Remembering the sixties

Someone recently asked if anyone remembered the sixties.

I do.

I remember seeing the Beatles perform live and bringing my infant son to Love-Ins every Sunday in Grant Park.

I remember Laugh-In and the look of horror on my mother's face when she saw the Rolling Stones on TV.

I remember getting sick when I tried pot, hearing all the outrage about burning flags and burning bras (though I never saw anyone burn either one).

I remember protesting the war and the police rioting outside the Democratic Convention. I remember the nightly body counts on the news. I remember seeing half the boys in my high school graduating class sent to Viet Nam - and half of them not coming home or coming home screwed up beyond repair. All of them coming home changed forever.

But most of all, I remember an overarching sense of possibility. A sense that, as bad as things were, we were still on a steady road to something better. I remember believing with all my heart that we could make a difference; that we did make a difference.

That is what the Neocons have stolen from me. The sense of possibility. The sense that things are, overall, on the road to something better.

I want it back. I demand it back. I refuse to bow down and cave in and say "Okay, you win, it's every man for himself."

I want it back. I demand it back. I refuse to be beaten down. I refuse to accept their cynical view of the world. I refuse to concede my country to them. I may get angry. I will get angry. But I will not feel defeated.

I will fight to get back on the road to something better. And I'm not alone. Watch out, Neocons, we're coming after you. We remember the sense of possibilities and we want it back. And we're pissed.

You know what I miss most of all? The sense of brother/sisterhood. Nothing was "mine", it was always "ours".

we may actually get our country back :)

As of last week, I am protesting 2-3 times per week at a couple different locations. And let me tell you, it gives me hope. There is so much support out there it is wonderful.

We need more people in the streets ALL THE TIME! Not just the big rallies and the anniversaries, but EVERY DAY IN EVERY TOWN and maybe then we'll get ourselves heard.

And if we don't at least try, then we have already failed.

:patriot:

every Wednesday night from 5:30 to 7:00. For almost one year now. I am honored to stand with this group of real Americans.

:patriot:

We just need to build the pressure!

I'm one of those guys to come home to never be the same, a changed man. I want my country back in the hands of honest good people. At least so semblance of it.

Get it out there for more to read and mull over.

:thumpsup:

what we thought and what we did. The country, as a whole, cared that we were out in the street and wouldn't be "nice" any more. When the people in the streets of Chicago in '68 chanted "the whole wold is watching", it actually made many of our "leaders" and older citizens feel concerned at what was going on. But the Neocons have figured this out. If peaceful protests are ignored, nothing happens. You can have 10 million people in the streets and if the media, corporations, and government just shrug, that's where it ends.

In the sixties major parts of whole cities went up in flames. When the cops pushed too hard battles broke out in the streets. We should be at that stage now - violence, massive destruction of property and massive obstruction of the machinery of government. But that America doesn't exist any more...the soma is just too good...

How/why they let go of it (and quit paying attention) a long time ago. It's Deja Vu all over again. Now "everybody knows" it started with Reagan in 1980 and took 25+ years to undo all the progress that preceded.

Where were those people? Where was that sense of possibility that now is so dearly missed?

"But most of all, I remember an overarching sense of possibility. A sense that, as bad as things were, we were still on a steady road to something better. I remember believing with all my heart that we could make a difference; that we did make a difference.

"That is what the Neocons have stolen from me. The sense of possibility. The sense that things are, overall, on the road to something better."

You have stated it beautifully. Thank you. However, it didn't start disappearing with Bushco.

The only thing that could have prevented this unending nightmare would have been the due diligence and attention of the generation who benefitted from having that sense of possibility; who might have noticed and "got pissed" when it started being disassembled 2+ decades ago.

:grouphug:

I've been involved all this time. I don't say that to pat myself on the back, just to set the record straight.

Too many people, once they had a shot at their slice of the pie, stopped agitating for the pie to be better and to be shared more equitably.

No, their disengagment didn't start with BushCo. You're right about that. But the sense of impending doom instead of bright skies ahead reached critical mass with this administration.

"But the sense of impending doom instead of bright skies ahead reached critical mass with this administration."

I understand what you're saying. The mystery for those a bit younger than that happy, shiny generation is that (for many/most of the "60's" generation) their awareness (individually or as a group) didn't continue.............. and get folded into the larger (and older, busier adult) part of their lives.

It was too obvious what the "critical mass" of the efforts Reagan brought in would be. It's been "impending" for all that time-- and now the nation is imploding. Preventable only by that group of young people living out those supposed ideals for the greater good, not just the "greed is good."

