Screw the Hippy resurrection, we need the Tom Joad resurrection

[sasquatch]

We need a slew of industrious, knowledgeble, outreaching, ass kicking leftist. Not a bunch of doped out "ME, ME, ME AND ME SOME MORE" hippies that are absolutist idiots that are just as bad as neo-cons or neo-libs, infact some neo-cons and neo-libs are former hippies. Don't let those jackass boomers tell you any different either, it was all those ex-hippies that voted for Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Gingrich, and slew of other neo-con douchebags. It was the punk rockers of today that gave us Obama, Edwards, Kucinich and slew of solid progressives that will be bring change and look out for the common man of our Republic, not the God-damned billionaires of the Globe.


:toast:Here's to the Tom Joad's of the world:patriot:

[L. Coyote]

1. There are only two kinds of people, those who divide people into two groups and

those who do not.

What you have accomplished is reveal to all how you divide people, and your own mental categories.

If we want to win elections, we have to denounce facile prejudices.

[sasquatch]

3. But that's what the hippies do

Your either "hip" or your out.

[patrice]

7. That's what you think hippies do, because you are prejudiced by something. nt

[Deja Q]

85. Being trapezoid sucks.

Oops, I mean square. There, I just let two types of people hate me - hippies and trapezoidists.

[patrice]

9. You are actually FOR telling people they are "in" or "out", just the ones

You decide fit your criteria for inclusion. You are the same thing as those you hate, just in the other end of the spectrum.

[silverweb]

22. ummm...

No. That's not descriptive of a "hippie" -- not even close.

I'd suggest that you do a little research and expand your definition of "hippie" about a thousandfold before thinking you know what you're talking about.

[pleah]

36. Not the hippies I have known.

What the hell is wrong with you?

[Hayduke Lives]

59. It's time to let your Reader's Digest subscription slip

Apparently, that's where you acquired your notions of what hippies are all about.

Hippies were/are about freedom - not in any abstract sense, but in the scary "rubber-meets-road" sense. No real hippie ever did the bidding of a fascist politician.

[Kitty Herder]

133. Good response!! nt

[ensho]

157. lol I'm flashing back to an ex fatherinlaw who read the RD in the john

it was the ONLY thing he read anywhere. he was a Rep.

[uppityperson]

70. Did you forget your sarcasm icon?

[patrice]

6. Odd that people like this don't see the contradiction in the very things they say.

It goes something like this: "We" have been wronged, because "we" have been excluded, so let's exclude these other guys, so "we" can get "our" "rights" back."

It's soooooo short-sighted; if you're against something, say - exclusion, you can't fix it by doing the thing you're against. If you're against being excluded from whatever the American Dream is, you can't fix that by being guilty of the very thing you are telling others is wrong. :crazy:

[NNN0LHI]

17. I think we pretty much all do it on occasion and its not that odd at all

I sure know I do.

Don

[patrice]

23. Well, it is true that absolute consistency IS the bugaboo of small minds.

I am, afterall, a moral relativist. That is NOT to say, as some would have you believe, that there is no right and wrong, but that right and wrong inher in the precise conditions of each given situation. And yes, some situations are enough alike that we might come to similar conclusions about what is right and wrong, but some situations, though quite similar to other sitations, and therefore possibly subject to the same ethical principles, CAN be enough different in some very particular way, so as to make a different set of ethical conclusions warranted.

So, the adult thing to do, is for everyone to accept his/her individual responsibilities for these ethical processes, be honest and open about them and then, perhaps, we can, amongst such an open, real, and honest community, come to some agreements about what to do.

[mitchtv]

2. How repulsive are you?

Kiss my aging ass. ( when I had to get to work, I devoted that energy to my Union. I have voted Dem since '68 (except . I voted for McCarthy ay the top) Yo mama voted repug.

[sasquatch]

4. Good for you, but that doesn't change the fact that boomers did vote for Reagan in masses

[Wilms]

44. Masses? Not so sure.

Around 55%.

And I see you've gone from hippie (er, hippy, :eyes: ) to boomers.

[havocmom]

89. Boomers does not = hippies. Generalize much?

:eyes:

Oh, I get it; yer doin your Bill-O impression, right?

right?

[Kitty Herder]

134. So true. Of all the boomers I know, including my parents, few were hippies.

Of course, that could be a rural Utah thing. I don't think the hippie thing ever caught on here. But that just goes to show you that not all boomers were hippies. Far from it, from what my parents tell me.

[dbonds]

5. There is a Hippy Resurrection? - VERY GOOD.

That was the best thing ever to happen to this country. The awakening. It wasn't the 'me me me' shit the OP said, that is rightest revisionist view. It was the well-spring of art, music, literature, and the computer revolution. I hope to see it again. I'm afraid the OP just didn't get it.

[frebrd]

58. VERY GOOD Indeed!

That's something I've hoped to see in my lifetime.

[Echo In Light]

139. Rightists, blowhards, and authoritarians loath what was represented during that era

[SeattleGirl]

8. Gee, thanks for lumping an entire generation into one definition.

Does that make it okay for me to say that all Gen X'ers are this or that or the other thing?

The Boomer generation spans the years of 1946 to 1964. Not all of us were hippies, and not all of us lived by the "me, me, me" credo, and not all of us voted for Reagan.

I love the excitement of the younger voters this year, but I'll be damned if I let you or anyone else define me.

[AlCzervik]

10. well said.

and i don't one hippie that was a me me me type or voted for any republican.

[sasquatch]

11. But 90% of you did

I'm sorry but in my book when 90% of a group of people do something, that group as a whole should take the blame.

[SeattleGirl]

12. Please provide objective stats for your claim.

Which, btw, I don't believe.

[sasquatch]

14. 49 out 50 states voted for Reagan over Mondale and a majority of people were of the "Boomer" make up

demographicly in the United States at the time.

Case closed.

[SeattleGirl]

18. You know, your attitude really sucks.

It really does.

You're posting like a "holier than thou" snob, and you're willing to toss over an entire generation just so you can think you're better than them.

How about this? When my daughter was in high school, she and a large number of the kids she was in school with majored in "I'm tired". How about I decide that everyone, or 90% of those kids, who are now in their late 20's, are STILL tired, won't amount to anything, and are the worst things that ever came along? Stupid argument? Of course it is. It's just as stupid as yours. Do you think that it is ONLY those who came after the Boomer generation that are making a difference? That are fighting against the continuation of this fucking war? That want things to be better?

Generalizations do no one any good. It would serve you well to remember that, and not make a decision on an entire group of people, regardless of their age, on one thing.

[mitchtv]

26. Boomer ,does not equal Hippie

case closed
(especially those wearing long hair 10 years after the Movement ie '80)

[SeattleGirl]

27. But, but, those weren't "hippie do's"!

They were mulletts!! :rofl:

[mitchtv]

28. By george , I think you've got it

:toast:
Particularly prevelant in the "Jenny Jones Triangle"

[Two Americas]

88. sure it does

By 1970, virtually all people aged 15-25 from white upscale college suburban backgrounds were "hippies" - sharing the same cultural views and fashion ideas. It was a major social transformation. The ideas that were popular then persist among those who are most influential and dominant within liberalism and the party.

[mitchtv]

111. you must be smokin something

if you think anything made it east of the Sierra
or south of Philly and west of the Hudson into fly over country. Your post alone admits to a certain demograph only. Many, many more joined the military and bought it hook line and sinker. a mere fraction were hippies

[zanne]

41. Did your age group vote for Bush? nt

[SeattleGirl]

42. ......

:spray:

[sasquatch]

55. No

[Hayduke Lives]

62. Knucklehead

Do you know how the electoral college works? You can win 49 of 50 states with 51% of the vote.

I love your logic: "90% of you voted for Reagan". So in 1980, hippies comprised 90% of the American electorate? Who knew?

[uppityperson]

72. Providing a good example of lies, damned lies and statistics.

[havocmom]

93. more like mind closed

You get lost on your way to some other site?

[eShirl]

138. man, our schools must have really gone down hill after we left. n/t

[scarletwoman]

20. Bullshit.

You can kiss my 58-year-old lifelong Democratic-voting boomer hippie ass.

Peace and Love,
sw
:hippie:

[Warpy]

30. The HELL we did!

Look down thread for how you are wrong, why you are wrong and why those of us who lived it know you are wrong.

[Wilms]

43. It was just over 50%.

That's half of those who voted, who were half of whom were registered. Or as Gil Scott Heron said, "Mandate my ass".

I suspect the group of boomers you are referring to were known as the squares.

