Posted on 04/20/2008 9:37:10 PM PDT by jazusamo
Even though I’m embarrassed to have been a Democrat for so many years, I’m proud that even in my 20’s, I thought the 60’s was the worst decade in America’s history.
Because I was born in 1940, I was at UCLA for some of those years and had a bird’s eye view of my fellow college students. It was not a pretty sight.
What makes that time the source of so much nostalgia for so many people of my age -- the incessant folk songs, the tie-dyed shirts and blouses, the granny glasses, the bongs, the infantile anti-establishment content that permeated so much popular culture -- made me yawn even then.
The young folks in those days were on the right side of the civil rights movement, but that was the extent of their good works. The anti-war campaign was a charade, having far less to do with pacifism than with lack of courage and discipline. The draft was still going strong and it was fear, not moral principles, which led young men to flee to Canada or to burn their draft cards.
The baby-boomers born in the years after World War II were members of the most coddled generation America had ever seen. From birth, they had been treated like royalty, privileged and spoiled not for any special qualities or accomplishments, but simply because they existed and were their parents’ little darlings.
Nobody should have been too surprised that as they came of age, they were a religion onto themselves. Their not so holy trinity consisted of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I never really got a handle on how that made them so special. But gods do not have to explain themselves.
Their favorite line, the one about not trusting anybody over the age of 30, wasn’t just an inane catchphrase. It became the order of the day, not just for those under 30, but those well past it. It wasn’t just wars they got to judge, either, but movies, music, TV shows, books and politicians. It fell on children to bestow the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
The fact that they weren’t particularly knowledgeable or even open-minded, except, of course, when it came to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, only added to their mystique. Unlike adults, the thinking went, they hadn’t sold out. What made their bullshit so totally odious was the fact that their elders, for the most part, bought into it. In addition, because they were so lacking in humor, their solemnity was taken for sincerity.
Even back then, I found it disturbing that for the first time in human history, youngsters didn’t want to be adults. Worse yet, neither did adults. As a result, one could almost have sympathized with the contempt the kids felt for grown-ups if it hadn’t inevitably led to contempt for America. It also led to a soft spot in their hearts for any and all of our nation’s enemies, which, at the time, included such arch villains as the Viet Cong, Mao, Che Guevara, Chou En-lai and Fidel Castro.
The prevailing lies were so self-evident that I couldn’t imagine how it was that so many people could be so self-deluded. For instance, there was a great deal of self-serving blather about individualism. But most of those doing the blathering wore identical clothes, listened to the same music, went to all the same movies and mouthed the very same clichés. There was more individualism to be found in a flock of sheep.
Perhaps the biggest lie fomented back then was something called the Free Speech Movement. It was like something taken straight out of George Orwell’s “1984.” The title, alone, would have made Big Brother smirk. The movement, which stretched across America’s college campuses from UC Berkeley to Columbia, consisted of student radicals commandeering offices and classrooms, doing their level best to silence professors and administrators who didn’t buy into their fascistic dogma. Funny how little some things have changed over the years.
Today, the children and the grandchildren of those flower children are also in favor of free speech, but only so long as those speaking share their politics and their prejudices.
Because those radical idiots lacked both reading skills and any semblance of self-awareness, they didn’t realize that they were very much like the totalitarians that Orwell had in mind. When in “Animal Farm,” Orwell’s villainous pig dictator, Napoleon, standing in for Stalin, altered the original battle cry of the barnyard revolution from “all animals are equal,” to “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” he had the Soviet oligarchy in mind, but, unfortunately, it very neatly summed up the thoughts and actions of America’s own youthful swine of the sixties.
Born in 1959 in a rural small community I missed the 1960’s and 70’s crap. I am glad I did.
I was always amazed by the lack of note of the obvious contradiction between wanting free sex, drugs, rock n roll, etc and admiring Castro, the Viet Cong, Mao etc. What would happen to a person who tried to live that lifestyle in Cuba, China, North Viet Nam etc? They would be in prison for sure. This was not a coherent philosophy, it was a fancy way of saying me first and adolescent silliness rolled into one.
Absolutely true..
Ouch! I love it. Fortunately a great number of boomers, especially those who went to Nam, never bought into the crap, or eventually grew out of it.
The one’s I hate the worst are those who were hippies in the 60’s and 70’s, went all Gorden Gekko in the 80’s so they could make their fortune and retire comfortably, then ran straight left to the Clinton’s in the 90’s and now are the elite trying to put their boot on the neck of us so called ‘intolerant redneck right wing racist conservatives’ today.
I’m a few years older than Bert and agree with him but those Punks have been in teaching positions in our colleges and universities for many years now. Something different I saw in the prewar vs postwar years was the rise of welfare of all types. There was little suffering of the general population...
Many of the young people were absolutely nuts during the 60’s but the shocker was so many of the elders putting up with it.
Ping...not that I really want to go down this memory lane.
