The Villages in Florida Party Like Its 1969 - What Happened to Us?

 ("The 'Disney' for Boomers Puts Hedonism on Full Display")

A place where seniors can "party like its 1969."

I remember 1969. It was a time of free love (Woodstock), of "four dead in Ohio" (actually early the next year), of sex, drugs and rock and roll. And questioning almost everything about the generations that preceded us. We were going to change the world. For the better. Hippies with a burning social conscience.

Where civil rights were human rights. Where passion and compassion were to be doled out in equal measure. Where we would be guided and led by our better angels.

How did we become the Villages? Where there is pride in prejudice, where liberal is a four letter word, where values once fully rejected now are wholly embraced. 

I wonder how many of those in this Florida enclave were in the mud at Woodstock, or protested the war in Vietnam. How many would have once renounced the core beliefs espoused in a place like this as regressive and reprehensible?

 

If we are talking about 1969, that may be the real story of the Villages. Of ideas and ideals lost and diametrically opposite ones found. Of what has happened to so much of America in the last half century.

And what hasn't.