[Blue_In_AK]

45. I'm sorry,

I'm a boomer and a true-blue original hippie, and I would have rather killed myself than vote for Raygun or any of the neocons. I think you're a bit confused.

[femrap]

65. Please stop showing people that

people from Ohio are ignorant. We already have a bad enough reputation as North Mississippi.

[sasquatch]

68. hahaha

:eyes:

[SeattleGirl]

78. One more thing:

I didn't realize that only hippies voters in the Reagan-Carter election were allowed to vote. :eyes:

[havocmom]

91. Jesus! Now you'r doin Reagan! Pulling stats outta yer ass.

You lost or something?

[Ani Yun Wiya]

132. That 90% were

yuppies, not hippies.

There were actually damn few hippies despite what popular misconception holds forth.

[seemslikeadream]

13. I didn't know he was tombstoned?

[NNN0LHI]

21. Yea he went completely ape shit one night here

No I am joking I don't know jack about what happened.

Nice seeing you SLAD.

Don

[Terry in Austin]

15. Stereotypes

Pretty broad brush you're slinging, there, generalizing about whole groups like that. Consider equivalent statements like "All Italians are ________" or "All Jews are ___________." It's condemning entire ethnic or cultural groups, which is not only a fallacy, it's also kind of a crummy thing to do.

And yet, you're doing the very same thing here against hippies, and (amazingly!) a whole generation -- "those jackass boomers."

That said, I'd have to agree with you that we do need some ass-kicking leftists. It's also worth noting that the New Left applied as much boot to seat of pants as any of their union-organizing forbears, while managing also to burn plenty of weed and consort with the original rockers who created the music from which punk is a respectful descendant.

[sasquatch]

16. Thanks for agreeing with me

:hi:

[patrice]

19. Oh, so this is about "ass kicking"? Well, surprise, surprise, we've got some agreement there!

As long as we stick to the issues, keep our priorities honest, and leave this other stuff, intergenerational and otherwide, out of it.

P.S. We're the ones who are going to have to do it, because "they", that's NO ONE, is going to do it for us.

[Two Americas]

100. I agree

Can we overlook the indiscretions and inaccuracies, and support what is powerful in what the OP said? Of course people who were not there don't understand the intricacies of the 60's and will make mistakes when they try to characterize it. Younger people will sooner get to a clearer understanding of the politics of the 60's if we show a willingness to criticize ourselves and to tolerate condemnation of what the movement became, and how it damaged and crippled the political left, then they will if we are defensive and get our hackles up.

Had we succeeded politically, we would not feel the need to cling to the image of ourselves from the 60's. That is the truth we are avoiding. Now the challenge is to rejoin the struggle anew, and this time go for results - kick ass as the OP says - rather than going for being right about things and defending our personal choices and stances.

[kevsand]

24. Tom Joad: I been thinking about us, too...

...about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together and yelled -

Ma Joad: Tommy, they'd drag you out and cut you down just like they done to Casey.

Tom: They'd drag me anyways. Sooner or later they'll get me one way or another. Till then -

Ma: Tommy, you're not aimin' to kill nobody.

Tom: No, Ma, not that. That ain't it. Just, as long as I'm an outlaw anyways, maybe I can do something, just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out that clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.

Ma: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? They could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom: Maybe it's like Casey says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then -

Ma: Then what, Tom?

Tom: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready and where people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build. I'll be there, too.

Ma: I don't understand it, Tom.

Tom: Me, neither, Ma, but - just somethin' I been thinkin' about.

[Joe Chi Minh]

34. Great passage. Was that from the Grapes of Wrath?

[kevsand]

105. Yes, the film version.

It's always reminded me a lot of this quote from Eugene Debs:

"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

[Joe Chi Minh]

158. The Christian tenet of the Mystical Body of Christ, of which Christ is the head,

also in the Scriptures, metaphorically, the True Vine, of which we are the branches, corresponds pretty precisely to this.

As human beings, we all have a competitive instinct in one direction or another, but it has always struck me as curious that Christians should covet an elevated status in Heaven, since we will all be members, cells, of the Mystical Body of Christ, with our own created, but sublimated souls, vivified by his own Holy spirit. Kind of spiritual clones of himself, "other Christs", as Scripture puts it, though obviously uniquely individual, at the same time. To me, it seems that the ultimate honour would be to be at the bottom of the pile helping to support the rest of mankind, anonymously to all except God. In fact, I believe that is pretty much what is happening here below, now, in this life. The Anawin, the poor, because they chose, however preternaturally, unworldly priorities, are the real giants. Similarly, Saint Joseph is seldom referred to in either the scriptures or the liturgy, yet the Church long ago designated him as Patron of the Universal Church.

This certainly compounds the iniquity of oppression of the poor, as intuited by our mammalian compassion, and which was designated by the Church, however unwittingly in conscious terms, as a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance. The poor are slandered as worthless, when they are the definitive Children of Light and their detractors, the devil's own spawn. Our salvation lies in identifying with less worldly, more endemically spiritual people and their welfare.

After all, God would not have created his less worldly children, in order for them to be exploited and cruelly treated by the more worldly, would He? It always tickles me when I read in the Gospels about the Pharisees completely "losing the heed", when, in response to a controversy among themselves, the people point out to them some elementary truth... "What? Would you presume to teach us!" It happened a couple of times at least: once with a group of the people, when the Pharisees described them as a "rabble" the "devil's spawn!" The very term Jesus used to describe them, adding that "they would die in their sins." Another time, when the patience of the young man blind from birth was cured by Jesus, and he asked them, "Why? do you want to become his followers, too?" Great outbursts of fury and outrage, much rending of garments, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Interestingly, in view of your reference to "all living things", Christian scripture also describes the whole of creation as being in travail together with mankind, until the Parousia. And this corresponds with a more recent postulation by a Jesuit palaeontologist called Teilhard de Chardin, of a Cosmic Christ.

[iamahaingttta]

25. What the hell are talking about?

I mean, seriously... what have you been smoking?

[Warpy]

29. Uh, hippies didn't vote for Reagan. That was the second cohort

of Boomers, the ones who were too young for the 60s and who came of age just in time for platform shoes and mirror balls--DISCO. Those were the ones who spent their teen years being lectured to by parents about those horrible grubby hippies and took it to heart, settling for glitz instead of justice.

I suggest you take your misinformed crap someplace they misspell "hippie" the way you do, a dead giveaway to somebody who wasn't there and is talking through his, er, hat.

We need both, by the way, Joad's prison tested working man's smarts along with hippie idealism. Neither will work well without the other. We need both to drive a stake into conservatism's shriveled, hardened heart.

[SeattleGirl]

31. And even then, not all of us who were more in the "disco age" voted

for Reagan.

Not that it mattered much, though. They announced that Carter had conceded to Reagan about 2 minutes before I went to vote after work. x(

(I still voted for Carter though....)

[Warpy]

32. Reagan was elected by an unhappy coalition

of old folks, jingoists, rich folks, bigots, religious nuts, and the greedy who couldn't do simple math.

That left hippies plumb out.

[zanne]

40. There were right-wing boomers, too.

They're the ones who grew up selfish and gave us the "Republican revolution".

[acmavm]

33. Doped out hippies screaming 'me me me'? You are an ignoramus when

it comes to that generation, aren't you?

[Joe Chi Minh]

35. He thinks the business types are wrapped up in the Second Commandment.

[SammyWinstonJack]

38. I don't think it's hippies this poster means to rag on. I think it's the boomer generation,

in general. That me me me is a dead giveaway. It's the usual crap from some here on DU who think the boomers are to blame for EVERYTHING screwed up since st raygun. :shrug: IT'S ALL OUR FAULT! :silly:

[Two Americas]

84. the generalization is accurate as a generalization

The post-Woodstock movement, which quickly swept the entire age group and has dominated our culture ever since is what the OP is talking about. That was a surrender, a retreat, from the political action earlier in the decade, and we have been retreating ever since. I think the OP sees us more accurately than we see ourselves.

"Boomers" and "hippies" as words used to describe that movement and that group - I can forgive the OP that. Any words used to identify the faction that controls modern liberalism and the party make people angry and defensive.

The hippy movement, which took over starting in 1969 and overhauled spiritual, cultural and fashion ideas, was not a logical outcome of the political revolution of the 60's, it was a negation and sabotage of it.

I think it was motivated by cowardice, not enlightenment.

[acmavm]

106. I don't know what crowd you hung out with but they must have been a

thorough waste of time.

The people I knew/know were quite different.

