I watched Easy Rider last week for the first time since college (I think just about everyone watches Easy Rider at least once during college). It was one of those $5 DVDs somewhere, and I succumbed to loss-leader marketing. I figure that if I have a vintage poster (with a chunk of one corner removed, making it tastefully "antique"), then I ought to actually own the movie. I know, it's fucked up logic. But such are our times.

I was struck by the dark vision of the film. Yeah, I know, it's the story of a couple guys who smuggle white powder (I'm assuming coke; it might be heroin, which would make more sense for 1969, I guess) across the border and sell it to Phil Spector. They then buy cool new bikes and motor their way across the country from California to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The voyage is doomed. It has to be to fit the dramatic structure of the film, which is something akin to Fear and Loathing at the Mardi Gras--and it arrived a year before F&L in Las Vegas. Even though I knew all of those things, the palpable pessimism of the film struck me.

Throughout the movie, Peter Fonda keeps pontificating about how America has gone down the tubes and how there's no way to fix it. I think the only time he cracks a smile in the movie is when women get naked around him, and even then it's more of a wry, knowing grin. For a happy stoner, the guy is one hell of a bitter ascetic. Even when he eats, he makes it look like each bite of food is causing him physical pain. Maybe that's why he's so thin. Anyway, every time the camera hits Fonda, you just know everything is going to turn out wrong. He even has a premonition of his fiery doom. This is one dark dude.

Then there's Dennis Hopper, who appears to be stoned--not just acting stoned--in most of his scenes. I'm not sure if that's the case; he was, after all, the director of the movie. But then, maybe that's the point. And anyway, Laszlo Kovacs shot the movie. He probably didn't need much of a director. Hopper is the freak in the freak, as my brother might say.

Jack Nicholson's prodigal son-turned-town drunk is a wonder. The subtle care with which Nicholson approaches the character is astonishing. He was, at one time, a truly sublime actor. These days, he's still pretty good. But no matter who he plays, he's obviously doing a version of "Jack." His George Hansen is at once cynical and optimistic, depressed and full of wonder. In the one speech from the movie that really hit home for me, George ruminates on the idea of freedom.

"...talkin' about [freedom] and being it is two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you're bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't tell anybody that they're not free, because then they gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em."

A scant few minutes later, George is murdered by some of the aforementioned scared folks, and not too much further down the line a couple of "frightened" hicks blow away the two remaining heroes.

I remembered all the violence, and even the bad vibes of the Mardi Gras LSD trip. But the whole notion that Americans weren't safe in parts of their own country was something I didn't pick up on back in 1988 or whenever it was they showed Easy Rider down at the student flicks.

Today, of course, that idea makes a whole lot more sense.

It's funny. Back in the 1980s and 1990s I had some serious hair. And I drove all over the country, through some of the spookiest backwoods places you can imagine. And I never got word one about my hair. Well, except for back in Clovis, N.M., where I went to high school. I got a few whistles from some boys in a pickup, but I never knew if they thought I was a girl or were making fun of me. Probably the latter. I'd make a pretty ugly girl.

Nonetheless, there really weren't places that I felt threatened. Maybe it's that feeling of invincibility you have through your 20s. Or maybe things really have changed. I spent six years of my life living in Kansas (and another four living a couple miles across the state line in Missouri). A lot of who I am is identified with Kansas. And yet, when I read that the state board of education is plastering stickers on biology textbooks proclaiming that most scientists don't believe evolution is proven (thus introducing an error to said books) and that the state attorney general has convinced a judge that he ought to have access to the medical records of every woman in the state who has had a late-term abortion, well, I'm suddenly feeling a lot less midwestern. I don't want my children growing up anywhere near a place like that.

This isn't about What's Wrong with Kansas. After all, I'd bet that most Kansans themselves don't agree with either of those two actions. But they let them happen anyway. I don't understand that. I was raised (in large part in Kansas by Kansans) to stand up for what I believe and to fight injustice. Maybe I'm unusual that way. Maybe ol' Doctor Gonzo was right. Maybe most of the folks in this country were raised to be sheep. Maybe they were taught to believe that whatever folks in the government say must be true. Maybe they really do think people who voice unpopular opinions are dangerous and should be silenced by any means necessary.

But I don't believe that. We're in the middle of some damned dark times, to be sure, but things will turn around. The funny thing about America is that when the light seems dimmest, we always manage to breathe life back into the flame of freedom. Maybe that's because, in fact, we do cherish our inalienable rights and aren't willing to cede them to anyone, even Unka W. I guess it just takes a while to wake everyone up.

Hey, you assholes, wake up!

Jon Worley isn't much of a hippie, but he's not opposed to treating people with love and respect.