One of the greatest of the Rolling Stones songs, written in 1969 when the US, and the rest of the world was nearing the end of the generational upheaval of the mid to late 1960s and coming to grips with the ugly downside of the supposed movement to greater peace and love among humanity–rampant life-destroying drug use and criminal activity and the usual ugly hypocrisy that accompanies alleged reform to a better society and government. A great song has match between music and lyrics, and Gimme Shelter has that match.
In my view we are in another Gimme Shelter moment, one in which I cannot foresee the ultimate end. The woke lunacy of unrelenting nihilism, violent anarchism and vicious identity politics has possibly passed its peak, but not without intense backlash and lingering recidivism among its adherents, and without a clear next stage. After 1969 we got Watergate and the dreadful end to the Vietnam misadventure. I do sense an exhaustion of the general public to the constant politicizing of everything. There is a search for a savior, who almost certainly will not appear. Will we continue to muddle through? Will we hit a terminal decline and end up like most countries in Europe? Will there be a true rebirth of the meritocratic ideals that made the US great? I do think the next few years are critical and we may all need some shelter to survive them. That song has a somewhat optimistic last stanza; perhaps I should be more optimistic about our future than I currently am.