[Two Americas]

129. Peter Werbe, John Sinclair, Albert Cleage

A few of the people I knew and worked with; Peter Werbe was the editor of the Fifth Estate in Detroit, and a leader in the Detroit Mobilization Committee to End the War, John Sinclair the founder of the MC 5. They were neighbors and friends. Joan Baez was a reliable supporter of a variety of revolutionary actions, and I had the opportunity to spend time with her and her husband on a few occasions. Albert Cleage was a local minister and Black leader, who brought Malcolm to Detroit to speak and was a powerful and eloquent speaker himself and Black Nationalist leader. Luke Tripp was a Black Panther leader in Detroit. John Williams was active in DRUM, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

I did not find any of them to be a waste of time, but other than Sinclair none of them were "hippies" and viewed the hippy movement with some suspicion.

Between 1968 and 1972 millions abandoned the political movement, as politics fell out of fashion and New Age spiritual pursuits took the place of politics. Before that, there were few if any "hippies" in Detroit.

The following excerpts from an article by Robert H. Mast describe what is happening in Detroit today. Where are those hippies who claimed to be concerned about justice and equality? I never see them. I haven't seen them in over 30 years.

"Detroit today, now eleventh in size, is the poorest large city in the country and has the highest poverty rate. While the official unemployment rate for the state of Michigan is 7.1 percent, Detroit's rate is over 25 percent and the rate for its Black youth hovers around 70 percent. This produces soaring rates in infant mortality, crime, and violence. Thousands of households have had their water, gas, and electricity turned off because they cannot pay their bills. A vast portion of the city is a wasteland of abandoned buildings and vacant space where thriving industrial and commercial infrastructure once existed. Most occupied neighborhoods are clearly poverty stricken. Ironically, Detroiters pay one of the highest real estate taxes in Michigan. Like Delphi, and possibly General Motors, the city government is heading toward bankruptcy with a current annual budget shortfall of $105 million. The city is laying off workers like mad, privatizing all possible remaining city services, and selling off or losing control of public assets like the zoo, museums, and one of the best water systems in the world that profitably supplies water to most of the metro population of some four million. The public education system is tattered beyond description, students now walk out of schools to protest their decaying infrastructures, and privatized charter schools are the newest class-based fad. Hospitals and clinics are closing."

"Detroit today is home for some 850,000 Blacks (about 90 percent of the population), making it probably the most segregated large city in the U.S. Expectedly, this population elects Black people to public office to officiate over the contradictions of urban decay and increasingly rigid class stratification. It's not unlike other large cities where people of color have become the majority."

"Detroit has had a steadfast and proud tradition of working-class left activism in the labor, civil rights, and other movements. Along with a powerful union movement led by the UAW, Detroit spawned such groups as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the white left-radical People Against Racism. The city was considered by some in the 60s to be the "revolutionary capital of America." But this is history. Today Detroit is very different, with a near-impotent UAW, a nearly-total population of color who are aging and increasingly led by women, a state of relative joblessness, a rapidly declining quality of life, and no hope that capital and its cronies have any intent or ability to recreate the city."

"However, Detroit still has an activist grassroots core that swears by the axiom that new material conditions require revised tactics. Activists of this grassroots core are in the process of theoretical and organizational development. Their view is that the disappearance of the means of production from Detroit, along with the rapidly evolving electronic mode of production and the cynical aloofness of capital toward the working-class condition, has produced a new class in working (or nonworking) Detroit who must take leadership in the coming class battle. Not a lumpen proletariat, this new class has been displaced by capital and left to wither. Race is only a crucial subtext in this battle. No longer can Detroit's citizens rely on union strength, white liberalism, or 'enlightened' capital -- all pages from the past. At the practical level, the core leadership emerging from this new class evinces confidence because of their personal characteristics: they are nice and moral people, they are strong and confident, they are wise and deeply experienced. Though a Detroit grassroots core, they are a microcosm (in an extreme urban trauma) of innumerable cases throughout the United States, which I have great hopes will become agents of political struggle and change."

excerpts from...

Survival Politics in Decaying Detroit
by Robert H. Mast

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/mast021106.html

About Albert Cleage -

During the 1960s, many religious leaders, led by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, sharply criticized the methods and advances claimed by the civil rights movement. By far the most vocal Christian minister advocating a more radical approach to obtaining civil rights was Albert Cleage, Jr.

Throughout the 1960s, Cleage was active in issues of education and black political leadership. By the late 1960s, his vision of Christianity had radicalized alongside the disappointments of the civil rights movement and rise of Black Power. He launched the Black Christian National Movement in 1967, which called for black churches to reinterpret Jesus' teachings to suit the social, economic, and political needs of black people. That Easter, Cleage unveiled an 18-foot painting of a Black Madonna, and renamed Central Congregational the Shrine of the Black Madonna.

In 1968, following a year of racial unrest in Detroit, Cleage published The Black Messiah, which detailed his vision of Jesus as a black revolutionary leader. In 1972, he published his second book, Black Christian Nationalism, and inaugurated the Black Christian Nationalist Movement as a separate denomination. The name was later changed to the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church (PAOCC), and Cleage changed his own name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, meaning "liberator, holy man, savior of the nation" in Swahili. The PAOCC includes churches in Atlanta, GA, and Houston, TX, several cultural centers, bookstores, community service centers, and a working farm.

http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/albert_cleage.html

Dreamers: the friendship of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Walter Reuther

UAW President Walter Reuther saw civil rights as a moral issue important to the continued success of American democracy and U.S. labor and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed the support of labor unions would be an important factor in winning the fight minorities faced. As a result, their philosophies spawned a close friendship between the two.

When King began planning the Walk to Freedom March that took place in July of 1963, he wanted as many unionists as possible marching with him in Detroit "To help him, Reuther gave King the use of an office in Solidarity house, UAW headquarters. His office was located on the fourth floor, if I recall correctly," said Bluestone."King used it while he was planning the march in Detroit and the March on Washington that took place the next month." Detroit's march was mammoth, with 200,000 people marching down Woodward Avenue led by King and Reuther. It ended at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream Speech" for the first time. According to Dr. Steve Babson, labor historian, at Wayne State University "King planned the march in Detroit to test the waters for the upcoming march on Washington. They were hoping to get 250,000 to 300,000 people to march on Washington and wanted to see how many would show up in Detroit before planning the bigger march. They were surprised at the numbers they got. People came from all over the country."

"My favorite story about King and Reuther," Bluestone said, "happened after the march on Washington in '63. Reuther was giving his speech at the foot of the Washington Monument; he was the only white person who spoke that day. I was backstage when I overheard a conversation between two black women who were active in the movement. One said to the other, 'Who's that white guy?' The other one said, "Don't you know who that is? That's Walter Reuther. He's as good a man as Martin Luther King."

http://www.uaw.org/events/mlk/02/mlk02.html

[scarletwoman]

130. That's a great bunch of reading, thank you for posting it! (nt)

[acmavm]

153. The you should know better if this is true.You apparently didn't

abandon your politics or your political viewpoint. Neither did I. And only two of the people that I knew from my 'youth' and rabidly political days have changed. The rest are as they always were.

Don't fool yourself and don't pat yourself on the back so much. You aren't the Lone Ranger out there fighting the bad guys by yourself.

[Rex]

37. Punk gave us Obama?

Are you series? I want whatever you are smoking! ASAP!

[zanne]

39. If you weren't there, you just don't know.

The "hippies" you talk about did not call themselves "hippies", for example. The media gave them that name. We called ourselves "freaks". Y'know, the "freaks" who brought about social change by caring about the environment, the food we eat and feed our children, the ideas of communal living and sharing of resources, the ideas of empathy and compassion, not to mention the arts that were completely transformed by us "freaks" and lastly, the guts to say no to the Vietnam War.

Don't condemn what you know nothing about.

[Two Americas]

90. I was there

I was there and I agree with the OP. You are describing the movement accurately I think - "caring about the environment, the food we eat and feed our children, the ideas of communal living and sharing of resources, the ideas of empathy and compassion, not to mention the arts."

However, it was a cultural movement, and from a practical political standpoint that movement destroyed the political left and we suffer from that today.

I argued the same thing in 1966. The eventual triumph of the cultural movement came when people backed down, abandoned political action, and retreated into New Age spirituality and self-actualization. That is how I and many other political activists saw it at the time, and that is how I see it today. I think it is accurate to generalize and say that this cultural and spiritual transformation is the most remarkable and identifying feature of the boomer generation, so I have no problem with the OP's generalizations about us.

[Two Americas]

46. now we're talking

:applause:

K and R.

[SeattleGirl]

48. Have you read all the comments?

The OP is full of generalizations and misinformation. Surely you aren't cheering for that?

