Reply #93: Before you lose it... [View All]

[Dove_eye_view2008]

You have to consider, at least, that the inclusion of youth in politics is pretty pathetic in current times. Not that they should be blamed for their apathy, ineptitude, and general disinterest in social and political issues, but rather we older and more informed folks have some responsibility in including them, and not insulting them over the fact that they don't remember events that occurred before they were even born, though they may have heard or read about them. I was not alive in 1968 and can't say I wouldn't have understood what happened and why were it not for my own drive to study and find out. Unfortunately you can't expect everyone who is younger than the 60s generation to take as deep an interest in the events of that decade as I have (and I've gone beyond that with interest in the events throughout history, whatever I can find, of similar subject matter), therefore as I agree the name "Recreate 68" was a bad idea, it was also an innocent one. The person who chose the name is young, that is, was not born until after 1968. I personally wasn't born until a decade following that year, though I know about through research (college) and my own interest has driven me, thus I know why that name was a bad idea, however, the one who picked it really had a different impression of what happened, and the fact that these youths want to get involved can't be discouraged by older historical know-it-alls. It would be dis-empowering to tell the kid why the name is "stupid," thus discouraging the person's participation. Especially considering the large group of youths who actually participated in choosing the name. Rather than ridiculing them, try encouraging them.

The kid is younger than I am, but I am younger than the 1960s generation.

When old folks give us that old speech about how we weren't there, don't understand what happened, and should just "shut up," what they are saying is that we should not participate in politics, not get turned on to politics and learn the lessons of history in any way, and not care about the important issues of the day. It is a way in which people in the older generations encourage self-imposed disenfranchisement among younger generations. When you tell them to be quiet because they weren't there when whatever happened occurred, you tell them not to vote, not to protest, not to get informed, and to be merely mindless complacent drones like the those depicted in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." Shallow, inept, complacency, and thus primed to live for leisure and pleasure with no thought. There can be no hope for any better future if we are all to 'shut up' and stay out of the way of politics. You may as well advocate fascism, as that is the threat of what comes about when an entire population is degraded to a herd of mind slaves and nothing more. You may as well try to sign them up as Republicans to vote against their consciences.

I agree the name is bad because it is one that the media, namely the corporate media, will spin like no other without a doubt, however, if we make all of our decisions based on our fear of how it will be played out in the corporate press rather than forcing the corporate press to pander to our issues and not the other way around, we are merely reinforcing the dominance of the blatantly undemocratic corporate press itself, along with the power-monger establishment legitimized by its propaganda. What they mean by recreating 1968 is recreating that level of popular organization and mobilization, especially the image of walking together united as "the people." That is something many youths today see as missing from current movements, especially those that challenge the "one party with two ugly heads" system now holding control of what used to be our republic. Young people have to go by what they know of history, and if they weren't there to see it for themselves that doesn't mean they don't understand aspects of it that are important. In fact, that line of B.S. "you weren't there to see it for yourself so you don't know" is a fallacy. If you were in Chicago in 1968 during the convention, and if you were alive then and watching it on TV, that doesn't prove you know the ins and outs of what happened, much less the political implications. That only proves that you saw some crazy shit that you probably didn't even understand at the time. The Age Card is not proof of any expertise whatsoever. I'm sick of people who were there in Chicago in 1968 telling me "that's how we got Nixon," regurgitating Gitlin's line. That is not how we got Nixon; the Democratic Party's anti-communist Machiavellian group think and polarization (did all of you elders forget about the overall context of the Cold War?) and their arrogance in continuing the slaughter in Vietnam (I don't call it a war, it wasn't a war but a series of massacres while the Dems were still in, and wasn't really a war until Nixon took over and the Soviets began backing Ho Chi Minh), and the Bay of Pigs, among other absolute embarrassments, not to mention being gate keepers on civil rights rather than doing the right thing, which led to the murder of many prominent civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr.; that is how we got Nixon.

