Sex sinks the Sixties Generation

Having been born in 1947, and turning 21 in the summer of '68, I was very much un soixante-huitard, even if I was unable to riot on the streets of Paris. Being reminded that this is, indeed, the 50th anniversary of the 'May Revolution' in France and its clones in other countries, I will be writing a post on my own memories. In the meantime, this is a very good essay, quoting Peter Hitchens. I shall post Hitchens' essay immediately following this.

From Lapsed Catholic Returns

Peter Hitchens has written an excellent essay entitled Some Reflections on the May 1968 now half a century ago about the May 1968 Paris riots. He tells us how it all began: “it started with a row about male students having access to female dormitories at the University of Nanterre, which really doesn’t stand much comparison with the defence of the cannons of Montmartre during the Paris Commune of 1871, let alone the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the convulsion’s supposed forerunners. On the other hand, it is a sign of what this was all really about – the dawning of the Age of the Self.”

I had no idea that the Soixante-Huit’ers’ (the term for the 60s generation in France) revolution, to which their nostalgic thoughts turn as they contemplate mortality, creaky knees, wrinkles, and erectile dysfunction, began as nothing more than a bunch of horny guys trying to get into young ladies’ knickers!

Half a century later, now in power, showered with money by their billionaire friends and donors, the Me Generation’s alpha males have fallen face down into the sewer of their own making, the result of their selfishness and sexual license, their pursuit of hedonism at all costs, and their to-hell-with-society philosophy.

Exhibit No. 1 is Bill Clinton, whose sexual misconduct during his term in office as president, boggles the mind. Isn’t it enough to be president of the United States? Don’t you believe in the sacred duty of public service, which includes sacrificing your own libido? Duty. Sacrifice. Not for them these values, which the generation of the Second World War held dear, and against which the Me Generation rebelled.

Among the French alpha males, there is Dominique Strauss-Kahn (born 1949), high-ranking member of the Socialist Party, and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, whose illustrious career ended in 2011 after he was arrested by the New York police for alleged sexual assault against a hotel maid. Many allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him between 2012 and 2014, including the hiring of prostitutes for his orgies and aggravated pimping. Strauss-Kahn admitted in court that he participated in orgies because that’s what libertines like him do, but he denied hiring prostitutes.

More recently, Francois Hollande, president of France between 2012 and 2017, has left public office with a pathetic legacy. Most people remember him as the president who sneaked out at night on a scooter to visit his mistress, Julie Gayet (an actress), in 2014, causing his Official Mistress, Valerie Trierweiler, to dump him. In November 2014, his approval rating dropped to 12 percent and by the time the French elections rolled around, his approval rating dropped to 4 percent. He is the most unpopular president of the Fifth Republic. In the 2017 elections, the French people delivered an unsurprising verdict against Mr. Hollande and his merry band of Socialists. The French voted overwhelmingly for En Marche, the party of upstart Emmanuel Macron, and killed off the Socialist Party.

The sordid lives of these men who accepted the mantle of leadership, but refused the gravitas that goes along with it, preferring instead to remain horny, teenage boys forever, dragging down with them the dignity of the office of the positions they held – President of the United States, President of France, Managing Director of the IMF – makes me profoundly sad. In the end, they chose themselves. You can hear the mantras being chanted:  If it feels good, do it. What I do with my body is my own business.

So, what then happened to the leader of the May 1968 riots? Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny the Red, became a Green (he joined the German Green Party in 1984 and the French Green Party in 1999). He served as member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. Sounds like the man had a successful political career and rode off into the sunset as a respected elder statesman. Except Daniel Cohn-Bendit has been haunted by accusations of pedophilia (in fact, in 1986, the Green Party even had a national working group on “Gays, Pederasts and Transsexuals”). I once heard him speak in a small conference and I was impressed. He’s intelligent, passionate, and very charismatic. Too bad about the pedophilia thing.

Hitchens ends his reflections on May 1968 saying:

I cannot deny that the liberation seemed attractive at the time. In that world of bad food, suppressed feeling, and often dull restraint, in which everything seemed universally grey and brown, the fresh green spring of 1968 and the psychedelic orange of the counterculture glowed seductively.

. . .

And we were so safe. These who we blamed for repressing us had brought us up in a world so secure and insulated from sad and violent events, that it never occurred to us that our behaviour would have any worse consequences than a mild bruise, or a headache, or some brief tears, or the occasional broken window.

Yet when I add up the outcomes of that era, for my own generation and for my parents’ generation too, I find an extraordinary amount of real tragedy, madness, death, loss, abject failure, cruelty, destruction and deep, deep disappointment.

I urge you to read Peter Hitchens’s memoir, Rage Against God (How Atheism Led Me to the Faith). Hitchens was once a Trotskyite, but he returned to the Anglican Church and continues to be one of the UK’s best and most fearless journalists (if not THE best journalist).