Enough.
I was silent when Kos started this shit because the whole "hippie" meme is well in the past and the remnants of that movement are merely an empty shell of what was happening then, plus he wasn't even CONCEIVED at the time, let alone a witness. What would he know?
I remained silent as the piling on started. Makes no difference to me, really. I was there, I saw it. I know damned well what happened.
But then I read lestatdelc's diary Saturday evening. "The ugly reality of hippies..." Where he essentially says that john kerry "had far more impact in swaying people that the Vietnam War was wrong and we needed to get out ASAP than `hippies'...because of his background, because of his demeanor, because of his approach, because of they way he presents."
And that did it for me.
Read on.
I got news for ya. EYEWITNESS news, I was there. In Cambridge. In Chicago for the convention. On the Lower East Side. For many years. And I am STILL there, although I don't run that "hippie" game on people. (Old news dies young....)
john kerry barely EXISTED in the consciousness of America at the time. Lestatdelc got his impressions from what he read and was told by the kerry campaign, I am willing to bet. He got them from the same place that Kos got his. From corporate, media-generated revisionist history.
And if he WAS there...he missed the whole thing. (Lots of people did...all safe, all locked up in their own heads. In their own position. In their own privilege.)
"During the Vietnam War, John Kerry had far more impact in swaying people that the Vietnam War was wrong and we needed to get out ASAP than "hippies" even within the same Veterans Against the War group did."
What?
Oh.
I must have been living in a different country.
Because I don't even REMEMBER kerry from that period. Hardly remember the Veterans Against the War.
Impact?
Dylan. Tom Hayden. Malcolm X. Abbie Hoffman. Muhammad Ali. Joan Baez. John Lennon. Paul Krassner. Jimmy Breslin., Norman Mailer. William Burroughs. Underground newspapers by the hundreds. A thousand THOUSAND freaks of all varieties saying "HELL no. We won't go.!!!" All OVER the media. All OVER the minds of the people. All over the DEMOCRATS, eventually.
And many of us did NOT go. WOULD not go. We knew what was happening out FRONT. kerry didn't. He went, so he's a HERO!!!??? That's why he went down in 2004. He was too dumb, too insulated by his own privilege during the Vietnam War to figure out what millions of us knew on the natch. Millions!!!.That the Vietnam War was wrong wrong wrong. Morally AND strategically. And his privilege blinded him to that until he went under fire. THEN he wised up. A little. A foxhole conversion. And came home and assumed his rightful place as a rich Yalie white boy child of privilege. At the front of the line where he just KNEW he belonged. Leading the proles to safety. Looking all soulful and posing for the cameras in his fatigues. Talking all Harvard and Yale to the select committees that were the same then as they are now. Full of shit. And then he went into politics. The rich boy's game, ESPECIALLY in Massachusetts. Cut his hair. Married well (TWICE!!!) and financed his career. Right to the top!!!. And then he was once again too dumb in 2004 to realize what millions of us ALSO knew then. Too insulated. That the Rats have to be faced down every time they try to run a Rat move. And that, just as in the '60s, the war was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Morally, strategically and tactically as well. Only he DIDN'T wise up this time because no one was firing at him. Not bullets, anyway. So he lost. All Harvard and Yale even in defeat. "It's just a GAME, fellas. Harvard wins one year, Yale the next. I'm off to Gstaad for some skiing. Maybe a blue ribbon tour of the safer areas of Iraq while I'm at it. Better luck next year. Too bad about Ohio. Tally Ho!!!"
While the foxes he was SUPPOSED to have been hunting guarded the chicken coop yet again.
Fox News Flash: "Kerry Concedes!!! And now the news."
And lesatatdelc has the GALL to write this diary!!!
And all of these supposed "liberals" here GO FOR IT???
Man...THAT'S fucked up.
Makes me madder than hell.
And I'm not going to take it anymore.
Without the youth movement of the `60s and `70s...we would have had this right wing media-fascist government 30 years EARLIER.
This very blogosphere upon which we all so sagely write would have been nipped in the bud. Before it got too dangerous.
ENOUGH of this hippie bashing.
Wise up.
Sure.,..it's over. Now.
Honor thy ancestors.
Y'might learn something.
Charles