In other words we got Nixon because the Democratic Party was not a real opposition party then any more than they are now. They were the culprits, in case you forgot, of the Vietnam invasion, slaughter, massacre, and war (war only in that the north eventually succeeded, and justifiably so). They were the main targets of any justice seekers during the 1960s, and by that perspective it is at least arguable that we got a massive radical revolutionist movement that burned down every city in the USA in war with mostly openly racist police from the Democrats and their plunders. You can't blame a population for anything, it is too ambiguous, but you can blame those who intentionally did what they should have known to be wrong, immoral, foolish and in every way incorrect, for example...LYING TO THE AMERICAN POPULATION ABOUT THE GULF OF TONKIN TO "MANUFACTURE CONSENT" IN THE POPULATION TO INVADE A TINY DEFENSELESS COUNTRY THAT ORIGINALLY ASKED FOR OUR HELP AGAINST A RUTHLESS COLONIZER!

So lay off Recreate 68. If you old folks would have just united and done the job right in 1968 by supporting the anti-war candidate, Gene McCarthy, rather than splitting into absent minded factions, constituting a classic example of a "leftist circular firing squad" (I'm quoting my favorite folk singer of today, David Rovics) and swinging the door wide-open to COINTELPROs galore, we wouldn't be going through this crap again! This mentality of blaming the victim is a clear indicator of today's liberals' lack of confidence and general political paralysis in the face of what we all know is beyond the evil of fascism, namely the corporate-political neo-liberals and "neo-cons'" twisted and fundamentally anti-democratic agenda of political economy.

Furthermore, those who think protests in the 1960s are even remotely similar to what we see today must consider that back in the 1960s all of you crazy, self-indulgent, and self-deprecating radicals had rallies under the influence of powerful hallucinogenic drugs. If there is one thing we have succeeded at doing in today's protests it is that we have gotten the drugs out of the movement. There are drug users no doubt, but it is not encouraged like it was (remember Abbie Hoffman and his acid lollipops) and in fact discouraged at protests as that would make for one scary ass trip if you think about it. In 1968 half the crowd was on acid, cocaine, pot, you name it, you stick it under their noses and they do it without question, believing they are expanding their minds somehow, and now we have succeeded in getting the drug users to leave their dope at home and show up sober for their own safety if not for everyone's. I have been to hundreds of protests, none of which had a bunch stoned out acid heads participating. Now drugs are even seen by many to be a form of conformity. You go and have a look at the Democrats during their convention and just see how many of them are intoxicated. You won't find that in the protest crowd, and if we find them we give them first aid and send them either home or to the hospital.

Finally we have a chance to protest the Democrats' complicity with corporate power (anti-labor and environment) and the Republicans after years of Republican Party rule (in 1968 the Dems had been in control for years and years, and now they are starting fresh again after eight years of the worst president in world history, W, a Republican), as well as their complicity in the illegal invasion of Iraq (if they didn't know Bush was full of it as Clinton claims was the condition when she voted FOR the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, they aren't fit to run our republic as a governing party); without the absolutely selfish "free love" (psychological and physical rape of teenage women by older men especially is all this really was) and the drugs; and here you supporters of the Democrats - which is support for the "War on Drugs" as much as any - are crying like babies about the fact that you can't get the support of the "left wing" your party claims as a "party base." You don't care that WE THE PEOPLE are the only ones doing any good in our society, and that is proof of Democratic Party insincerity.

Be a real democrat and dump that facade of a political party by joining us in the streets. That is the only way the Dems will become what we all want them to be, and what they have always falsely claimed to be, the party of the poor, of labor, of the environment, of peace (that's a reference to being against war, not being for "putting more cops on the streets" as the Democrats always do, though cops get away with murder in today's society as much as they did in the 1960s at least) and of "democracy."

? <- means Nuclear Disarmament by the way, and what have the Dems done for this cause? JACK SHIT. While the Dems were in power the world was almost blown to smithereens several times, and the Republicans are obviously no alternative. We want the Democrats to become the democrats, or we'll have no choice but to form a true opposition to the current establishment of imperialism.