Thanks for your reply and all your efforts :hi:

I don't know, though, if it really was all that obvious to many people what the results of Reagan's efforts would be. Right or wrong, and it's definitely wrong, for a lot of us, what seems real is what we see for ourselves.

Of course, I can only speak for the people I knew and I can see in retrospect that we were a fairly sheltered lot in some ways. Not sheltered from poverty or pain, but sheltered from the reality of where the world was going. We lived in a city that was largely Democratic and a part of the city where the Right Wing consisted of moderate Democrats. We worked for a company that espoused some fairly liberal ideals. We were all involved in one way or another with volunteer work and environmental activism, but it was still a pretty insular environment. We were liberals surrounded by liberals. It's a little embarrassing to say this but it's true - we had absolutely no idea just how many people out in the rest of the country were buying into the right and watching "Wall Street" as if it was a How-To documentary. The only issue we saw close to home was AIDS and gay rights because the company I worked for was about 80% gay employees and AIDS was rearing its ugly head. And being ignored because it was just a problem for "them."

A move and a job change in the late eighties introduced me to a neighborhood and a corporate culture in which liberals were in the minority. It was the first time I ever saw a real live, ordinary person foam at the mouth over liberals. One guy introduced me to another and said, laughing "This one's a liberal - and not even embarrassed about it!" I was stunned.

That's when I saw how complacent I had become without even realizing it. I've often wondered how many people have had that wake-up experience - and how many of them just rolled over and went back to sleep.

or at least, i did. but they are grown enough now. i am back. i think a lot of people are. i think air america will help. my little sister, who was a little kid in the 60's, but a hippie in the 70's, and has not paid much attention lately told me this yesterday- "i think, come fall, i will have to get involved. 6 months of listening to air america, and i can't sit by any more." she lives in deep-red-ville.

... and dozens of other vocations where the hope was to make "change from within." Those of us who took the torch from the WW2 generation tried to pass it on to the late-boomers and it got dropped in the mud and went out. Why? The deactivation of the Draft was, in my opinion, the more iconic of the changes. Rather than step forward and emphasize participatory democracy, kids-cum-adults who had no memory of McCarthy, duck and cover, the draft, coat hanger abortions, 'whites only' drinking fountains, and girdles wallowed in the wonders of all nature had to offer: NASCAR, The Dukes of Hazzard, Saturday Night Fever, and "what their country could do for them."

And I mean this in all sincerity as a person born in 64.

The 60's IMO were extremely confusing for young children...there was all the energy and protest and whatever but most kids myself included didn't have a friggin clue what any of it was about.

When Vietnam ended the culture IMO still had the general vibes left by all the flower power stuff, but there was not really any "movement"

By the mid 70's the tweens and teens were sort of left with the hippy culture--but there was no cause to rally around and consequently you had people just running around assembling to party and listen to the leftover music acting like faux hippies with no apparent purpose other than partying.

In addition the people that really HAD been hippies just appeared to magically get sucked up into the mainstream -- at least to me and my peers at that time it appeared that way.

By the time Reagan was elected my age group was cynical, jaded and pissed off.

I know NOW that historically the so called "hippies" did make a difference in regards to Nixon and Vietnam but quite frankly when I was younger I thought well that was a bunch of crap because we still got Reagan and bush and James Baker and where are all the people who fought against Nixon et al?

Just trying to defend my age group to a degree...we knew what the score was and we were livid, but we didn't have any optimistic organizers to guide us.

Where as the 60's youth was fighting FOR something we were just raging against something with no alternative plan.

We were spinning in circles chasing our own tails.

I think to a degree that same thing is happening today in the dem party... we are so angry (myself included) that it is hard to focus in on a plan for a decent and honest change.

Now I will put away my soap box because I am not even sure the above makes sense to anyone but me!

My generation (the "war babies" who created "the 60s") grew up with threats from without and within. There was no place to hide except possibly Canada, which was a very conservative post-monarchical culture with Blue Laws! (Many people conveniently forget this.) We almost literally had a gun to our heads. The aftermath of WW2 saw a doubling of college-educated working people, the vast majority of whom benefited from the power of "trickle up" federal spending. We rode the tsumami of owner-occupied homes and grade schools. We graduated from girdles (the chastity belts of the day) to The Pill. We graduated from "whites only" to having a dream. We graduated from Perry Como and Lawrence Welk to Janice Joplin and the Moody Blues. We were the children of mothers who had no memory of being denied the vote - mothers who also emancipated themselves economically behind Rosie the Riveteer with the almost whole-hearted support of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. (Many people conveniently forget this.)

