I just handed off some voter registration forms, buttons and bumper stickers to a volunteer who wanted them for a wedding where the bride said it would be fun to take advantage of all those people in attendance to do some voter registration at her reception.  During the course of my conversation with the volunteer, I mentioned to her that she could register the bride with her new name at the event, providing she planned to change her name.  Then I mentioned that the bride and/or the groom could change their address on the form, too, if they weren’t already living together.  We had to laugh because we both remembered a time when it was unheard of for a couple to live together before marriage.  Now it’s not only commonplace, it’s actually normal now.  I guess that’s one of the benefits of cultural revolution.

Who knew, however, back when we were experimenting with drugs and free love in Golden Gate Park and panhandling on Haight St., and going to jail to protest the Vietnam war that our little ‘revolution’ would still be causing problems forty years later?  I was just a naïve runaway back then and later, when I laid down in front of a government facility on May Day to protest the war, I couldn’t have had an inkling that people were being so deeply traumatized by what they saw as treasonous rejection of what America stood for.

I didn’t even know what the culture wars were until I read a piece on the topic by Andrew Sullivan.  Now I get that those same traumatized people are still suffering from it the same way John McCain is.  They are still parked in that moment in time and can’t move forward.  Perhaps it is because they realize, much as the sullen Confederates in the South have for over a century, that they lost that war and can’t forgive the victors.

America has moved on.  Men and women can live together before marriage; women can have credit in their own names; women can stay at work while pregnant; gays are so far out of the closet that there’s no turning back; contraceptives are now readily available; girls can look forward to a life in professional sports, a woman and a Black man can both run for President without it being a gimmick. (This is not to say that we don’t have a long, long way to go, especially where civil rights are concerned.)

I almost want to say to these people, “I’m sorry.  I had no idea this was going to be so difficult for you.”  I think about how important it was to us to reach out to Hillary supporters and to heal the Party.  Now I think there must be a way to reach across this huge divide to help heal a nation.