Jim Quinn: For What Its Worth

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

        Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth

by Jim Quinn | The Burning Platform

Stephen Stills wrote the song For What It’s Worth in 1967. It was composed three years into the Second Turning, the Consciousness Revolution. The song has come to symbolize the turbulence, mistrust, rage, paranoia, anti-war spirit, and the anti-establishment mood of the 1960’s. An Awakening era has many parallels to a Crisis era at the outset. A traumatic event or events triggers the mood alteration in the country which sets the next twenty years in motion. In 1929 the stock market crash triggered a 17 year Crisis. In 1963, the assassination of John F. Kennedy triggered a 20 year Awakening. In 2005, the housing collapse has triggered the next American Crisis which we are living through today.

“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

        George Orwell

We are currently at the same stage of this Crisis as we were in the Awakening when Stephen Stills wrote this deeply poignant song. An Awakening begins in an uproar of fury, passion, anger, and civil disobedience. The fury subsides during an Awakening as the passion flames out. The last Awakening period reached a crescendo in 1974 with the resignation of Richard Nixon and the country lapsed into disillusionment and lethargy as the 1970’s petered out. A Crisis begins similarly with a trigger that causes pain and suffering, but instead of fury subsiding, the Crisis intensifies, violence erupts, war breaks out and danger becomes extreme. The current Crisis is about to detonate upon the unwary twittering Americans while they are mesmerized watching Dancing with the Stars and Housewives of New Jersey on their 52 inch HDTVs in surround sound.

The Great Depression was a dreadful time for America, with unemployment reaching 25%. But, that was just a prelude to the horrific World War that killed 76 million people or 3.5% of the world’s population. America lost 400,000 brave young men, with another 600,000 wounded. As the carriages with aristocrats from Washington DC descended upon Bull Run Creek to watch the Union Army end the insurrection by some Southern State rebels, all expected a short painless militia skirmish. But, three years later 620,000 men had been killed with another 400,000 wounded. An entire generation was wiped out. Those killed constituted 2.3% of the entire U.S. population. If 2.3% of the American population was killed today, it would amount to 7.1 million people. Is the American public prepared to sacrifice 7.1 million young men for any cause? This magnitude of Crisis seems incomprehensible today, but a trial on this scale will face Americans in the next ten to fifteen years.

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