[Two Americas]

49. people are taking this too seriously

I am an aging boomer and "hippie" myself, and I am amazed that people are taking offense at the OP's remarks.

I also agree with the OP that "the hippies" have won, have taken control over the left and liberalism, and that we need more Tom Joad and less hippy.

If the OP is a younger person, I will GLADLY trade enduring their offensive remarks about my generation in exchange for an appreciation of Tom Joad. Gladly. What the hell do my personal hurt feelings, or my emotional commitment to my social and cultural identity or personal preferences mean when compared to the life and death struggle that the working class has been forced into, and the serious work we have ahead of us?

Given a choice, I think many liberals would rather defend their personal cultural and social identities and preferences than fight for the traditional principles and ideals of the party when it comes down to that, and that is illustrated by this thread. And it does in fact come down to a choice between the two - they are mutually incompatible.

[SeattleGirl]

50. My feelings aren't hurt.

I just object to the kinds of generalizations posted by the OP.

I'm glad he seems to appreciate Tom Joad. I just think it can be done without lumping an entire generation into one category.

[Two Americas]

56. I know

I see what you are saying, I just think it is a relatively minor offense. I also think that there is a deep split in the party, and that the battle for the party is between the dominant faction - "hippy" or New Age modern liberalism - and those who see politics as a matter of power and economics, not a matter sentiments and personal preferences and culture war issues.

If from the OP's perspective, the weak and spiritualized modern liberal movement looks like "hippies" or "boomers" I can live with that, and I agree with the OP that we need more ass-kicking true left wing activists rather than cultural warriors, and that the difference between the two is real and important.

[scarletwoman]

74. It's the divisiveness that's objectionable. Personally, I think the OP doesn't have clue when it

comes to "hippies" or "boomers" or the 60s or whatever else he's whinging about. He's just spouting off the same pre-digested rubbish that's gone around for years, thanks to the right wing media megaphone.

It's not impressive material in the first place, and it's certainly not some startling new and original thought on the part of the OP. Not to mention that broadbrush condemnations and wholly innaccurate generalizations do not make for a persuasive argument.

I'd even agree with the OP to some degree in regard to the Tom Joad part of his argument. But he's already slandered me and declared me his enemy, so why should I pay any attention to what he has to say?

And I also think you are wrong about how you're reading this:

. What the hell do my personal hurt feelings, or my emotional commitment to my social and cultural identity or personal preferences mean when compared to the life and death struggle that the working class has been forced into, and the serious work we have ahead of us?

Emotional attachment to "social and cultural identity" is a universal human trait; so of course, when your entire group is being attacked, there is an instinctive protective reaction.

However, I think it's something deeper and bigger than that. It is our hippie committment to truth. We, who experienced the history firsthand, have an obligation to hold the truth of those events clearly in our memories and teach our stories to our children and speak out against ALL attempts to distort or revise or refashion the truth of those days.

I don't feel his insults on a personal level, I just see more sad evidence of how pervasively the forces of the Right have infected our entire national consciousness with falsehoods that become accepted as "reality".

We old DU hippies are hard-working antibodies, rushing to dis-infect the body politic by speaking our truth. It's not personal, it's our duty.

Lastly, given a choice, I'd LOVE to see the younger generations get busy and change the world like we tried to do. More than anything, I'd LOVE to see them succeed. And I'd love to help, of course, 'cuz I ain't dead yet, and I've lived my whole life for changing the world.

But I'm sorry, children who swear at their grandmas and call them names and throw spitwads at them are rude, and I do not care to make common cause with rude people.

sw

[SeattleGirl]

76. Well said, sw.

The OP comes across as someone who is of the "We are good, you are bad" kind of person, which is BS. While there are fashions, trends, issues, etc., that can be used to describe the era of each generation, they do not DEFINE them. As I said in another part of this thread, I was in grade school and junior high in the 60's. I was definitely aware of the Vietnam war(we ate dinner every night while watching war footage and listening to body counts), and the protests (which I agreed with), I was wearing my dresses and going to math and English classes, not living in Haight-Ashbury (and even there, not everyone was part of the "great" unwashed).

[scarletwoman]

81. Thank you. (nt)

[Two Americas]

80. understood

Divisiveness is not a good thing, however I think the OP is talking about an existing divide, not creating one.

I also think that the outrage expressed whenever the boomers, hippies, New Agers, suburbanites, professionals, and dominant liberals are challenged is way out of proportion to the alleged offense.

Certainly younger people are prone to make generalizations about the older generation that can be unfair, and yes the right wing has been in a 35 year battle against "hippies."

However, what I am criticizing about hippies today I was criticizing about hippies in 1966 and I think that the validity of those criticisms is as strong as ever.

There is no doubt that millions of people converted to being hippies almost overnight in the late 60's, and that led to a collapse of the political left from which we have yet to recover. It is also true that the hippies won as much as the hippy movement ever could win, and that we are living with the consequences of that.

Had I not been saying this for over 40 years, since long before the right wing propaganda about it, it would be a different thing. But the hippy movement, a cultural and spiritual and lifestyle movement, prevailed, and it destroyed the political left and still dominates liberalism to this day.

[scarletwoman]

92. Personally, I think you are confusing what the mainstream co-opted from the hippie movement,

for the movement itself. You're mistaking the ripples for the original tossed pebble. You know, it didn't take more than 2 years for hippie-ness to begin to be commericalized into the mass culture -- the hippies themselves didn't do it, Madison Avenue and Hollywood did it.

My friends and I were appalled about it -- watching it go down, and there was nothing you could do about it except preserve our own truth.

In any case, it's obvious that without a definition of "hippie" agreed upon between us, our arguments are of limited value.

Your statement:

But the hippy movement, a cultural and spiritual and lifestyle movement, prevailed, and it destroyed the political left and still dominates liberalism to this day.

is not at ALL how I perceive the place of "hippies" in the political landscape.

The hippies I know, myself included, stayed leftist and radical and have only a very tenous alliance with the Democratic party, much less being the "dominant" strain of liberalism.

Sure, the commercialized, mass-marketed hippie fad stuff infiltrated the culture at large -- and men in suits made huge piles of money out of it. Gurus and cystal wavers cleaned up, too -- but again, the size of the phenomena was due to the affluent and the dillitantes finding it fashionable.

I refuse to call myself a "liberal" anymore, because I think current-day U.S. liberalism is largely useless as a vehicle of social transformation or political power.

That's not MY fault! "Liberals" never want to listen to us "dirty fucking hippies" (as coined by atrios, I believe). Liberals have spent years going to great pains to ensure that they are untainted by leftism. They run for the fainting couch if you bring up the Class War.

If liberalism WERE actually dominated by the "hippies", Reagan would NEVER have won. The political left collapsed because the nice clean Liberals took over, and purged the leftists and the messages of the leftists. And what else remained of the left was largely done in by COINTELPRO, or by drugs for those who lost the strength to keep up the battle.

Many survivors just quietly faded into the background. But we still keep the fires of social justice and societal/cultural/political transformation burning in our hearts.

Peace,
sw

[havocmom]

94. Most eloquent, SW. And pretty much how I recall the era and the aftermath also.

Thank you for your clear words.

[scarletwoman]

107. Thank you for your thanks!

:D

[Two Americas]

96. bingo!

Excellent post scarletwoman, thanks.

Yes, of course I am talking about "what the mainstream co-opted from the hippie movement." Absolutely.

You and I were there, and we know the difference between the pebble and the ripples. But we can't blame younger people for not making the distinction. We are close enough to it to remember what was true and authentic, and as you say "many survivors just quietly faded into the background. But we still keep the fires of social justice and societal/cultural/political transformation burning in our hearts." That is how I would describe myself, and I think it applies to you as well - although I am not quiet, fading, nor in the background lol.

But the younger people can't make these distinctions, and as we performers say "you are only as good as your last performance." If we are going to re-kindle the spirit of the 60's for younger people, we must accept their condemnation of what the movement became, and what the real world results of that are. We must allow our generation to stand condemned, just as we asked that of the generation before us.

"I refuse to call myself a 'liberal' anymore, because I think current-day U.S. liberalism is largely useless as a vehicle of social transformation or political power."

Amen! Couldn't agree more.

"Sure, the commercialized, mass-marketed hippie fad stuff infiltrated the culture at large -- and men in suits made huge piles of money out of it. Gurus and crystal wavers cleaned up, too -- but again, the size of the phenomena was due to the affluent and the dilettantes finding it fashionable."

Yes.