We were the children of parents who were born during the "Roaring Twenties" and became first aware of a world in the grips of The Great Depression, parents who were then sent overseas to fight (and often die) autocratic, militarist, bigoted regimes. (Many people forget that the foremost characteristic of the 'enemy' was racial and ethnic bigotry.)

Many people forget ... and many people never knew. Perhaps we wouldn't have known either ... except we had a gun to our heads.

I'm a proponent of Universal National Service. :shrug:

"Universal National Service" builds character? "A gun to the head" inspires attentiveness?

I don't think it needs interpreters. I'm not interested in the politics of "Let George Do it" ... and don't believe in privilege or exemption from the necessary chores of citizenship.

Wanted to make sure I understood your point.

"Many people forget ... and many people never knew. Perhaps we wouldn't have known either ... except we had a gun to our heads."

:shrug:

Your response:

"Thanks. What I'm saying is there to be read. I don't think it needs interpreters."

i.e. "read the post, dummy"? I'm sorry.

"I'm not interested in the politics of "Let George Do it" ... and don't believe in privilege or exemption from the necessary chores of citizenship."

I don't know what that means, but I won't annoy you further by asking! :evilgrin: :yoiks:

"In addition the people that really HAD been hippies just appeared to magically get sucked up into the mainstream -- at least to me and my peers at that time it appeared that way."

"...we knew what the score was and we were livid, but we didn't have any optimistic organizers to guide us."

If "the people that really HAD been hippies just appeared to magically get sucked up into the mainstream" and there were few examples or guides for younger folk....................................................

From the time I entered 9th grade and signed up with selective service (the draft for those of you too young to have had the pleasure) there was the spectre that you'd be cannon fodder within a few months of graduation. About this time also we started having guys come home from Vietnam. Like you said they were changed people. Straight-laced guys, farm boys, football players with crewcuts when they left. They came back with long hair, pot smokers or worse and very, very jumpy. Many still won't talk about what happened to them in Vietnam. That's what faced me for 3 year during high school.

Nixon ended the draft 2 weeks before I would have been entered it with a lottery number of 134. This was 1973. I still voted against his ass and I've never trusted a Republican since.

People today need to have it hammered home that this war and this presidency are killing America as we know it. We realized it back in the late 60s and early 70s and did something about it. We need to do it again but it takes us all finally getting pissed off!

era liked Peace, Love, and Rock n' Roll. Look at Rove, Norquist, Reed....there were a ton of people who hated what their generation was doing. And now they are having their revenge.

And yes...the Flower Children grew up and had children which makes for financial responsibilities...as a result, many were working long hours and exhausted.

And another thing, IMHO, was the Clinton Years. Democrats and Progressives got complacent with a Dem Pres and thought we were OK when we weren't. I blame myself for this as well. I wasn't a big fan of Clinton selling out to Big Biz.

My fear today is the youth...I wonder if they have hope at all. We desperately need them to stand up and scream. When I go to meetings, demonstrations, etc....I see a ton of Boomers and not that many of the twenty year olds...of course I'm in Ohio where all the youth leave...smart choice!

"My fear today is the youth...I wonder if they have hope at all. We desperately need them to stand up and scream. When I go to meetings, demonstrations, etc....I see a ton of Boomers and not that many of the twenty year olds..."

Those children (and the culture) the product of those "hip" boomers who faded into the mainstream

I think that was the biggest reason the protests fizzled.

The idelism got lost inrementally.

Many people honestly decided that the best way to make changes was to "work within the system" and bring about positive change from within. But instead of changing the system for the better, they got caught up in the scrapping required to survive within the system, and then bought into it and became worse than what they had originally objected to. ...Others maintained their values, but were not numerous enough or stauch enough to balance off the negative systemic forces.

commercial for mutual funds or something of that sort?

Pretty appalling IMO

I was simultaneously amused and appalled. That thing where you laugh out loud as you're saying "Well, that's just plain wrong!"

I was born in 64 so I wasn't actually doing anything too radical in the 60's lol... but a lot of the music was still quite popular well into the 70's and I have to tell you I am horrified by these commercials hawking mundane products and services featuring the music I grew up listening to!

:crazy:

"Get it on, bang a gong.........."

Is those damned ads DO initially get my attention because I hear the music and then walk in to see why it's playing!

Hey...do you suppose Ambien could use Dazed and confused in their ads?