I can relate, I’m not that far behind the writer in age. Two things come to mind - there was a sci-fi movie set in the future, made in the 70’s I think, with Michael York, where the world was made up of beautiful, young people living an ideal, indolent, laconic life. But...they all had this circle in the palms of their hands that activated and began flashing when they turned 30, at which time they must die (be executed an a “humane” and civil way). All very symbolic, for the times. Anyone remember the name of this flick?
The second thing that comes to mind is the old saying - When you’re 20, if you’re not a liberal, you have no heart.
When you’re 40, if you’re not a conservative, you have no brain.
(Just sayin’) :-))
I can sum it all up in three words...spoiled rotten brats.
Yes and fortunately the worst of that bunch are retiring and should be gone before long. The ones they taught are probably not quite as messed up, hopefully.
Logan’s Run
how right-on you are! Always amazing to me that those who most take advantage of our freedoms (especially speech) are also those most unwilling to fight for their defense and preservation.
That saying is true and there’s an awful lot of conservatives that are former libs.
Born in ‘42. Grew up in 50’s, 8 to 18. Best time of my life. But are you ever right about the BS 60’s college crowd. Four years of that crap, it’s a wonder I didn’t kill somebody.
I had fun in the 60’s, I think.
I was born in ‘55. In Junior High when I was 12 several of the freshmen came back from a summer in CA. They were completely indoctrinated and spread tons, and I do mean tons, of “free love”, drugs and rock and roll throughout the school. Lots of kids took lots of heavy drugs. Lots of kids were sleeping with lots of other kids. They were dirty and drugged out. We had the highest pregnancy per capita rate in the whole country. My best friend went to CA for a two week vacation during the school year. We were extremely close. When she came back she did not even let on that she ever knew me. She was very changed. Boy, did that hurt. I did dabble in the whole thing but it didn’t take me long to out grow it. I have hated the 60’s thing for years, just abhor it.
Not everybody fit the hippie flower-child or peace activist mold back then. I lived thru it without getting drawn into it. I even got drafted and didn’t come out like John Kerry.
Well. That indulged upbringing seems spartan by today's standards on child rearing.
I'm a mid boomer raising young kids alongside GenX and Echo boomer parents and they are incredibly weak parents as rule. Simply unbelievable. Never spank. Talk Junior into it. Kids raised on silly feminized PC cartoons. Scared of guns. Daddy's a meterosexual who has tats to try to look tough. Mommy is the boss...hands down.
Kids are allowed to run the parents and stay home forever till they mature maybe 5-10 years after 5-7 years of college. I'm 50.......I can't open my mouth at school stuff.....again the sole province of ninny women. We'll probably be 50% homo boys in another generation amongst the non-hoodie class
I am sick of overly earnest, chin stuck out women who have to get validated about everything. My wife's 42....much younger than her and that's what you get if they've been to school much.
No wonder so many white guys want Asian and Latin women today.
...
Television and communications brought it into our homes. Political corruption of both sides began to be exposed.
I lived through it, and was to a degree influenced by it. But in retrospect, when you study the real history of the era I find it to be an embarrassing, but to some degree necessary time.
When the history of the American democracy is written, I just hope this isn't the period cited as the beginning of the end.
Born in 1957.
the music was great....66 -75 was excellent rock music...damned good.
long haired libertarian sorta lefty but the crazy shite like fembotism, infanticide, gun control, affirmative action, mexicanization, south demonization and black racism, enviro-wackos and all that had not taken root...being a long hair just meant pot and maybe uncle sid and bucking the establishment and standing up for da black man ...at least in the south anyhow
we got away with all that cause folks didn’t fret over every little damned thing and our folks knew diddly
drink at 18, drive at 15, hunting rifles in the dorm,..........no worries about kidnapping pervs everywhere.
best of all:
NO GD THUG KULTURE.........imagine the joy in that....it was cool to be a peckerwood.
Your mind was formed in the 1950's, during which period the US had a semblance of rational order, process, and secure family life. You were 18 in 1960. You already had finished High School at a time when that was still a real citizen's education. You wore clean, pressed clothes to school, leather shoes. You had a haircut.
Hippies were not yet invented, it was the beatnik era. Beatniks liked jazz, poetry, and were generally literate. And although they had enough drug problems to satisfy anyone, drugs had not yet become ordinary. In 1960, people were taking LSD, but they were more than likely graduate students, and it was legal. Marijuana was NOT everywhere.
What came later in the 1960's and 70's would naturally be, if not repellant, at least be considered strange or unwholesome, to someone who was a mature 18-year old in 1960. Someone who was 12 or 14 in 1960 grew up in the chaos and might be inclined to accept it as normal. They are the children of the 60's. An normal, educated 18 or 20-year old in 1960 was not a child, but already a man or a woman, or very close to it.
