In almost 50 years nothing's really changed.

[hobbit709]

[KJG52]

1. Great song for a generation that is now supporting Tea Baggers' and "2nd Amendment remedies,"

the Vietnam Era is over. The protests of the Vietnam Era were about the possibility that life would be wasted in a war without end and that white kids, educated white kids from middle and upper class families might die in that war because of a draft. Still, the government of that era ended the war, after 11 years of protests and clear signs that the South Vietnamese government was about as stable and popular as a smallpox epidemic. That government never did end racial discrimination or poverty or... and now we have another generation being wasted in an endless war on terror, drugs, and the government itself... What an amazing thing is the polity of the USA.

[hobbit709]

2. That song still hits me and I'm neither of those two categories.

And that song originally had nothing to do with Viet Nam if you know anything which apparently you don't.

[KJG52]

4. Actually being old enough to have bought the album that song was on, I'm sure I know

what the song is about. it is about civil unrest and upheaval in the streets of America and the social changes happening at that time, the "generation gap," etc... You are attacking me for ignorance, I love the song, what I don't love is the self congratulatory crap coming from self-satisfied "Boomers," about the generation that produced the song, while achieving very little to change the underlying issues that the song raised.

[90-percent]

3. What the song is about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_What_It%27s_Worth_%28Buffalo_Springfield_song%29

Viet Nam was part of my youth and teen to adulthood years. The war and the riots and the assassinations all seemed pretty normal. I remember the generation gap and don't trust anybody over 30, but I was too young to comprehend the turmoil of the country.

It's only decades later and I contemplate how ever more corrupt and mean our government has become. Unless you're a .01%'er, your government hates you and wants you to suffer and self immolate with fear.

-90% Jimmy

[Moostache]

5. Paranoia strikes deep...

Into your heart it will creep.
Its starts when you're always afraid,
Step out of line, the man comes and takes you away...

Think about that for a second. Those lyrics are nearly 50 years old now, but the situation we live in is infinitely closer to those lyrics than some kind of "shining city on a hill" or "beacon of freedom" or "land of liberty".

Ever since 9/11, a HUGE number of Americans HAVE been living in perpetual fear. Scum bag opportunists like anyone working for Fox News, right-wing radio or conservative "think" tanks simply eat that up like manna from heaven. The problem is that we have allowed ourselves to be mollified and placated with no real change.

I am bitterly disappointed in President Obama for many reasons, but the biggest are Gitmo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

He promised an end to all of these things 8 years ago in the campaign and again 6 years ago when he took office.

Today?
Gitmo, still open.
Afghanistan? Just got ANOTHER 1 year combat extension.
Iraq? Sorry, we have to send BACK troops to deal with the ISIS/ISL/I LIED group of extremists.

Its ALL bullshit and people refusing to wake the fuck up and stop being so goddamned afraid all the time is the oxygen that keeps the flame of hate burning. We live in a police state of 24/7 surveillance, constant spying and a police force that lives above the law while meting out "justice" through summary execution for crimes like insolence, petty theft or jay walking.

Fuck America.
This current incarnation is an international and historical disgrace.

We may not have been much better through much of our history - just pick another country in the Western Hemisphere and I can find a story of American exploitation and military abuse - but we have turned the powers of the Military Industrial Complex on our own people now and the situation is even worse than its ever been.

[Triana]

6. +1 n/t