So now "hippie" discussion is a growth industry on dKos? Gotta love this blog.
500 or so comments (so far) and a stint on the rec list for my original ENOUGH hippie bashing, goddamnit!!! diary?
Lestatdalc's diary...the one that originally pissed me off...called The ugly reality of hippies...? (What a nasty little title, by the way!!!)
The revered addison posts a diary called Shrumin' With The Hippies.
Gotta love this blog. Couldn't find a hippie in a carload a week ago. Kos posts an offhand diss, and now the nasty, dirty pests are EVERYWHERE!!!
GOTTA love this blog. The subconscious of leftish America in publicly available, mostly unedited print.
Nice.
Read on.
I wrote that first diary not so much because of the "hippie" part of lestatdalc's original post but because of its utter lack of comprehension about the truth of what happened then. A lack of comprehension that was manifested by trying to build kerry up to have been some kind of major figure in the movement. Which he was not.
And now addison makes the point in HIS diary that "the hippies"...the youth movement of the `60s and `70s... were a failure.
I know the movement failed in its broadest goals.
ALL movements "fail". The great, freaking middle ALWAYS eventually imposes its will by the application of sheer mass of numbers and inertia. But SOME movements move that middle.
I want to see that middle moved again. Because if it isn't, I think that we will soon ALL be Cindy Sheehan. Mourning for the dead of a MILLION Iraqs.
Nuclear Iraqs.
DAMNED soon.
I actually think that the people here on this site are "the movement" of today. That's why I am here. (I DO have other things to do besides spontaneously awakening out of a sound sleep at 6 AM on a blessed Sunday morning to sit at my computer and type my thoughts on these matters. Really.) And I think that those mostly middle-aged people in Crawford are "the movement" as well.
It's a different time.
Time for a different movement.
I don't dream of any "neo-hippie" movement to counter the neo-cons. Life tried that already and has moved on. Drugs suck. Including those pushed by Big Pharma. (ESPECIALLY those pushed by Big Pharma.) And I don't live in that sad, regressive leftover hippie scene, either. In fact, I suppose that you could accurately describe me as the ANTI-hippie right now.
Lean, clean, green, mean and as alone as I can possibly be in order to be able to do what I do. (Besides writing the occasional screed on the internet, of course.)
This present discourse has devolved in any number of ways. Baby Boomers vs. Gen Xers. Pro and anti-"hippie" supporters. Etc. etc. etc.
That was not my intent. But like I said...ALL movements eventually fail.
Large AND small.
Devolved by the great, freaking middle.
"Can't we all just...get along?" said Rodney King after getting his ass whupped by a bunch of insanely paranoid LA cops.
I ask "Can't we all just...get started?"
ENOUGH hippie bashing, goddamnit!!! was the title of my original post.
Well...enough hippie DISCUSSION now, as well.
The diary wasn't about "the hippies" in the first place. It was about the lack of effective action by centrist Dems like kerry TODAY, and the attempted co-opting of what happened 40 years ago by their spin machines.
Onward!!!
"Never look back. Something might be gaining on you" said the nearly immortal Satchel Paige. Who successfully competed with 20-something baseball pros at the age of 50 or so.
Who also said "You want to know how old I am? How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are. THAT's how old I am."
Who ALSO said:
"Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter."
"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common."
'Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines."
"I use my single windup, my double windup, my triple windup, my hesitation windup, my no windup. I also use my step-n-pitch-it, my submariner, my sidearmer, and my bat dodger. Man's got to do what a man's got to do."
"I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation."
(I can relate.)
"The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal."
(I can relate again...)
And
"I''ve said it once and I'll say it a a hundred times, I'm forty-four years old."
Yup.
And I say.
Don't look back.
Admit nothing.
And DO something.
ANYTHING.
Vaya!!!
Charles