Very Well Then I Contradict Myself
On Bob Dylan’s new album, the blues are his own, the mystery gone.
1968 was a brainbuster, an election year in which the choices were Richard Nixon, a “law and order” Republican who appealed to a “silent majority,” and Hubert Humphrey, an Establishment Democrat appealing to America’s sense of decency. An economic crisis loomed while a flu pandemic crept in from overseas. Tensions over racial justice exploded into the streets following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., inspiring protests and riots in over 100 American cities. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., burned. Chicago mayor Richard Daley authorized the police to “shoot to kill any arsonist … shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting”; by summer’s end, the CPD had killed a 17-year-old protester in a demonstration at the Democratic National Convention, one of many to die during the violent struggles with