The OP stepped in it with their sloppy and careless use of language, but let's not be too quick to judge and reject younger people for errors like that.

I remember back in the 60's, there were socialists and radicals from the 30's who resented being lumped in with the establishment by us younger activists. That was easily overcome because those older radicals had a foundation of political ideas, rather than cultural ideas. Our job now with the younger people is to overlook the slights and insults, step out of our cultural bias, and talk politics with them, not culture.

Thanks again for your thoughtful and honest post.

[scarletwoman]

104. Thank you for the compliments. Reluctantly, I find I must dispute yet one more point.

This:

...we must accept their condemnation of what the movement became, and what the real world results of that are. We must allow our generation to stand condemned, just as we asked that of the generation before us.

Sorry, as long-ago recovered Catholic, I am really quite wary of this "condemnation" language. I mean, ugh -- isn't that what they did in Mao's Cultural Revolution?

Anyway -- and do correct me if I'm wrong -- it sounds like you're saying we should shrug off the victory of false information over the truth that we know, stoicly take our licks and confess our unloyal thoughts.

Myself, I see it as a perfect teaching opportunity -- explain the step-by-step process by which the genuine left was rendered powerless and how the parasitic changeling, Liberalism, was left in its place.

Wouldn't an analysis of what really went down and how it happened be far more useful to the project of building a new and better left, than flinging curses?

I mean sure, I can say, "Hey, wow, I'm like SO sorry we screwed everything up back then -- *sob* how can you ever forgive us!?! How can we ever forgive ourselves!?!"

But I'd much rather say, "You really need to know how infiltration works; we've seen it firsthand; we'd like to help you avoid our mistakes."

I suppose you could combine the two: "... we'd like to help you avoid our -- *Curses be upon our heads! Mea Culpa Mea Culpa* -- mistakes."

Peace?
sw

[Two Americas]

108. agreed

"Condemnation" was a poor choice of words.

I agree with everything in your post.

[scarletwoman]

109. I'm beginning to think

that you're getting too easy... ;)

I'm glad that we agree, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to hone my own arguments.

Peace and Love, man,
sw
:hippie:

[Two Americas]

121. thanks

I try to push myself and others to continuously look at things in new ways, from a different perspective. I think we are in a dire crisis, worsening by the minute, and we cannot afford the luxury of complacency.

I very much appreciate you contributions to DU and your patience with me. :hug:

[scarletwoman]

128. This has been a very enjoyable exchange.

The appreciation is mutual.

:hug:
sw

[mitchtv]

112. I'd rather say " why the fuck don't you show up

when a street demo is called?" I only see gray hair when I go. I also blame the generation that had not died off in 1980 for Reagan. Even blaming the boomers for that fiasco is pushing it. WE were not in charge yet. The Korean war crowd/WW2 gave us Reagan.

[scarletwoman]

116. I like your version, too. But I have seen evidence of some young'uns in the street.

Frankly, at this stage of the game, street demonstrations strike me as pretty ineffective, except for giving people something to do.

I think what we need most of all are some new ideas for effective action.

sw

[Two Americas]

131. wrong demonstrations?

Millions have been in the streets recently, including the largest political demonstration ever in the history of the city of Los Angeles, demanding equality and justice. This went largely unnoticed by the white liberals and progressives.

One of the most stunning and bizarre disconnections I have ever seen in politics was recently when millions were marching, and at the same time I heard and read white liberals saying "what oh what will it take to get the stupid sheeple out into the streets?"

I have not seen many white-haired people at those marches - haven't seen much of anything that was white at those marches. There have been many, many young people participating.

I also noticed many young people at the Million Man March a few years back.

The focus by upscale and relatively privileged white liberals on a grab bag of isolated causes will always be limited in its appeal, and blaming the people for that is a political mistake.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

47. Steinbeck went on to support LBJ's war in Vietnam.

Much to his infamy

[Two Americas]

67. not relevant

Steinbeck was no far-leftist. It is only in comparison to modern liberalism that he seems far to the left. Today we have people who are "against the war" as more of a personal statement than a political statement - when we don't even have a war going on - and judge that to be the "left" while at the same time being deeply conservative on issues of power and economics.

Steinbeck was wrong about the Viet Nam war. In the modern liberal way of assessing politics, he took the wrong personal moral stance, and is therefore to be rejected as a potential hero or a guru, as a "like-minded" friend in the cultural wars. But that tells us more about the lack of political sophistication of modern liberals than it does about Steinbeck.

[dawgman]

51. GOTDAMN RIGHT.

I can't stand the (admittedly corporate stereotypical) image of the dope smoking hippie talking about free love but not doing anything for anyone. Almost an Ayn Randish "enlightened self-interest" philosophy.

Give me someone who will fight in and lead the revolution. I would much prefer Che to Leary.

[SeattleGirl]

52. :sigh:

You say you can't stand the image, yet you still seem to buy into it.

[dawgman]

53. Quite honestly

the stereotype has been reinforced by MANY friends who have followed this path and followed the corporate stereotype. Therefore I have doubts as to whether anyone can get passed the awful stereotype that pervades the archetype. I would rather have the stereotype of the Wobbly style rabble rouser than some dope smoking wimp that doesn't get the job done. (and no in the 60's you hippies didn't get the job done. Peace only goes so far before the threat of violence is needed to enforce the threat. If hippies could go to the next step if needed I would support...alas.....

[SeattleGirl]

54. I was never a hippie. I was in grade school and junior high in the 60's.

That's what I mean by generalizations.

[dawgman]

57. look obviously there are generalisations....

unfortunately, the modern hippy was raised on those generalities. They don't know it can be different. And they are largely worthless. That is why I will not call for a "hippy ressurection". I would be ineffectual to say the least.

Honestly a person wearing a suit and leading people fearlessly is one of the most powerful images in this country. And to be frank that ain't the modern hippie.

[SeattleGirl]

60. Okay, define "modern hippy" for me.

This is not snark. I really want to know what you mean.

[dawgman]

63. Where to begin...

how about the children of privilege that attended college with me and as a direct rejection or "daddy" decided to become one of the unwashed masses....literally. Those same people who really have no idea what the "movement" was really all about. Those who would give blank stares when confronted with the names "stokely Carmichael," "Huey P. Long" "James Rowan" or indeed the IWW, Wobblies or the LCDO. Those who would argue more for a libertarian state than for a socialist or egalitarian state.

Unfortunately the "movement" has been dominated by these types.

[SeattleGirl]

71. I don't know that I agree that the movement was dominated by

the kind of people you talk about, but I see what you mean.

I also think you can find those types in any generation, and in many groups: the kind who join without knowing WHY. The kind who join solely as a way to rebel against whatever they think is worth rebelling against (whether it actually is or not).

It's like a few years ago, in the WTO/G8 protests in Seattle, which unfortunately turned into the Battle in Seattle. While I think that a lot of the trouble was started by the police, I also think a lot of it was started by the young anarchists who came to town, yet a lot of them who ended up getting interviewed had no freakin' idea what the WTO was, or what the G8 was. They didn't want to protest any of that; they only wanted to spread havoc because they thought it was "fun" or "cool" or whatever.

However, they didn't dominate the protests; what they did was scream louder than anyone else, the police and the M$M were all over it, and the true message got lost. In that way, the kind of hippy you are speaking of did dominate the message, and thus became the message. But if you look at the wider picture, (which we don't always take the time to do), I think you will find a broader message. People who wanted peace instead of war, who wanted the homeless and the hungry taken care of, etc., were, I think, far more populous during that time than the more prominent-on-your-TV screen unwashed masses.

[dawgman]

148. I was at the G8 /WTO riots in Seattle

and yes the police started it. They pushed first.

And yes there were far fewer "trouble-makers" than non. I recall huge amounts of UNION marchers, ethnic marchers, and yes a few pseudo hippies.

I wouldn't consider the majority of people involved in the anti-globalization movement to be hippies. They are more in the vein of the Weather Underground or RAF, a little more militant.

I am much more comfortable with a movement centered on class struggle at the global level, environmentalism and sustainability than a notion of some sort of utopian society centered on drum circles and marijuana smoke. (and yes I know I am being an ass with the last statement, just trying to keep it light hearted.)

[Two Americas]

82. clear and powerful analysis

I couldn't agree with you more on this.

We need a disclaimer" "no aging hippies will ne harmed in the overthrowing of the 60's sacred cow." We all have so much to gain and almost nothing to lose by challenging the dominant ideas and forces and players in modern liberalism.

Of course the movement has been dominated by apolitical culture war types, people from relative privilege and ease, or those admiring and emulating those from relative privilege and ease.

