2019 or 1969?

Imagine that you have access to a time machine, a Tardis or some H.G. Wells-ian device. And you were given a one-way ticket choice: continue to live your life onwards from January, 1969 or January, 2019. Which year would you choose?

It's the known past versus the unknowable future. We know what went down in 1969. But it's kinda intriguing to think of what one's choice would be if you were presented this choice in January, 1969: continue in '69, or jump to 2019 for future frivolous lifestyle pursuits. We'd all be traveling by rocket-jetpack by now, surely!

The present day is always bogged down with the baggage of the past. It frames our perception of reality. But the future appears as open-ended. And unless one is a fan of dystopian films or literature, the future is seen as an escape from the problems of the current age. It's "what if" versus "what it is".

We all know the quandries and dangers of our time. Runaway climate change that threatens our future existence. An ongoing autocratic assault on democratic institutions that will take, at best, years to repair. A ruthless, unregulated and unsustainable capitalism that will teeter and crash down all around us. Out loud racism and misogyny that passes for acceptable dialogue. Bad pop music and the dismal Chicago White Sox. Pick your poison. It's all enough to pine for a different time.

And if we were living in the now of January, 1969... well, it was not a happy time as I recall.

We had survived 1968, so there was that. The murders of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy seemed to have damned the country to some sort of long-term karmic retribution. Cities were burning. Civil rights appeared to have stalled out in the hatred. The Peace Movement staggered into the violence of Chicago, resulting in Richard Nixon being elected by 500,000 votes.

The awful war in Vietnam raged on, with over 1500 soldiers killed just in 1/69, or 375 a week! Also, the wounded: nearly 2300 hospitalized in that January. Nearly 17,000 had died in 1968. Meanwhile, there were 550,000 servicemen stationed in that country.

The Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969. A major oil spill fouled the environment all along Santa Barbara. Air and water pollution poured forth across the nation, unabated. The natural world seemed hopelessly vulnerable.

It was The Cold War, too, with thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads aimed at us, poised to launch. Between the Hot War of Vietnam and the Cold War, the sense of unrelenting doom was heavy, every day. Does anyone else have memories of nuclear nightmares?

Richard Nixon began his tumultuous reign, following a tempestous and self-defeating Johnson era. He went on television to make a nationwide address seeking support for his policies, coining the term "the silent majority" for that portion of the public that quietly accepted his positions in our torn-apart nation. (Nixon's "silent majority" and Trump's base have a strong Venn-diagram crossover.)

Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, launched his attacks against the press. "The nattering nabobs of negativism" and "an effete corps of impudent snobs" are phrases that galvanized Nixon's base. Whenever the press coverage turned bad for Nixon, Agnew would be called on to charge forth with new insults that resonated with the party. He even popularized "generation gap".

Tensions with North Korea continued to escalate. The USS Pueblo, a spy ship with 83 crewmen, had been captured by the North Koreans in 1968 and was still detained. The propaganda war really heated up again when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, an EC-121, killing 31 on board.

There were skyjackers! And lots of airplane crashes! Rupert Murdoch began his march towards world domination! Later in the year there was Woodstock! And Altamont! And the Manson Family murders! The Cubs collapsed and the Mets won it all! We even made it to the moon!

That was the year that was, 1969, in a ridiculously brief synopsis.

So... if you were given the choice in January, 1969 to continue life then or to hop up to 2019, it would be completely understandable to bite the bait for the future. Things didn't look good, but a 50 year jump-ahead could be enough time to heal those late-60's wounds.

But if you took that ticket, what would you find?

The Vietnam War hit its apex in January, 1969. It took far too long, but from that point on the war declined. Now you have the forever War on Terror. Military casualties are much reduced, but civilian totals are awful and so is the worldwide stress caused by hundreds of thousands of refugees. We're still dealing with effects of the Iraq War foreign policy debacle, far greater than that of the Vietnam mess (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and - waiting in the wings - Iran).

Our society remains in major turmoil, but widespread rioting and destruction is absent. Yay! Civil rights that had advanced since 1969 are being challenged, blocked and scaled back. Ugh.

The environmental crisis of 1969 found a solution that same year with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage in the next years of the landmark Clean Air and Water Acts and subsequent regulations. Today, though, we are scrapping that progress and are the only nation not a part of the Paris Climate Accord. Climate scientists' ugly prognosis for the planet is back to Full Crisis Mode.

North Korea returned the Pueblo and its crew. Since then, it has fortified its defenses, created a nuclear arms program, and continues to play games with our presidents.

The Cold War ended peacefully. The loser, Russia, is now a major player in the governance of our country.

You avoided the crash and burn of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, and now will witness the crash and burn of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

The bad pop music of 1969 has been replaced by the bad pop music of 2019. Air travel is much, much safer. Skyjacking went away for decades; however, made an unfortunate resurgence in September, 2001. The Chicago White Sox remain bad. Bad. Just bad.

So, if you're offered a one-way trip into the future, maybe you should hold off. The issues that drive you into the unknown may change quickly, dramatically, and for the better. Also, there are constants with humankind, therefore expect new but similar problems awaiting your arrival.

We can't escape the past. The present holds us forever in its Now. And the future, though unknowable, is nothing more than a collection of remixes in new packages. Except... except...

Well, listen to the #1 single from mid-January, 1969 versus the #1 single from mid-January, 2019. Marvin Gaye, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" and Halsey, "Without Me". Different tastes, different times, different styles... but one easily surpasses the other.