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God only knows what insanity or corruption Trump and his ringleaders will do today. But he is certainly not the first president to royally screw our country.

 

So often a single event sparks an entire shift in both the culture and the trajectory of a nation and two such events happened on this date 17 years apart. Both proved to be disastrous for the United States.

 

On August 5, 1964, President Johnson put the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before Congress. This started the vast escalation of our military involvement in Vietnam. That single event led to countless lives of young men being lost or being altered irrevocably, as well as a chasm between generations that still reverberated long after our last troops left southeast Asia.

 

Then on August 5, 1981, President Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers. This led directly to the weakening of labor unions and workers being seen as both expendable and replaceable, regardless of the industry. What we are seeing today, and have seen for at least the past 30 years with so many employers having little to no loyalty to employees and vice versa, can directly be attributed to that event in 1981.

 

Two different events. Two different presidents. From two different political parties. Same deleterious consequences that far outlasted those presidents themselves. There will be no shortage of deleterious consequences that we will have to deal with that outlast this president.

 

On a sunnier note, in preparation for Wellness Wednesday, those who know me well know I absolutely love The Beatles and so many other 60s and 70s artists for the musical nourishment they have given my soul. And this date in 1966 marked a cultural shift no less seismic than those above.

 

On August 5, 1966, The Beatles’ Revolver was released. Revolver marked a turning point in both the production and release of music. Not just for The Beatles but really for all of the music ever since. This was the album where John, Paul, George, Ringo, and George Martin melded the songwriting and song arranging capabilities of the band with studio wizardry in ways previously unheard of before.

 

Revolver is consistently rated either the best album of all time or at least in the top five in many polls. I actually prefer three other albums by The Beatles alone over Revolver. However, there’s no denying that McCartney really came into his own as a songwriter on Revolver; I just prefer most of John’s songs over Paul’s.  Nevertheless, I have to give credit to Revolver for introducing psychedelic music and, in many ways, “grown-up” rock music to the world. There are other bands that may have been making music like Tomorrow Never Knows, Eleanor Rigby, and She Said, She Said, but they certainly were not reaching the masses like The Beatles were in the mid-60s.

 

Seismic shifts. Some occur subtly; others abruptly. If you are interested in effectuating change come out and join Seismic Resistance this Thursday as we help plot a new course for our political culture.