It is very perceptive of you to see that modern liberalism is in reality a variant on libertarianism.

[Two Americas]

64. a great article about this

The New Age Racket and the Left
By Justin E. H. Smith

<snip>

I would like to discuss that movement often covered by the umbrella term 'New Age', and to argue, specifically, that New Agers should be ashamed of themselves, for abandoning all concern with those goals that have traditionally served as the driving force of progressive politics, like social justice, equality, the end of oppression, etc., and allowing -- nay, aiding -- the cynical and opportunistic power-mongers to make the world as disappointing a place as it currently is.

Before this polemic begins in earnest, perhaps it will be best to sketch out a definition of the concept that concerns us. By 'New Age' I mean to refer to any world-view that:

1. is decidedly postmodern, in that it picks and chooses from vastly older traditions those features it finds useful;

2. is sloppily multiculturalist, in that it levels out and denies legitimate distinctions between the traditions from which it borrows;

3. is individualistic, in that it takes spirituality to be a 'quest', and sees the ultimate end of this quest as self-fulfillment (however much it may borrow from traditions that emphasize self-overcoming or dissolution of the ego, even at times insisting that it shares this goal);

4. is nostalgic, in that it maintains that with the rise of modernity, humanity experienced the loss of a distinctly 'spiritual' disposition, in contrast with the rational disposition;
5. in large part as a consequence of its suspicion of rationality, is also uncritical as a matter of principle;

6. portrays itself as apolitical, or, better, as tapping into a reality so profound that any explanation of it in terms of the social, economic, and historical plights of its adherents can be safely dismissed as irrelevant.

I propose, in contrast to the last of these, that the New Age movement can only be understood politically. In an atmosphere, moreover, in which one rarely come across a self-identified anarchist, socialist, environmentalist, or progressive who will not also willingly identify his or her star sign and proceed to expatiate on the finer details this totemic affiliation reveals about his or her personality, I must add that it is exceedingly urgent that we come to a political understanding of how it has come to this, and then proceed to purge this disgraceful tendency utterly from our ranks, either through re-education or, for the intractable, banishment.

That's right. It's time for all of us who consider ourselves even mildly progressive to get at least a little bit Maoist on the occultists' asses, confident in the singular correctness of the scientific world-view, and intolerant of 'difference' when all this manages to give us is muddle-headed obscurantism.

It is not for nothing that I bring up Mao here. For New Ageism represents but one of the two possible outcomes of the 1960s. The other possible outcome, unflinching revolution against the status quo in society and its consequent radical transformation, fizzled out in the first decade of the 1970s, as all those Aquarians who, around 1967, joined up for the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, quickly realized they did not want to go all that far in pushing the dawning of a new age after all, by, say, joining violent revolutionary groups like the Weathermen and Black Panthers in the US, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, and the Red Brigade in France, but were unable to come up with any more creative, non-violent ways of transforming society. The age of Aquarius, in short, won out over the dictatorship of the proletariat. Santa Cruz emerged victorious over Beijing. But why, precisely, crystals? Why this feel-good Buddhism lite hocked by the Dalai Lama? Why the insistence from just about every whitebread American you meet that they have a bit of Native American blood, and thus have some privileged insight into animals, or dreams, or life and death? New Age, in the particular form it came to have in the 1970s, was the result of the confluence of two distinct trends extending back to the 19th century. One was the proliferation of curiosity about paranormal phenomena, such as animal magnetism, telepathy, and communication with the dead, that so fascinated Victorian parlor company. Early on, some of these programs of investigation were legitimate, and it is only because they were pursued that we have been able to determine as much as we have (and we've only just begun) about the boundary between sane and meaningful discourse on the one hand and bullshit on the other. But for the most part, they drew the attention they did because the positive results that establishment science is able to come up with are generally quite dull, and certainly won't do as entertainment.

<snip>

In short, the Age of Aquarius did not pop out of nowhere. Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, and Bronislaw Malinowski all played their parts, and in an era when, as the popular narrative (of American history anyway) has it, the vast majority of people were still good, simple, rule-following, God-fearing folk.

But all of this is old hat. What has not been sufficiently emphasized, in my view, is the way in which the victory of the Age of Aquarius over the dictatorship of the proletariat, New Age over revolutionism, was easily, happily, accommodated by those in power. Go ahead, transform yourselves. Absorb all the energy you can from that crystal around your neck. Just don't try to change the world, or take control of the means of production, and we won't seek to stamp you out. While its adepts see it as an 'elevation' or 'liberation', in fact New Age is a retreat and a capitulation.

Indeed, self-fulfillment is not just easily accommodated within the system against which the counterculture initially set itself up in opposition. It is a positive goldmine. Browse at an airport bookstore on a stopover. Look at the titles on the New York Times bestseller list. It would take a naïveté I can't even begin to comprehend to fail to notice that spirituality -- what passes for Eastern spirituality, in particular -- is by now a commodity like any other. This phenomenon is now being treated by a very small number of social scientists. The French sociologist Raphaël Liogier, for instance, in his Bouddhisme mondialisé: une perspective sociologique sur la globalisation du religieux (Ellipses, 2004; sorry, Republicans, there's no translation yet), shows how the globalization and commodification of this religion promotes an odd combination of a gratifying sense of planetary citizenship with the same sort of ego-inflating, success-driven advice one finds in those troubling self-help/business paperbacks that sell so well, like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

But why call it Buddhism, if it's all made up anyway? Why not impose the New Age ethos on our own, autochthonous Christianity? Again, it will help to recall two of the features of New Agery listed above: its sloppy multiculturalism, and its knee-jerk suspicion of whatever is 'Western' (which, Ethiopian and Armenian Orthodoxy, Latin American Liberation Theology, etc., notwithstanding, for some reason includes Christianity), as being too 'rational' and thus insufficiently 'spiritual'.

No, to find any authentic spiritual sentiment, or at least to market a product with the promise of authentic spiritual transformation, we must climb the Himalayas, or at least imagine ourselves on such a journey while flying to a meeting at the Kansas City branch office. The Dalai Lama serves as the best example of this tendency, and is likely also the best-selling product the New Age industry has yet put on the market. This is particularly troubling when we consider the fact that the Dalai Lama is, among other things, a political leader, whose movement has been conferred a legitimacy beyond scrutiny simply in virtue of his purported holiness.

What is so worthy about the Tibetan cause? How many if its supporters can really say? I'm not saying that it is not a worthy cause; many movements for national liberation are. But what about the Basque Country, Corsica, and Turkish Kurdistan? Nobody believes that continued occupation of these national homelands involves any sort of spiritual injustice, only the mundane political kind. This is all it should take, of course, to earn the global community's opprobrium, yet Richard Gere and the Beastie Boys remain deathly silent, for these other national-liberation struggles lack a leader sporting a robe and claiming to be a divinity. Meanwhile, his Holiness jets around, meeting with world leaders and persuading them to support his cause- including George W. Bush, whom the Dalai Lama deemed to be, like himself, a 'very spiritual person'. And even through all this, he is seen as being somehow beyond politics. This is the great illusion that sustains the New Age racket: that, because it is so spiritual, it is beyond all serious scrutiny. The proper comportment towards it is with bowed head, not open eyes.

At best, then, New Age is a lucrative side venture of neoliberalism, lining the pockets of those crafty enough to package spiritual fulfillment as a marketable product while leaving the spiritually hungry as unsated as ever. At worst, though, it is the expression of something altogether more sinister. Rootedness in the earth, a return to pure and authentic folkways, the embrace of irrationalism, the conviction that there is an authentic way of being beyond politics, the uncritical substitution of group- identification for self-knowledge, are all of them basic features of right- wing ideology.

Who is it that is out of touch with the earth, uprooted, and thus responsible for our own experience of ourselves as uprooted? The right-winger has a quick answer: it is those other people living uninvited among us, who have no homeland of their own and so have to dwell on our soil. Who or what is to blame for our loss of our old ways? The rise of the modern, rational state apparatus, with its love of science and deafness to poetry. Who or what has torn our people apart, dividing worker from baron, denying that we all share the same blood? The politics of class conflict.

In the case of Germany in the 1920s, it was the Jews who were the rootless intruders on German soil and threatened by their presence the German nation, since blood was seen as a sort of distillation out of the soil itself. France, and to some extent England, were seen as having imposed an overly rationalized state apparatus that was incompatible with the more deeply rooted, 'poetic' way of life of the Germans. And Marxism, a Jewish invention, was the wedge that separated different groups of Germans based on the otherwise insignificant criterion of class, and ignored the more important fact that, bourgeois or proletariat, Germans all have the same blood, distilled from the same soil, pumping through their veins.

