In my lifetime I’ve witnessed an ‘Iron Curtain’ descend across Eastern Europe in the bleak late 1940s and the Berlin Wall go up during the Cold War in the early 1960s. I never imagined a President of the United States would declare – as  Donald Trump did recently – “we may have to close up our country”.

When I lived in Washington DC as a student from late 1969 to late 1973, the counterculture in the US was at its height. In springtime, thousands of young people from all over the country gathered in Washington to protest against the Vietnam War. This anti-war protest movement inspired similar protests on behalf of the environment.

One of my memorable experiences during my four-year stay in Washington was to be present at the first, historic celebration of Earth Day in the spring of 1970.

The mid 1970s witnessed a backlash against the counterculture with the emergence of Jerry Falwell’s self-righteous ‘Moral Majority’, a toxic mixture of fundamentalist Christianity and politics. As the 1980s progressed under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the liberal, progressive US of the 1960s became the conservative, right-wing, guns-and-Bible-toting America of today. 

Under President Trump, America has become a reactionary state, with a fortress-like wall soon to go up along its southern border – and Trump’s siege mentality to go along with it.