“The United States is now at one of those historic bifurcations whose outcome will prove as fateful as those of the 1860s, 1930s and 1960s,” Nancy MacLean wrote in her 2017 book, “Democracy in Chains.” .

History is punctuated by discontinuities that alter its trajectory. The key to the occurrence of such decisive moments is less the leaders than a socio-political environment receptive to change. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson obviously played major roles at the turning points listed by MacLean, but the spirits of this era were more fundamental.

The current inflection point has become much more apparent over the past five years – and especially over the past few weeks. The United States in 2022 is at a crossroads and the direction taken will probably determine whether the experiment in democracy launched in 1776 will survive. One of the forks before us leads to autocracy, kleptocracy, plutocracy, a renewed subordination of women and people of color, and to a time before the dramatic advances that began in 1964. The other points to a reactivation of the spirit that was temporarily prevalent in the mid-1960s.

When he took office, President Biden laid out an ambitious agenda for activist government, proposing dramatically expanded programs that would build a more racially and economically just society. Some say it was an unprecedented program since the Johnson administration.

Johnson’s vision and ability to get things done in Congress was clearly important in the change that occurred in 1964, but more essential was that Johnson found himself in an environment where progressive approaches were possible.

This is evident in the dramatic cultural change that took place during the same period.

In January 1964, Bob Dylan’s third album, “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, was released. Johnson’s declaration of a war on poverty in his State of the Union address that month and Dylan’s title track were, while different in tone and approach, parallel in focus. how they saw the time.

The story continues

When Dylan sang about being lucky not to come back and the loser would win later, he could have channeled the new president. Dylan and Johnson – the poet and the president – ​​almost seemed to sing a duet. This synchronicity was, of course, unforeseen.

When one of Dylan’s friends picked up a typed copy of the song’s lyrics a few months earlier and read aloud the line “Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call he asked, “What is it, man?” Dylan shrugged and replied, “Well, you know, that seems to be what people like to hear.”

Such a coincidence of the words of a musician with the arguments of a militant president suggests that there was something “in the air”. And one of the things in the air in 1964 was the desire to expand freedom and improve conditions for the “losers” in society.

Dramatic changes would continue to occur at a breakneck pace over the ensuing months until 1965. The result was a nation reshaped politically, socially, racially, economically and sexually – and which became a full-fledged democracy for the first time.

The enthusiasm with which many Americans responded to Johnson’s calls for fundamental change indicates that he, like Dylan, was expressing sentiments that were in tune with the times.

Today, the right-wing extremists who hijacked the Republican Party are determined to reverse all that progress. Their chances of success largely depend on the zeitgeist of 2022.

Authoritarianism has spread. Sinister white supremacists and opponents of democracy control the main cable news network and dominate one of the two main parties. Political violence is now accepted by a significant fraction of those who identify with this party. The Republican Party of Texas has just adopted an extremist platform which calls for – among other shifts in the modern world – the abolition of the income tax, the enshrining in law that life begins at conception, the teaching lies as history, the idolatry of traitors who fought the United States upholds the “right” to enslave human beings, prohibiting any gun safety laws.

But do these forces of hatred reflect the spirit of our times? Is there any hope that our society will have the strength to drive out the forces of anti-democratic extremism?

Historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that there is nothing new about American politicians and crooks using lies about the “great replacement theory” to sow fear and gain power for themselves- same. But events elsewhere, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, may have produced a renewed appreciation for democracy around the world, including in the United States.

The freedoms fought for and developed in the 1960s changed America permanently, and going back is unimaginable. Even now, the extremism of the Supreme Court denying women control of their own bodies and the eagerness of many Republicans to tear down LGBTQ+ rights and countless other freedoms are producing a resurgence in activism.

Perhaps the growing evidence — most compelling in Tuesday’s testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson at the January 6 hearings — that Donald Trump was determined to overturn a Democratic election result, through violence if nothing else worked, will lessen the appeal of authoritarianism.

The zeitgeist of 1964 was freedom, and a substantial majority of Americans embraced it as a path to a better future, emerging from a past built on racism and oppression. The American soul now stands at a crossroads – whether to reaffirm that heritage or repudiate it.

Whether senators and congressmen heed the call now hinges on voters electing enough Democrats to give them viable majorities in both houses of Congress to block determined right-wing extremists. to “bring America back” to the pre-1964 era.

Robert S. McElvaine teaches at Millsaps College. He is the author, more recently, ofThe Times They Were a-Changin’ – 1964: the year the sixties came and the battle lines of today were drawn.”

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.