Germany is its own case, of course, and it is always wise to remain skeptical of any invocation of the Nazis to denounce whatever tendency in contemporary society one finds displeasing. There is nothing in the vapid chatter about star signs that takes place in hair salons and on first dates throughout America that should cause us to worry about an imminent repetition of the Holocaust.

That said, it is also a safe bet that the diversion this vapid chatter allows, the flight into a domain that feels 'profounder than politics', has to no small extent contributed to the demise of a genuinely progressive political culture in the United States and facilitated the rise of an administration that, if superficially offensive to most New Agers (though not all: Ronald Reagan, after all, was both the godfather of neoconservatism and an enthusiastic consulter of oracles), at least shares with them the suspicion of good arguments, and the habit of claiming to derive authority from some je ne sais quoi beyond the bounds of human affairs. Most of all, the uncritical resignation required in order for one to get wrapped up in something like astrology is exactly the sort of disposition, when it takes hold of millions of otherwise dissenting minds, that best suits the purposes of a regime like the one currently in power.

<snip>

A similar point was made long ago by Theodor Adorno in his study of the horoscope section of the Los Angeles Times in the early 1950s, subsequently published under the title The Stars Down to Earth. He argued that horoscopes, if not in themselves permeated by fascist ideology, promote the sort of submission to abstract authority that paves the way for the rise of fascism. Earlier, in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno had railed against the Nazi denunciation of psychoanalysis. Isn't it revealing, he asked, of the true nature of this movement that it disdains with such ferocity the endeavor to know oneself? Fascism would prefer that its subjects engage in a more harmless variety of searching for self-knowledge, the kind that comes to nothing, motivates no overcoming of dependency upon paternal authority, whether the original, family variety, or the kind that's invested in a Führer. Runes, anyone?

Many New Agers seem to feel not just secure in but altogether self-righteous about the benevolence of their world-view, pointing to the fact, for example, that it 'celebrates' the native cultures that global capitalism would plow over. To this one might respond, first of all, that celebration of native cultures is itself big business. Starbucks does it. So, in its rhetoric, does the Southeast Asian sex-tourism industry. Second, the simple fact that New Age is by its own lights multicultural and syncretistic is by no means a guarantee that it is safe from the accusation of being, at best, permissive of, and, at worst, itself an expression of, right-wing ideology. The Nazis, to return to a tried and true example, were no less obsessed with Indian spirituality than was George Harrison. Indeed, the Beatles and the other followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi were not trailblazers among Europeans, as the aging hippies still like to think; the sitar on Rubber Soul was not the first time in history a subcontinental flourish made its way into European arts and literature. This was only a very recent instance of a trend that extends back to the early 19th century, in Germany, and includes many of the Romantic authors, of whose ideas Nazism was not so much a distortion as a particularly bold strain.

<snip>

New Age is an imagined, personal secession. It is fantasy, though this is not in itself an indictment. Theatre is fantasy too, and I have no interest in stamping it out. But New Age is a sorry sort of fantasy, for it imagines itself to be a form of resistance, but is only able to take hold in history when true resistance proves too difficult to sustain.

<snip>

http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2004/08/new_age_racket_.html

[Two Americas]

61. you are right

You are hitting a nerve here for many of us, but you are essentially correct.

Back in 1966, when there were a thousand serious political activists for every one hippy, I never could have imagined that the political movement would completely collapse, and the hippy movement would prevail. But that is exactly what happened.

I would like to see you younger people sharpen and refine your criticisms of us boomers, because if you do I think you will find that the majority of us are on your side about this.

The two key features of modern liberalism that have their origins in the hippy movement are individualism - much of modern liberalism is libertarianism with an "organic" label slapped on it - and spiritualization, which leads to people settling for being "right" rather than going for results.

The first flaw sabotages the left, the second sabotages politics of any kind.

Here is something I wrote the other day in a great discussion some of us old timers are having about the failures of the left and the causes of that:

People would rather be right than succeed - that is the chronic weakness of modern liberalism. Being right is the consolation prize in politics. People are consoling themselves with being right because they have abandoned any hope of real political effectiveness. Blaming the people fits right in with this - "we are right and if the people are too stupid to see that, oh well then it is their loss the stupid idiots."

After the left collapsed in the late 60's, there was a sudden shift in the viewpoint of many intellectuals and activists. It was an amazing thing to watch - it happened almost overnight and suddenly you heard many people all saying the same things. Modern people, especially educated people, want to think that they are independent free agents, but people move in herds and rugged individualism is largely a myth. They gave up, basically, but used a particular rationale as cover for that. One day people were saying "we need to organize and mobilize and overthrow the war machine" and the next day they were saying things like this:

- Politics is not really were the truth is. We need to change people spiritually.

- I am going to work on improving myself, that is the way to change the world.

- We need to take baby steps and do the little things that we can to make things better.

- We can work within the system, and gradually change it.

Those ideas are in place to this day and have a powerful grip on all political thinking. Challenge those, and people get very angry. Since that shift, the left has been getting weaker and weaker and the right wing stronger and stronger. Now we are teetering on the brink of total catastrophe, but still people cling tightly to this weak political philosophy of modern liberalism - New Age spirituality, individualistic approaches, charity and consumerist social activism, alternative lifestyle choices, compromise and compliance with the system. People use their politics to establish a personal identity rather than as a guideline for effective organizing for mass action. The personal identity that can be established by being a modern liberal is not one that appeals to, is available to, or is needed by the majority of people in the country, and never will be. Political effectiveness that requires as a prerequisite that people become "like us" before anything can happen will never be effective - will never even really be political at all.

It is not that any of those ideas, and the activism and organizations that promote them, are necessarily bad things. The problem is that they have come to replace real politics. People will deny this - "we can walk and chew gum at the same time and it is not an either/or." It need not be an either/or, that is true, but in practical and functional effect it is an either/or. That is because all modern liberal activism was designed as a replacement for politics, that is its utility, that is what attracts people to it.

Being right is the consolation prize. When you start out with the idea that only a few enlightened beautiful people know the truth and are therefore right and try to base a political movement on that, you are doomed to failure. Obviously, a political movement based on the elite few can never become a mass movement. People want to think of themselves as being among the elite few - more caring, smarter, better - and that is a club that we can't let just anyone join. Modern liberalism is set up to give individuals the opportunity to reinforce their self-image as being one of the superior ones. It is such an obvious set up for political failure.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=257x9839

[dawgman]

66. No one

really seems to understand the global, ie, "big" picture. That it is not Just about the environment. That it is not JUST about the labor of the poor or middle class. That it is not JUST about the war. etc. etc.

We need leaders that "get" the whole picture. We need leaders that will tackle issues one by one without an agenda from the "hippie" element or any other SINGLE interest.

[Iris]

86. Talk about not getting a job done - how about closing your parentheses?

[dawgman]

110. if that is the best critique you have

well, I guess I made a pretty good argument.

[Iris]

140. Hardly, but it's just not worth getting into.

[dawgman]

143. lol

then why reply at all?

The hippie of my generation (I am 31) is nearly as self-absorbed as the 80's stock broker. They may spout some quasi-liberal rhetoric from time to time, but what they really want is some more dope, and to talk some young girl (or boy) out of their knickers.

I would much rather have a movement based out of the working person's struggles and out a desire for class struggle and equality than some bullshit redux of the 60's hippie.

[Iris]

147. There are no "hippies" of your generation.

There is no "hippie" movement - it's just posers and people who like tie-dye or tattoos or piercings or what the fuck ever is considered "cool" at the moment.

Totally, totally different from the hippie movement.


You might like to read Peter Coyote's "Sleeping Where I Lie" to get an idea of where the hippies were coming from and why the movement finally fizzled out, while at the same time leaving some true believers who still live that lifestyle and harm no one.

[dawgman]

150. that has been my entire argument

that a resurection of the hippie movement has already occurred and if focused on the WORST aspects of the original.

thank you for seeing that I am not trying to dog on the original hippies. They did some good things and by and large had very good ideals that many were willing to work towards.

[Iris]

152. Yes!

I can totally agree with you there. In fact, anyone can use the parts of the hippie movement that were good in their own life without adopting the negative aspects. But, if they just want an excuse to do drugs and more or less drop out, then they are missing the whole point.

[conscious evolution]

160. Sorry.Tom Joad lost any credibility

when he bent over to kiss reagons ass after ronnie fired the PATCO workers.
The labor unions lost a lot credibility when they refused to stand with PATCO.
Why join a union that does not represent their workers and kisses corporate ass instead.