AND I am DAMNED tired of being lumped in with those sacks of sh*t, and having them trotted out as the representatives of my generation. They weren't. They just made the most noise. Capice?
CPT., ARMOR
MACV, Class of ‘71
One day ,exiting the downtown subway at Randolph and Dearborn, I saw a wave of hippies/yippies curb to curb rushing toward me. They were followed by baton wielding cops. It was like being in a stampede, I was lucky I didn't get my head broken.
I remember in the early 70’s boomers,still disdaining the materialism of society,showing off their expensive sound systems.
I had a great sound system. Bought it at the PX.
You’re exactly right. The 50’s 16 to 20 year olds were raised to respect people and to have a work ethic. Drug use was not considered cool. Many high schoolers had some kind of job even if only in the summers.
Even though it was peacetime, people had to consider the military because there was still a draft. Drug use and the anti-establishment thing really took off in the sixties. I got married and started a family and cussed every time I’d see a college campus demonstration or more often a riot on TV.
There were good things too but these anti everything crowd nuts got the spotlight.
Born in 1952 ...I think the 70’s sucked more than the 60’s !
I don’t think anyone is lumping you in with with those sacks, surely no one here is.
The media turned against the war and portrayed our service people in the worst way while giving way to much coverage to those spoiled brats.
We know who did the right thing for the country and that’s the important thing, we know!
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
I was born in ‘51 in a small, rural community also. Luckily, I grew up from as young as I can remember going to the library and reading voraciouly, thereby learning (and yearning) of a big, wide wonderful world out there. Guess the 60’s and 70’s were a matter of perspective - I have fond and nostalgic feelings about them, and always felt blessed to have gone through that era during a youthful time of my life. (that Mary Tyler Moore Thing - every day was a new day!) I remember dreams, ideals, and a feeling of limitless possibilities.
And yes, not I appreciate SO much the small, rural, simple life as I’ve gotten older. I wouldn’t trade either experience (country mouse, city mouse) for anything. It’s all part of the journey.
YES - thank you! I hate these senior moments :-))
Yes, I know a little about the riots of that era. The ‘65 Watts riots were a nightmare for us that had to be there. I was a fireman and all rigs were escorted by police. The National Guard are the ones who finally stopped it, their Commander said they didn’t use automatic weapons but he lied, that’s what ended those riots.
Exactly. As Earth, Wind and Fire said “That’s the Way of the World”. Okay, won’t continue this nostalgia thing :-))
got that on dvd, logan`s run, some others too, like
soylent green, omega man, death race 2000.
So true, So true. I’ve seen it all happen.
Wow, and when I started college and met “big city kids”, I got an earful and eyeful of what you’re saying. Looking back (though I hated it at the time), I was so lucky to have traditional, pretty strict parents so I didn’t get the free rein to go totally off the deep end with all that was out there (I pushed the envelope plenty, don’t get me wrong). You know, one thing I learned, first through embarrassment and teasing, and later through acceptance and pride, even, is that I always was, and am today, a preppie. Yes, I had the bell-bottoms, tie-dyed shirts, Ali McGraw hair, smoked some stuff, but I long ago learned that the costumes weren’t my heart. I’m just an oddball preppie, and it’s not so bad! I loved (still do) the plethora of great music, especially the 3 B’s - Beach Boys, Beatles, Bee Gees. (okay, yes, I’m a preppie)
Like I once said, I wish I was wealthy enough to be a Trotskyite.
classics, all. :-)) Love sci-fi, started with Ray Bradbury as a child.
And you just described the left-wing liberals (with LOTS of money to do damage)!
I guess the 30s must pale by comparison.
What do you mean?
As just an observer who was too young to “take a trip”, I can tell you, it was wild man, it was wild.
Anyone who graduated from a public high school after 1965 was mercilessly interrogated, drug-tested, stripped, high-pressure-washed, cavity searched, hair-cutted, beaten with ax-handles, and then permitted to interview after being given, and passing various SATs, New York State Regents Exams in every subject, and proving they could do 25 chin-ups and run 5 miles in 30 minutes. As I recall, I suggested being even tougher on the females.
Before being permitted to speak with any employee already on the payroll, they were also made to memorize the immortal Sherwin Cody text, "Do You Make These Embarrassing Mistakes in English?"
Saved us a bloody fortune.
In many ways, 1960 marked a true turning point. The crooked election that put JFK (objectively a President who made Warren G. Harding look good)in office marked the ascendancy, nay the triumph, of incandescent bullshiite over any semblance of reality or common sense. Downhill all the way after that.
What do you mean? I guess the 30s must have been a piece of cake. Oh, that's right, they didn't have cake.
I just fail to see what the Depression had to do with the 60’s and don’t believe this column mentioned a word on it or tried to compare it.
I guess you didn’t read all of my two line post in which the first line is a quote from the original post.
Sounds to me like you did the right thing. I’ll bet you got some good people but you probably turned a heck of a lot more away.
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