My 60s heroes were “freaks” who battled the “straights” in a cultural war they called The Revolution.
After being despised, lied about, spied on, tear-gassed, beat up, and shot down; the heroes won it for us.
They put an end to men getting away with battering their wives—the only people who loved them—because “I was drunk, your honor.”
They put an end to men getting away with rape if the girl was sexy because “she was asking for it.”
They put an end to 30 years in prison for smoking dope and gays being criminals and rednecks hanging black folks as public entertainment.
The Revolution began the moment the Beatles stepped off the plane in ‘63 and we won it at 12:00 noon the day Nixon resigned.
We killed the monsters.
But, as Nietzsche warned, the monster-killers became monsters.
In California colleges, a timid freshman commits RAPE if he fails to ask a girl, “Do I have your permission to put my hand in your shirt?” AND “Do I have your permission to unbutton your pants?” AND “Do I have your permission to touch your clitoris?”
Then finally, he must ask her, verbally, “Do I have your permission to have sex with you?”
If Nixon had forced this crap on college kids, we would have burned down the White House just like the British did.
And rightly so!
Unfortunately, WE did it. WE became the “straights.” After seizing the day, we needed a new Cause, so we started seizing other people’s feelings.
Amazingly, we managed to make it even even worse. Even if she answers “yes” to all those questions, he STILL committed rape if it happened after she had a few beers at a mixer, invited a kid she liked to her dorm room specifically to fuck, then the next morning she was dragged back into her sick upbringing by guilt and thinks she did something wrong.
She can now uphold her wretched “virtue” by having the frightened kid prosecuted for rape because he “should have known” that if she hadn’t had a few beers, that she wouldn’t have wanted sex.
Or at least, she wouldn’t have admitted it to herself.
If no means no, then yes, means yes. If she said “yes” by stripping naked in front of a kid and smiling at him, then she gave her permission for sex. Obviously.
“I was just drunk, your honor” isn’t a defense against rape now; it’s a reason to charge someone else with rape.
If men have to live with the results of what they did when they were drunk, so should we.
You can’t murder black people for fun anymore. Good. You can’t humiliate them by denying service. Good.
But if a redneck says the word “nigger,” he gets prosecuted by the People’s Revolutionary Council government. The crime wasn’t that he vibrated his vocal chords. The violence wasn’t the compression wave of air slamming into the victim’s eardrums. It was a “hate crime:” thinking something the government doesn't like. In this case, that black people are unworthy of respect.
We turned thoughts, per se, into crimes.
“You have not converted a man [just] because you have silenced him” was easy to say when WE were the ones being silenced. But now that we run the culture, words are crimes again. Opinions are crimes again. Consensual sex is a crime again.
“It’s okay your honor, we’re just drunk with power.”
You get punished if you throw a rock through your neighbor’s window because you don’t like the same baseball team. But you get a worse punishment if you did it because you don’t like the same gender.
It’s the same rock and the same window. The larger fine or extra jail is punishment specifically because of an emotion someone felt.
The illegal emotion could be about the neighbor’s religion, too, or the country he comes from, or that he pretends he’s a girl, or any of a long, ever-expanding list of government-designated, special people you can be punished just for not liking.
If you don’t like someone but they’re not on the list, no extra punishment.
So we not only created the speech police and the sex police and the thought police; we committed the ultimate evil: we created the feelings police.
Even the repiglicans didn’t do that.
We have met the new boss, same as the old boss, and he is US.
In 1966, you could smoke a cigarette because it’s what The Man smoked. But smoking a joint was illegal because it’s bad for you. We still smoked it in the park.
Now that we’re The Man, you can get high. Great!
But we didn’t stop there. Now, unless you’re outdoors, smoking tobacco is illegal because it’s bad for you. Some particularly Liberal towns are even making it illegal to smoke tobacco in the park.
30 years ago, the rednecks only wanted to say “nigger.” Now they might elect President Trump.
We should have let them say “nigger.”
The unspeakable inhumanity of Americans like the KKK and the slave owners and Leutenant Calley wasn’t in the evil things they did. It was that they could hurt other people THAT much without feeling anything.
Now YOU have to make the same decision they did.
Or not.
Is it okay to kick down doors and force your opinion down other people’s throats as long as it’s OUR opinion?
Note that’s a different question than, “Is our opinion good and right?” It is. Racial discrimination is wrong. Harassing gays is horrible. Beating up your wife is unspeakable. And those are rightly punished.
But that’s not the question.
See, the metaphorical Satan doesn’t whisper in your ear, “Let’s do something wrong today,” he says “Let’s be really angry at Those People, and let’s hurt them and torture them and feel delicious revenge and righteousness and hate.”
That’s bad, remember? It’s evil. We always knew it was evil, and that if we can’t do it with a smile on our face, if we can’t do it with love in our hearts, then we ain’t got no right to it at all, children. That was the core of who we really are.
Now, America’s Children are America’s Old People, and the question is, do we remember who we really are?
Did we usher in the Age of Aquarian harmony and understanding? We still can, you know. All we have to do is be the first Old People who don’t hate.
Or are we no different than the rest of ‘em: every generation before us for decades and centuries and millennia; the ones who got old and intolerant and angry, forgot love, completely forgot joy, condemned sex, and couldn’t feel anymore?
Do you, the reader, have the integrity to see the evil we began doing When the Revolution Came, or is casual, dismissive, fascist repression okay because it’s “us” doing it now?
You have two choices:
Do you think what Chicken Little said is coming true?
Do you see the writing on the wall?
Do you feel the walls and ceiling closing in on you?
Or don’t you feel at all?
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