[Rex]

69. To all the 'hippies' on this board.

My parents were 'hippies' and taught at various levels in public schools for over 60 years combined. Mom is now on the school board and dad is a regionally known artist.

So for the OP, go suck eggs. You must have never met a real 'hippie'. Go out now and learn something about the 'cultural mutation' you know nothing about.

Thanks.

[sasquatch]

73. Your parents sound like good people, but I stand next to my OP

[Rex]

75. Well you are so wrong.

About Obama and Punk...explain please.

[Lex]

102. He's often wrong. Often.

Habitually.

[mitchtv]

114. Too bad you weren't out standing with me

at my last street Demo. An old , old saying from an old Hippie "talk is cheap"

[varelse]

77. Obama, Edwards, and Kucinich

All three are "boomers". I doubt that Kucinich, at 61 years of age, had much time to pay attention to trends in music in his "formative years". He grew up dirt-poor and for at least part of his childhood, they lived in the family car. By age 30 he was mayor of Cleveland and had a contract out on his life. Now, he's in Congress, pushing universal health care and justice for the unforgivable and apparently unpunishable criminals in and around the White House. His belief in UFO's, willingness to speak publically about inconvenient political stances (Ron Paul as VP?) and dream of creating a Peace Department certainly seem to align him with "hippies" as I remember them (this would be my parents' generation).

Your message seems to be "screw most of DU" - since most of the people posting here, are boomers, or pre-baby boom generation. Most of them are also life-long progressives who've built up quite a bit of frustration and anger over the direction things have taken since Reagan took office. I'm sure most of these people voted against Reagan and were appalled that their fellow Democrats were crossing over to him (and appalled at the reasons). I'm not surprised it's not being universally greeted with cheers and salutes.

:shrug:

[uppityperson]

79. Hippies voted for neo-con repubs?Well, that tells me how little you know of hippies.

You just dropped down in my opinion.

[Greyhound]

83. I'd like to know how old you are, since you are obviously clue-challenged.

You've apparently conflated the baby boomers generation with the Hippies. The Hippies were always a tiny minority of their generation and most of them still have the same values they adopted then.

What you're talking about was not the Hippies, but the same suburbanite ignoramuses that played dress up for a year or two and pretended to be Hippies when they were "cool". Once their asses weren't on the line anymore, they cut their hair, became 'the man', started doing coke, and complaining that their taxes were too high while dancing to the disco beat.

[Iris]

87. Bingo.

Wanted to say this but couldn't put it together nearly so well.

[Greyhound]

95. Why, thank you very much.

My parents are/were Hippies and almost everyone I knew growing up were Hippies, and they're all pretty much the same as they were, still being ignored and vilified. Then schmoes like this come along and repeat the same lies and blame the victims.
:shrug:

[Zynx]

98. It is fair to look at a movement in its entirety and not just its true adherents.

For example, good Christians, rather than those who use Christianity as a guise, never do any harm to anybody. I know those who follow the New Testament closely are some of the nicest, most generous people you'll ever meet. However, look at what hardcore adherence to Christianity breeds as a whole and it can be frightening. I saw this as a Christian myself. Applying the same standard I think it is fair to look at the hippie movement with some skepticism.

[Iris]

141. But that's not looking at the hippie movement. That's looking at styles and the affectations of

posers. Totally different than looking at the movement itself.

[Echo In Light]

142. And to be fair, those anti-traditional affectations brought many into the fold...

...and from that point, began to inform/educate, and realize what it actually meant, what was really happening, and why.

[Iris]

145. I'm not saying the hippies were affecting affectations.

My point is that some people adopt the "hippie style" and did as well back then. They were not "hippies" but the very people described in the OP who went to climb the corporate ladder and disco nights away in the 70s.

[Echo In Light]

146. The substantive crowd vs the party crowd - some were/are both, by degrees

[Iris]

149. Yes, that's certainly true.

And I guess that will always be the case in any type of "movement".

[scarletwoman]

99. Wow! That's a great post!

I'd like to have it printed on little cards that I could hand out to people who need a clue.

:applause:
sw

[Greyhound]

103. Please feel free. n/t

:kick:

[uppityperson]

101. Up thread is talk about "the modern hippy".

I agree that that is who they are talking about. Rather like faux-punk rockers who are now tweaking and probably don't represent true punk rockers.

[Iris]

144. Since there's no hippy movement left, then I think "modern hippy" is more about fashion statements

than lifestyle.

[Echo In Light]

151. Dissidents such as Hicks and Chomsky speak of the individual isolated by their views

It's a defense mechanism of the prevailing belief system: it marginalizes dissenting views, and when the substance of those views cannot be ignored completely, those espousing them are attacked on a personal level. That is to say, there are likely all sorts of people from various walks of life who share similar views, feelings and spirituality, yet are disconnected from the mainstream corporate culture as they don't find any genuine representation within that carefully crafted structure.

[mitchtv]

115. some of them were very good lays

as long as they left early. But you have them pegged quite rightly.

[Zynx]

97. I've always been a Harry Truman Democrat and not a George McGovern Democrat.

The hippie movement, like any ideology, was full of hypocrisy. I'm not saying all were hypocrites, but on balance they were an insincere bunch, just like the fundies that are the largest social movement today. I am too young to remember the 1960s as I was born the better part of two decades later, but I am far from impressed by their ideological descendants.

[sasquatch]

113. Same here, in a way!

Kick ass and take names when its needed, build a coalition and bring calm when its needed as well.

[mitchtv]

120. Some coalition you're building

[mitchtv]

117. a clue is coming

any day now
Think of life with no environmental movement, no recycling ,No union organizers, And no right to privacy, no medical Marijuana and more

[JanMichael]

118. As a commie DUer I could not agree more!

I'm an ass kicking LEFTIST. Period.

[mitchtv]

119. and what have you done for US lately?

while you buy into this asshole post?

[JanMichael]

122. Whoa! I make sure affordable housing is just that.

I plan affordable housing projects. I make certain homeless shelters are good and clean.

I do fucking plenty.

On EDIT: My profession is dedicated to eliminating poverty. Period. This is hard to say but but my job is actually what I think most so called DUers wished they could do. I mean efficacy in action. If you know what that means of course.

[mitchtv]

123. as the OP said to me

"Good for you." It in no way adds any credibility to the OP. (nasty and divisive as well as untrue.

[JanMichael]

124. Doing, planning and consideration, is always maligned.

And dumb-fucked criticism is even less able towards considering and understanding of its subject.

[mitchtv]

125. as is generalizing an entire generation

peace and love from the 60's

[JanMichael]

127. We've diverged from the OP thing I think.

And the boomers as a generalized thing have failed health-care for all and all such other progressive ideals and things and such. I don't have to list them now do I?

So good night:)

[scarletwoman]

126. But see? This is what so many of us genuine old hippies are trying to say --

We've been leftists all along, we're not the soulless simalcra that got sold to the easily scammed U.S.ians as "hippies". He's attacking and insulting people who actually know firsthand what happened to the Left and would be happy to be his allies.

I'm all happy for the younger generations to get on with it. I have no intention to get in the way. But I don't appreciate being berated by some punk who wasn't there and thinks he knows shit because he's got all the talking points from the Official Approved Version Of The History Of The 60s memorized.

And I'm sorry, if there's not going to be any respect for your elders in this brave new revolution, I'm not interested.

Peace,
sw
:hippie:

[Echo In Light]

137. "if there's not going to be any respect for your elders in this brave new revolution...

"...I'm not interested."

Reminds me when someone attacked Howard Zinn in a thread yesterday, belittling any who take anything positive from him, and accusing him of being "just as bad as right wingers."

[scarletwoman]

161. Howard Zinn "just as bad as right wingers."?!?! WTF!

How clueless can a person get? :banghead:

Peace,
sw

[MrSlayer]

135. Hippies hate Death Metal.

[Kitty Herder]

136. We need BOTH!!! We need the hippies and the Tom Joads and

any body else committed to social justice, peace, and freedom.

Why exclude anyone who is committed to those ideals?

[lonestarnot]

154. Yeah you rock!

:yourock:

[L. Coyote]

155. What we need is fewer distractions like this crap!! Resurrect reality-based thinking!!

[dawgman]

156. lol What is DU

if not a distraction?

If DU is a distraction then what you are saying is that we need fewer distractions from the distraction?

Is that like being distracted from the TV?

[zonmoy]

159. I agree, we don't need people that will do useless protests while

they are getting their faces ground in the dirt by the cabals jackboots. we need progressives that are willing and able to fight back by whatever means are available and necessary.