going to "try an get my soul free."
The refrain, the best known of the lyrics, says it all: "We are stardust, We are golden, And we've got to get ourselves, Back to the garden." The Garden of Eden.

The problem is, these golden children of stardust, longing for the innocence of Eden, were thus ill prepared for Richard Nixon and his "politics of anger." Nixon plays the snake in this divinely political drama, and he tempted Middle America, the ones we came to call "values voters," the "moral majority," or simply, "patriots," to reject peace and love.

But Nixon tempted the Woodstock Nation as well. As the politics of anger worked to make the conservatives harden their hearts against the Woodstock Nation, it also worked on the Woodstock Nation, tempting them to become angrier and angrier. The anti-war movement became more violent, erupting in spasms of rage like the Weathermen. The "We Shall Overcome" marches peacefully led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became "by any means necessary" and the Black Panthers. And even though the total number of those who rejected peace and love for violence and resistance was small, the symbolism was huge. Nixon lost the presidency, but he won the culture war.

Even at 40, the dream of the Woodstock Nation for a more innocent politics has not totally gone away. In fact, in some ways it has returned. The dreams of "change" that drove the last election were partly a longing for a more innocent, bi-partisan politics. But instead, Nixon's "politics of anger" has returned, resurrecting the demons of race and economic resentment that Nixon knew so well. Sarah Palin sometimes seems to be channeling Richard Nixon in her capacity to cut right to the nerve of the simmering politics of anger that has bubbled below the surface of American life from then until now.

You can't confront the politics of anger with naïve dreams of innocence. You'll lose. Unless and until liberals, progressives and even some moderates quit dreaming they can get back to Eden, they'll never be effective in this kind of political struggle. If you want justice and peace, you will have to struggle for it and be prepared for that. Gardens have snakes and you've got to know a snake for snake when you see one.

By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite  |  August 12, 2009; 10:52 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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