Marc Bolan made some outstanding boogie rock magic. I hope if anyone is making money from the commercials using "Get it On", let's hope it's family. Not whoever made away with the T-Rex monies.

The mystery of Marc Bolan's T. Rex millions

snip

By 1977, Bolan had began to suspect all was not well with the management of his finances and decided to act. Fate intervened. At 5 a.m. on Sept. 16, his purple Mini, driven by Jones, hit a tree on Barnes Common, south London, killing him and badly injuring Jones. He was two weeks short of his thirtieth birthday.

Within hours Bolan's flat was broken into and his papers, letters and receipts stolen. None has been recovered. At 9:30 that morning, four and a half hours after Bolan died, somber taxmen turned up at his office and demanded $5.2 million in unpaid tax.

In February 1979 a court in Jersey made a judgment against two trustees of the Bolan estate over the misuse of $700,000 of the star's money. The court heard the cash had been used to buy works of art which subsequently fetched only $277,000 at auction. A different group of trustees is now running the estate.

Bolan's 21-year-old son, who lives in Los Angeles near his mother, believes it is time for the uncertainties to be cleared up. An aspiring rap musician, Rolan claims that, with the exception of a trust fund set up by his father to pay for his schooling, he has yet to receive a cent of the Bolan fortune. "I feel that from the second my dad passed away, everything went down," he says. "It was my dad's desire to become a big star and to make the money. And I think the children and the family are entitled to their part of that existence."

Some things just break your heart because of the unfairity of it all

The above is something else...

Someone told me recently that after a certain amount of time music can be used by anyone but that can't be right, can it?

Whatever the case I would like to club the remaining members of "The Who" over the head for letting HUMMER use their music in it's commercials!

Selling out must be more appealing nowdays. All that non-materialistic ideal stuff must've been the random frivolity of youth.

nt

You can't fight for anything once you're dead.

I remember overhearing my son when he was a teenager telling a friend "Some parents tell their kids 'Son, someday you may have to fight for your country.' Mine told me 'Son, someday you may have to move to Canada.'"

We never actually told him that. We told him he may someday have to make a principled choice and that whatever he chose, we were behind him as long as he was doing what he thought was morally and ethically right.

That phrase sums up eactly what we've lost -- or what we've given up.

Despite all of the excesses, foolishness and the dark aspects of the 60's, there wwas a sense that we can do better, both as a society and as individuals. It operated on many levels, from the political to the spiritual to the social.

Even the turmoil and ivisions that often emerged often had, at least, an underlying shared sense that life was evolutionary, and society's path ws ever forward.

The biggest problem, IMO, was that we stopped looking at life that way, and instead became cynical about the prospets for positive growth. Everything shifted tyo a sense tht life was never going to get any better, and the best nayone is struggle to get the biggest piece for ourselves as individuals as possible.

The biggest part is a gem in the OP-- not just the sense of possibility and hope we are all picking up on, but something even more fundamental, more valuable and more powerful. The one shred of hope and possibility that all of that big glut of booming babies could have steered this country away from this "inevitable" nightmare for the planet.............................. that was also forfeited by too many..............

"WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE."

:bounce:
:bounce:

Several of the responses in this thread made me think of the Harry Chapin song.

Oh all the times I've listened, and all the times I've heard
All the melodies I'm missing, and all the magic words,
And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then,
How I'd love to find we had that kind of choice again.

Complete lyrics

That is what the Neocons have stolen from me. The sense of possibility. The sense that things are, overall, on the road to something better.

We'll make it change back to that way of thinking :-)

This is the part that I find most astonishing and saddening.

The people of the peace, love and optimistic sixties are the adults now. People that are in their early 60s, 50s and late 40s are parents today. They established an optimism for the future that I just assumed was going to come to pass...(I was born in 1961).

Why hasn't this generation of American adults stood up and taken responsibility for their children’s future?

It's beginning to look to me like the optimism of the sixties was just fun and the me-decades and the consumerism avalanche obliterated the dream. What happened to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

Play the music again and listen to the lyrics. All of the issues of those times have already been exposed through the music of the sixties: "1, 2, 3, 4 what are we fighting for..."

... and yet it happens again and so few adults stand up for your county (bless John Conyers).

and sacrifice for a better good. They knew loss and lack and they wanted, as all good parents do, to make sure their kids had it better than they. They did too good a job and raised a selfish, unconcerned, egotistic, generation that feels entitled to all the benefits of The American Way without the duty, sacrifice, and hard work that this is required to keep it working.
This is a sweeping generality and as such, there are many exceptions, but as the child of very active hippies, I remember that it was always a small core of the committed that lead the overwhelming majority of "day trippers". They loved to come along for the ride, but always vanished when it was time to do the clean-up. They are still the majority and primary source of the "me", or "I've got mine, fuck you" generation that rules now.
:smoke: :hippie:

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

our future.

