Posted on 07/01/2004 8:34:16 AM PDT by qam1
I’m a baby boomer and that’s a curse. You see I’m stuck with the idiots from the sixties till my dying day as they whine and moan about injustice and mentally dwell forever in the days of tie-die shirts, incense, and free love.
The news media, now controlled by baby boomers, keep the myth alive that everyone from that era got high and protested in the streets disgorging their revolution to enforce a “new America.” They were revolting all right. The very sight of them turned my stomach.
The truth is that those who perpetrated the anti-war protests didn’t really care about the Vietnam War except for how it affected their draft status. They had no compassion for the pro-freedom forces in South Vietnam who were sacrificing everything to try and stop the takeover of their part of that country by a very brutal communist regime. As the protesters carried their Mao signs and chanted “Che, Che,” their purpose was to rip apart traditional America and rebuild it on the ideals of Mao and Che. What ideal was that? Communism.
The tragedy of the sixties was that so many young people simply didn’t understand that their chants and posters and the promised “new vision” were really in support of a communist America. Nor did they understand that their actions were helping the communists to sentence millions in Southeast Asia to the gulag. Worse, those baby boomers had no sense of the brutal reality of life under communism. Most still don’t.
Case in point is Country Joe McDonald. He and his group, “The Fish”, performed the song that became one of the anthems of the Woodstock Generation. It was called, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.” Usually, Country Joe would start the song by shouting to the crowd, “Give me an F!” The other three letters of the cheer would follow as Country Joe would ask, “What’s that spell?” The crowd would respond by shouting the well-known profanity. Country Joe would then begin the catchy rag which asked “One, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam.” It was all so, well, revolutionary.
Country Joe became a major voice in the “revolution.” So what was Joe fighting for? He did help force America to abandon an anticommunist ally; resulting in its becoming an enslaved nation. Is that what he wanted? Is that what he hoped would happen? Is he happy now? Apparently Country Joe doesn’t have a clue.
Recently he was invited to Hanoi to receive a World Peace Music Award. However, Country Joe says he won’t go because “as a hippie protest songwriter I could not exist in Vietnam.” Why on earth not? Isn’t Vietnam now exactly the communist paradise he and his buddy protesters wanted it to be? Apparently Joe misunderstood back in the sixties.
“Communism tends to be totalitarian, and I am not for that,” says the self-proclaimed revolutionary. Even worse, his complete ignorance of communism’s principles is shocking. “My parents were American Communists for some time, but they left the Party because of a lack of democratic positions by the Party,” he naïvely admitted.
Like a lot of the baby boomer generation, it seems that Country Joe McDonald just got a thrill from protesting. He had no idea what he was against or for. It was just a social event to go down to the local protest, carry a sign, and meet some “groovy chicks.”
The consequences of his actions? His nation suffered worldwide disgrace and millions of innocent Vietnamese remain enslaved to this day. Oh well, it was “kool.” The whole pathetic lot of ‘em make me want to barf!
Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center. The center maintains a website at www.americanpolicy.org.
Me too! I was busy trying to find decent clothes that
weren't hippie (impossible in the '60's), busy cooking and
cleaning and doing normal ordinary things for my family,
unencumbered with my own importance or the need to get out
and act like a bigshot revolutionary. With the help of the
media, the liberals and the doped up teenagers and twenty
somethings, Vietnam is just a rewritten piece of history.
You occasionally see an "old" hippie who never got over
the greasy ponytail and the ratty beard, but mostly they
have moved on to just ordinary liberals, and in a few
cases conservatives if the LSD didn't permanently damage
them. Yep. Sickening. I got out and demonstrated during
the 2000 Bush/Gore election carrying Sore/Loserman signs.
The first time I've ever demonstrated, rallied we called it.
This will sound rather strange, but the symbol itself was supposed to represent a nuclear bomber. There's a painting from 1963 (the time of the ban the bomb movement) called "Leopardskin Nuclear Bomber No2" by a Colin Self which if you look at it has the same profile of the portions of the symbol inside the peace sign's circle; evidence that the symbol represented a bomber with swept back wings.
You actually thought "Dirty Dancing" was a REALLY good movie.
No Gen-X guy thought this was a good movie, If he said he did he was either gay or trying to get some. It was the ultimate chick flick nightmare for us until the Boomers decided to top it with their movie "Beaches" years later. And what was weird was every girl thought Jennifer Grey was so hot even though us guys found her ugly.
So strike that one off the list for guys for us our ultimate/favorite/most memorable Gen-X movie moment was the pool scene with Phoebe Cates
As a female, the 80s started out with the hope that someday I would find a guy that would kiss me exactly the way Han kissed Leia in Empire....and dress like him tool...and have a heap of junk like him....well, you get the picture....
OK, Not quite Phoebe but slave Leia was definitely up there (plus I can post a pic without getting permanently banned)
That's why I don't like 1981 as the cutoff year for Gen-X, IMO in order to be a true Gen-Xer you have to remember seeing at least one of the Star Wars movies (The real ones not the prequels) in the theater.
ALL TOO WELL!!
For some reason this one stuck in my mind, But today I went to Mcdonalds and there was a family in front of me who ordered Happy Meals and Yes Happy Meals still do come in Boxes so this is wrong.
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