But my parents both tried to tell me how things are always getting better. The sense of possibility and hope you speak of has, sadly, has never resonated with me.

I was born the year Reagan was first elected. During the Clinton administration, my mom, now raising me alone, lost her welfare assistance thanks to "reform" that said she had to go work at McDonald's rather than finish her degree in Psychiatry (that she was 3 years into, with outstanding grades) if she wanted to keep her assistance and continue to be able to feed her and I.

(Note: I'm not blaming Clinton, its just an example that even when there wasn't a Bush or Reagan in the WH, progress did not seem apparent.)

Anyway, this post inspired me because it didn't speak in the language of hate, but still conveyed strength. Thank you.

Hey...you go right ahead and blame Clinton. I do. And I am a Boomer. He sold out to Big Biz. He was part of the DLC...which IMHO are nothing more than Repug Lite and whores to Corporations. Clinton did some horrid things to this country and I hold him accountable.

Did your mom get her degree? I hope so.

Everything in this world goes in cycles...so I'm hoping we are at the height of this 'greed phase' and it will soon crumble...unfortunately this 'financial crumbling' could get mighty ugly....but it may make people realize that money is not happiness and we need to work together if this planet is going to survive.

Stay positive!

So I didn't experience my formative years within that era ...however, I've always held to it in spirit, and have "born too late" tattooed on my arm.

I will continue to speak out for Peace, for Resolution, for Wholeness, for Unity, for Connection.

I stand with you, in friendship. :grouphug:

was a tragedy that pushed many of the middle-of-the-road (both young & old) away from the Nixon "establishment". I hope we can end Bush's Vietnam before a similar tragedy. This war is horrible enough.

However, Nixon was re-elected in '72. :wtf:

you weren't there."

And old 'un but a good 'un.

It reminds me of my favorite lines from Field of Dreams - a movie with many great lines

Annie Kinsella: ...And if you experienced even a little bit of the sixties, you would understand.

Beulah: I *experienced* the sixties.

Annie Kinsella: No, I think you had two fifties and moved right into the seventies.

William S. Burroughs called the sixties the last great gasp of the human race. I say it's still the sixties. Inside me, at least. The coalescing of The Great Ideas -- all common sense, all the best expression of the human soul.

We failed, but it was an exhilarating time of questioning all the sacred cows and mythology that the American Empire is based on. We won many battles but lost the war.

We, young wolves, "showed our teeth" as Steinbeck said, and for a moment the bosses trembled.

before it boiled over in the '60s.

I think we might be seeing the first signs that things are beginning to boil over now.

I hope so, anyway.

and this corksucker Bush would've been out on his fuckin ass by now!

I can't help but compare the Boy King's demeanor and body language to that of LBJ during the Vietnam War. LBJ looked like a very worried man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He wore the sadness and pathos of war on his face as a mask of tragedy.

Contrast the glib demeanor of Boy King as he mountain bikes, jets around on our dime to endless fundraisers with the "have-mores." Always the smirky smile, the dangly-handed wave.

This administration should be remembered in history, among other things, as the Disgraceful Era.

Maybe at the corner of Haight/Ashbury? Their heads would explode.

I didn't drop shit got elected to the eboard of my Union and kept up the fight for more years as a shop steward. I still go to the demonstrations, tho I am not so confrontational now ( can't take meds into jail). Sad that most of the people are my age or better thses days and I wonder where all the precious genx'rs and young boomers are.

country, equal rights and then his young life was taken away. and then came bobby -- there was hope again. and martin luther king. even though their deaths were untimely they made a difference.

and yes vietnam. i had peace signs on my car. wore pins "what if they gave a war and nobody came?", etc. protested the war. i acted like a hippie even though i had a full time job. i was a divorced with a child, but i cared. my little son would come home from elementary school and talk about vietnam. every night the news showed the carnage. but yet there was hope. it was "we" and "us" not "i". there was "make love, not war". sexual liberation.

and yes i eventually got my "piece of the pie", but i still care about those who didn't and maybe that's why i'm here on the DU at the age of 64 wanting a government who cares about people -- not money.

i don't know if we'll ever recover as a country, but i don't want to give up hope.

sometimes i say "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times".:dem: