The Central Park event was organized by Paul Williams, an 18-year old who had founded the first serious rock and roll magazine, Crawdaddy, as a college freshman a year earlier, and Jim Fouratt, a gay actor who would co-found the Yippies a year later. That January, San Francisco had launched its first “Human Be In,” called Gathering of the Tribes, which had drawn 30,000 people to listen to Timothy Leary, dance to the Grateful Dead, and vibe on the free acid distributed to the crowd. The New York “Be In” would lack even that level of structure (if that’s the right word…), with flyers plastered around the city simply calling on people to “come as you are” to Sheep Meadow.Here's some video:
Here's a contemporaneous article in the Village Voice, "Central Park Rite is Medieval Pageant," by Don McNeill:
Rhythms and music and mantras from all corners of the meadow echoed in exquisite harmony, and thousands of lovers vibrated into the night. It was miraculous. It was a feast for the senses; the beauty of the colors, clothes, and shrines, the sounds and the rhythms, at once familiar, the smell of flowers and frankincense, the taste of jellybeans. But the spirit of the Be-In was tuned -- in time -- to past echoes and future premonitions. Layers of inhibitions were peeled away and, for many, love and laughter became suddenly fresh....And here we are in that future, hearing the echoes.
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85 comments:
And we've reaped the whirlwind.
See that girl barefoot' along
Whistlin' and singin', she's a carrying' on.
There's laughing in her eyes, and she can live on the street.
Everybody's dancin' in a ring around the sun.
Nobody's finished. We ain't even begun.
So take off your shoes, child, and take off your hat.
Try on your wings, and find out where it's at.
Take a vacation. Fall out for a while.
Summer's comin' in, and it's goin' out in style.
Well, light up smokin', buddy. Have yourself a ball.
Hey, hey, hey, come right away.
Come and join the party every day.
Damn Ann. You are one seriously leftover hippie. (Not there is anything wrong with that).
@pacwest
You should see Meade.
Ann's hippie history.
"Oh....the futility" in my best Herbert Morrison voice.
Back then nobody considered what would happened when self-righteous hedonism gets a little power - tender snowflake fascism and the rise of the idiocracy, that's what. I bet the average stoned out hippie sophomore in 1967 knew more that was true and useful than a modern post-graduate in the humanities.
Every nj princess' fantasy.
'Cause there's really no better way to memorialize the Resurrection of Our Lord than droppin' some blotter acid, we always used to say.
Having lived through those times does seem to give a sense of perspective. Or maybe it is just the wisdom of age. Or maybe not. Who knows.
You are certainly right about the hippie sophomores of 1967.
Standards in higher ed have slipped a lot since then.
On that day 50 years ago, I was an intern probably trying to pass a tube down the nose of an overdose to wash out her stomach. She was spitting and vomiting in my face as I did so.
I used to call them "underdoses."
The only thing good about Hippies was Hippie girls--and the fact that they sometimes bared their breasts in public, sometime through diaphanous clothing. The rest stunk.
YH,
"Some of you are taking acid to find spiritual enlightenment. To find a higher purpose. Some are taking acid just to get high. Either way it's a dollar in my pocket." Frank Zappa
(From memory so not exact, and I think it was Zappa)
It was bullshit them. It's even bigger bullshit looking back from the perspective of a half century.
...Paul Williams, the composer?...
..the world will little note nor long remember.
Paul Williams, the composer?.
Doubtful. No.
It was a sad day when the hippies grew up, got politically active, and traded in the incense and love-beads for the billy club and the bayonet.
William Chadwick said...
"It was a sad day when the hippies grew up, got politically active, and traded in the incense and love-beads for the billy club and the bayonet."
Perhaps we can view Boomer Feminism as a Reaction to their young experiences with 'Free Love' and being treated as interchangeable sex buckets.
Explains things.
Maybe adds a little empathy to their current demeanors.
I am Laslo.
I had no idea Paul Williams organized the Central Park Be-In! I knew he had founded CRAWDADDY! Magazine.
Later, he became primarily responsible for the belated discovery and late- and post-(mortem)career success of Philip K. Dick, via his article in the November 06,1975 issue of ROLLING STONE Magazine, "The Most Brilliant Sci-Fi Mind On Any Planet: Philip K. Dick" which brought Dick wide attention outside the insular world of science fiction fandom and readership, (where, even there, he was considered outre, a minority taste, never one of the big sellers). Though I was familiar with his name and reputation, I had read only one story by him at the time I read this article. It spurred me to pick up a couple of his books. The first one I read, The Man In The High Castle, somewhat underwhelmed me. It was the one book of his that had won the Hugo Award, (science fiction's Oscar). The next one I read, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Edritch, blew me away! It wasn't just that the novel itself was wilder, but it took reading more of his work for me to recognize and feel Dick's voice. From that time on, I was and remain an ardent fan of his.
(When I re-read The Man In The High Castle years later, it struck me as one of his best novels, though more restrained in its science fiction elements; it's almost a mainstream novel, except for the world it depicts, in which the Axis powers won WWII.)
Williams later founded The Philip K. Dick Society to further memorialize and publicize Dick's work after Dick's death at 53 in 1982. I subscribed to that for its entire run.
(Prominent contemporary writer Jonathan Lethem was also a subscriber to it and even helped in putting a few issues of it together.) I think this newsletter, coupled with the posthumous release of BLADE RUNNER, based on a Dick novel, (Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep), did the second half of the work of bringing renown upon Dick, (his ROLLING STONE article having done the first half of the work 7 years previously).
I still have that copy of ROLLING STONE.
"'Paul Williams, the composer?'
"Doubtful. No."
Decidedly no.
Peace and love didn't triumph. On the plus side, the world didn't end in nuclear Armageddon either.
Perhaps we can view Boomer Feminism as a Reaction to their young experiences with 'Free Love' and being treated as interchangeable sex buckets.
They did it willingly, Laslo. Even eagerly. There were no victims, just perpetrators.
"Peace and love didn't triumph. On the plus side, the world didn't end in nuclear Armageddon either."
It's too soon to say it won't.
I was reading Fred Siegel's "The Revolt Against the Masses." and he describes a guy who was involved in a 60s terrorist group who was having sex with a girl member of the same radical group when he noticed a crab louse in her eyebrow.
Lovely.
"And here we are in that future, hearing the echoes."
That is because the Boomers built an Echo Chamber.
I am Laslo.
And here we are in that future, hearing the echoes.
I was living in the Haight when the summer of love swept over SF in a wave of opiates. We dug it, we burned our bras and draft cards, we boogied all night long, we were so frickin' cool. I participated in two events that shaped the Boomer culture, the FSM and SoL, I have to laugh at my naive easily manipulated younger self.
Unfortunately the promised future of enlightenment, love and peace took a hard left at the intersection of Broad and Wall and the music echoing down the hallways of our institutions is not Scarlet Begonias, but Uber Alles (yeah, I went full Godwin).
Laslo, right on cue with the Boomer loathing. His generation, by contrast, has covered itself with glory.
"Laslo, right on cue with the Boomer loathing."
Don't loathe Boomers, just the ones that brought us The Overwhelming Modern Left.
A generation previous, Ayers would still be in Prison, rather than ghost-writing a President's Life Story.
Of course, in this Generation he would have to check his White Privilege at the BLM meetings.
I am Laslo.
Leary was an evil manipulative man. Even Harvard had he sense to get rid of him.
Ok, I looked at a good bit of the video.
It's a White Lives Matter gathering.
Don't loathe Boomers, just the ones that brought us The Overwhelming Modern Left.
Tappa tappa tappity tap. Rhetorical footwork, they used to call it "hoofing."
For my part, I loathe all those who brought the modern left, starting approximately with the generation of 1789 in France and continuing on through to today's university-educated Millennials.
Tappa tappa tappity tap.
Sheep Meadow being the perfect metaphor. And the likes of Leary wolves posing as sheepdogs.
Easter Sunday 'Be In.'
Ayers would still be in Prison,
That be a different kind of "be in".
Feminism is outgrowth of the physics principle of mechanical advantage, thereby making human physical strength and its hierarchy replaceable by machines. Has nothing to do with free love, equal rights etc. That's why you will never see AA pancake Mead, but that is not essential for survivorship in our world.
This confused mass of white hustlers and white hustlees in the Sheep Meadow was no ignition point. The ignition point came in July when a race war went to live fire in Detroit. You could go back to Watts, but Watts got Commissioned. The Commission did not change anything but it delayed but still exposed the poverty of high mindedness. Next came the riot of the black poor and desperate (Detroit 1967) and then the Chicago Convention riot of 1968. We are just as confused today but the "Resistance" is, so far, considerably less willing to take radical risks. Having just left power, they probably think they will get it back soon. The rub will come if they are wrong.
"That's why you will never see AA pancake Mead, but that is not essential for survivorship in our world."
You forgot that she loves him. And you underestimate the continuing power and viability of pancaking.
That was interesting. A cross-section of humanity, some seeking enlightenment, some just looking to meet chicks. Well, not a complete cross-section, since as noted above it was a very white crowd with only the stray POC. Some squares in suits, lots of proto-hippies. Looks like it was BYOW - Bring Your Own Weird. Back then, they were trying to find where it was at; now that the survivors are all pushing 70 hard or even older, they may not be able to remember where they put it.
It was the first generation where nerdy, smart, unathletic males found a way to get girls - get 'em high and confuse them with a lotta political bullshit.
And it worked!
Paul Williams' first song (co-written with Biff Rose), "Fill Your Heart", was covered by Tiny Tim on the B-side of his 1968 hit "Tiptoe Through The Tulips"...
Who knew?
Clyde -
BYOW - Bring Your Own Weird.
or
BTOB - Bring Your Own Banana.
It was the first generation that had a large number of people who cared more about themselves than about their children. Self-actualization and self-indulgence above all.
The evidence is all around us, and it was the genesis of much of our decline in family stability, which led inexorably to the decline in educational achievement, which led to the decline of everything else.
Generally speaking, of course.
People do not apprciate the reality of that era. Nothing was more enervating than the lassitude of a Sunday afternoon. The Sunday papers spread out on the floor. Nothing good on tv. Time crawling. Of course, people went to Central Park. Their moments there were significantly less boring than staying at home, and it was kind of fun to pretend that aimless milling was participation in the revolution......How sad and desperate life was before the Internet and cable tv.
50 years ago, I was 13, and the cutest girl in Art class invited me to her home to listen to her new Moody Blues album.
This entailed my lying next to her in her bed and sharing the album cover between us to look at the artwork.
Her mother came by the doorway and told us we could sit on the bed, but not lay. Then to embarrass Lisa, she said "I don't want you getting Mono again".
Yea, Mono, the first STD...
It started there and it ended with sticking their children and grandchildren with non-dischargable student loan debt and forcing them to purchase healthcare insurance to cover the hippies' geriatric medical costs.
Cummon people now, smile on your brother,everybody get together, try to scam one another right now.
@WIlliam. Really. People born later may not appreciate how vanilla life was then. No ref to race intended.
"Paul Williams' first song (co-written with Biff Rose), 'Fill Your Heart,' was covered by Tiny Tim on the B-side of his 1968 hit 'Tiptoe Through The Tulips'....
"Who knew?"
David Bowie recorded it for his wonderful album HUNKY DORY.
"It was the first generation that had a large number of people who cared more about themselves than about their children."
Nonsense.
"Tappa tappa tappity tap. Rhetorical footwork, they used to call it "hoofing." For my part, I loathe all those who brought the modern left, starting approximately with the generation of 1789 in France and continuing on through to today's university-educated Millennials."
I am always willing to blame the French, sure.
But the French did not directly give us Hillary Clinton: Baby Boomer.
Or: Obama, Baby Boomer.
Hell, the Boomer Left tried to give us Hero John Kerry, Boomer Idol and War Hero.
My original quote was "Overwhelming Modern Left". You see it as 'hoofing'. I see it as describing the great flowering of Influence. Yes, the Left has always been there. But I view the Sixties Generation as when the 'Anti-anti-Communists' began to take control, and built the Universities and the Media in their Image.
I used Ayers as an example of how the Boomers handled Advanced Left Thinking.
In the Fifties, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed. Can one picture the Boomers doing that, twenty-five years later?
From Wiki: "on September 28, 2015, the 100th anniversary of Ethel's birth, 11 members of the New York City Council issued a proclamation stating that "the government wrongfully executed Ethel Rosenberg", and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer officially recognized, "the injustice suffered by Ethel Rosenberg and her family", and declared it, "Ethel Rosenberg Day of Justice in the Borough of Manhattan".
Gale Brewer is a Boomer. I imagine most of the others were, too.
Sure, there have always been 'those' people: they just now have their hands on the levers of Power.
The comment I wrote before your response was in response to Althouse's "And here we are in that future, hearing the echoes" line. I wrote:
"That is because the Boomers built an Echo Chamber."
The Mainstream Media ARE, for the most part, (Leftist) Boomers, and they fight The Newest Nixon, figuratively, endlessly and airless.
I was educated by Boomer teachers. I know the lessons they taught me. I know the consistency of Thought they imparted, all the way up to and through College: I really learned how America sucked. Were the schools like this in the Forties? Fifties? 1789?
"...continuing on through to today's university-educated Millennials."
I don't believe the Generations after the Boomers are any better. All are still drinking from the same well.
I believe a great Minority of these Generations are Upright People. But they are fighting what is now an Uphill Battle.
But I'm willing to shift the blame backwards from the Boomers:
In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, adjusted the fluoride content of its water supply to 1.0 ppm and thus became the first city to implement community water fluoridation. By 2008, more than 72 percent of the U.S. population served by public water systems had access to fluoridated water.
The Boomers DO have great teeth.
And, for kicks: Ah, yes: How Baby Boomer psychodrama infected the 2016 election
I am Laslo.
Easter on March 26 is really early. You could run into a Super Bowl week /Mardi Gras confluence now. Make the "Be In" look like a little girl's tea party.
I screwed up the link:
Ah, yes: How Baby Boomer psychodrama infected the 2016 election
I am Laslo.
Yeah nerdy guys made out all right , but only if their hair was good. Such was the power of a good head of long hair.Girls would tell their friends "He's growing his hair" and it was a Heavy thing.
Thing fell apart when guys started going bald. Major bummer!
Big Mike said...
It was bullshit them. It's even bigger bullshit looking back from the perspective of a half century.
3/26/17, 12:55 PM
Yep. The direct ancestor of pussy hat marches and candlelight vigils against terrorism. Nothing of any worth is really accomplished but the participants get to feel so deliciously superior and self-righteous.
As a 33 year ,old cop then I called it the same as now, "entitled idiots"...but it was easy to get laid,,,
I was into Philip K Dick before he was popular.
You would get his stuff in F&SF and Galaxy and the like. I had piles of those things from the vendors at Clark AFB.
Its like being a fan of a band before they were popular.
I was, like, cool, man.
While the soldiers were dying
The hippies met on a hill
There was song & celebration
Some are vibrating still
Woodstock Nation's
In rehabilitation
Aquarian philosophy
Just a New Age lobotomy
From eternity to here
Flashing yellow, green, and near
From eternity to here
But the message wasn't clear
Bert Guy/1992
Laslo:
Struck a nerve, I did.
Talk about your psychodrama.
So typical of your generation. Which is covering itself with glory, sure.
Laslo Spatula said...
.......
I don't believe the Generations after the Boomers are any better. All are still drinking from the same well.
...
Exactly, rendering all the rest a truckload of ....
Typical From Laslos link:
The Clintonite half of the race represents the Baby Boomer generation's brittle, screechy self-righteousness, born out of exaggerated struggles, and soothed by corrupt money-grabs. Then there's the Trumpian half: born rich, yet afflicted with grandiose self-importance and paranoia, and possessed of a consciously exercised offensiveness that is normally pardoned as senility.
Kinda seems to me majority of boomers are neither screechy, nor born rich.
rightguy2 said...
While the soldiers were dying
The hippies met on a hill
There was song & celebration
Some are vibrating still
The soldiers were baby boomers, sent to war by "the Greatest Generation"
Laslo, tap dancing. Start at 2:57.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHOgD-RZ_vk
The soldiers were baby boomers, sent to war by "the Greatest Generation."
No shit. The Greatest Generation gave us the Vietnam War, which Baby Boomer grunts won only to have their victory squandered by ... the Greatest Generation.
The Greatest Generation radicalized the universities.
The Greatest Generation gave us the War on the Poverty, which ... oh hell, you know the rest.
"The soldiers were baby boomers, sent to war by "the Greatest Generation"
JFK was,but LBJ was not a member in good standing of the Greatest Generation. LBJ's behavior during WW II was deplorable. As Caro masterfully described in his LBJ bio, (literally) while our soldiers were on the Bataan death march, Johnson was in Hollywood having gauzy photos taken of himself in his cleanly pressed officer's uniform smoking a cigarette (through a holder).
I think that the big reason LBJ made so many fatal errors in Viet Nam was that he didn't meaningfully participate in WW II. Before send you 18 year old conscripts to die for their country, you had better have a damn good reason to do so.
Hit a lot of Boomer Nerves, evidently...
Still waiting to see what in my 4:59 comment is actually in dispute.
WAS John Kerry a bigger hero to Baby Boomers than I thought?
ARE the Baby Boomers in the MSM actually conservative?
Roughcoat said...
"So typical of your generation. Which is covering itself with glory, sure."
As I said previously:" I was educated by Boomer teachers. I know the lessons they taught me. I know the consistency of Thought they imparted, all the way up to and through College." As the commercial went, "I learned it by watching you, Dad."
Tank said...
"Exactly, rendering all the rest a truckload of ...."
Just identifying where the necrosis we see today begun to spread out of control. Kind of a BC / AD thing. But we get to the turning point a few comments later.*
Roughcoat said:
"Talk about your psychodrama."
AND
"No shit. The Greatest Generation gave us the Vietnam War..."
*There's the Turning Point.
Wow. Boomers have Daddy Issues, Who knew?
I am being serious with this question: what did the MAJORITY of Baby Boomers accomplish?
I am Laslo.
Baby Boomers are just happy they were the Last Generation before the Abortion Wave came: they all got born alive.
How would America be different if Roe v. Wade came down in the early Fifties?
Too many possible answers for multiple choice.
I am Laslo.
I forgot: the Baby Boomers became the Greatest Generation by halting Legal Abortion over the last forty-plus years.
Something like that.
I am Laslo.
The Early Years (1973-1979)
"When the Supreme Court issued its Roe and Doe decisions, the effect of the seven-member majority's rulings was to place no real limits on the way, timing, or reasons an abortion might be performed. There were no waiting periods, no informed consent requirements, no parental involvement laws, no laws banning partial-birth abortions or any other technique that survived the Court's sweeping decision. Rather than discourage abortion, many states actually went on to fund abortion, as did the federal government prior to passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976, not only paying for the decision to take life, but also lending their tacit moral blessing.
Under the circumstances, the skyrocketing numbers of abortions in these early years are not surprising. In the seven-year period from 1973 to 1979, the number of abortions more than doubled, whether we take the CDC numbers (from 615,831 to 1,251,921) or AGI's numbers (from 744,600 to 1,497,700).
Abortion rates (the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44) and ratios (the number of abortions per 1,000 live births) also exploded in the immediate aftermath of Roe.
The abortion rate stood at 14/1,000 women of reproductive age in 1973, but reached 24/1,000 in 1979. The ratio of abortion to live births stood at 196 abortions to 1,000 live births in 1973 and almost doubled by 1979, reaching 358 per 1,000 live births.
Population increases fueled by the baby boom generation's coming of age might account for some increase, but not of the magnitude seen here. For example, while the female population of reproductive age (15-44) grew by 24.4% from 1970 to 1980, abortion totals increased by more than four times that figure - - a whopping 101% increase from 1973 to 1979.
Cultural factors, such as the sexual revolution ignited in the 1960s, surely contributed to the increase, but what fueled the explosion was probably the availability of abortion itself as an automatic "solution" if an unplanned pregnancy occurred. An aggressive abortion industry marketed itself as a vehicle of "liberation" for women and played upon widescale ignorance about fetal development ("it's only a blob of tissue") to court increasing numbers of customers and allies."
I am Laslo.
Roughcoat, in a response to me:
Laslo said:
"Perhaps we can view Boomer Feminism as a Reaction to their young experiences with 'Free Love' and being treated as interchangeable sex buckets."
Roughcoat said...
"They did it willingly, Laslo. Even eagerly. There were no victims, just perpetrators."
No Boomer Victims, just Boomer Perpetrators.
If I am refuted any harder I'm going to ejaculate.
I am Laslo.
"I am being serious with this question: what did the MAJORITY of Baby Boomers accomplish?"
I have thought for some time that my generation -the Boomers- are under-achievers. We were born into situation better than any before, but we are passing on to our children a much inferior country and society. The sixties hippie counter culture probably would have been cult sized (like say the beatnicks) if the Viet Nam war =and the draft- hadn't come along and made dropping out a sensible thing to do.
"So typical of your generation. Which is covering itself with glory, sure."
Baby Boomers: Hey! The Problem wasn't us, it was the kids we raised!"
Sorry, Mom and Dad.
Mom and Dad? Wait.
Blame the baby boomers. They started divorcing at record rates in the 1970s and never stopped. While divorce fell somewhat among younger Americans over the past 25 years, it has soared among older adults.
I am Laslo.
Boomers: we grew up with a Generation of parents that stayed married and had less abortions. Glad we fixed that.
Oh -- and by the way: sorry about the National Debt.
I am Laslo.
Afterward, they grew up to behave as assistant principals, with a love for overseeing people not their students, not enrolled, and not wishing to be enrolled.
Firstly, You're welcome. Whom do you think developed the devices that enable you to bitch about us.
Secondly, only a percentage of the Boomer demographic were hippies. The summer of love was just that, and many of the "hippies" were high schoolers on summer break. SF had problems dealing with thousands of runaway minors. The whole scene quickly soured.
In the early 60's only about 30% of high school grads went to college. Most went to work married, bought a home and had kids. Even fewer embraced the hippie and/or rebellious lifestyle associated with our age group and half of us were conservatives. We did not sanction much that has been done by the left. We quickly realized that doing drugs made one stupid and when you're young that isn't helpful.
It's easy to dissect the Vietnam war in hindsight. It was very different for Boomers. 91,000 18-20 year olds were drafted from Northern CA alone in late '65 through mid-66. War was not an abstract, it reached into our lives and grabbed us by the throat. Many of our brothers, husbands, lovers and friends died while the leftie scumbags protested hiding behind deferments, often obtained by parental privilge.
/rant
BTW can we tar abdominal feather the jerk who invented autocorrect?
As a tail-end Boomer who was a little kid in the '60's and cannot be held responsible for be-ins, Altamont, or Nehru jackets, I think one problem I have with the younger generations is that although their complaints about the Boomers are correct, what did they do to push back?
It looks like college age millenials are intent on pushing the mistakes made by leftist boomers to new excesses. Campus militancy? At least then it was protesting an actual war. Now it's stopping speakers students don't want to hear.
If millenials and Gen X's had stood up and told their Marxist Boomer professors to stick it up their asses, I would have cheered. Instead, it looked like they unquestionably accepted radical politics and are eager to find new and better grievances and offenses.
You know what would be really radical? NOT getting tats, NOT wearing a man bun, NOT being a campus leftist, majoring in accounting, getting married and having kids. And naming them, say, Bill and Mary.
Actually the problem isn't the GenXers, in the main they're a hard striving, sensible group having survived their parents excesses and foibles,they are the generation that realized the potential that the post-WWII economy promised. It's the GenXer's kids; the helicoptered snowflake generation that may become problematic. They are easily persuaded by to settle for less...the tiny house movement is an example. Millennials may get their shite together, but it's not looking good at the moment.
Laslo, the majority of the Boomers did what most generations do, slogged through ordinary lives, pay taxes & mortgages, drive buses, work at the supermarket, in car dealerships, service businesses, sell insurance, replace your hot water tank, change your tires. All the boring crap nobody notices or appreciates until they have to take a cold shower.
Boomers are a marketing meme gone wild. We began to believe the PR, and yes, we made some bad personal decisions, so will those following us. The only thing that made us remarkable was our sheer numbers which converted to $$$$. As usual the industrial media complex encouraged behaviors they approved of and wished more of, the excesses, not the normal.
Anyhoo you're up at bat next and the largest generation to date, the snowflakes, are at your heels, good luck with that.
I like William's comment at 4:32. The past is a foreign country. It's easy to look back with the benefit of a half-century of hindsight and make judgments, but the experience of being there would have been very different, and as William noted, with a lot fewer options for entertainment. I'm not going to go on a "You people ruined the country!" rant about any generation, because while things are worse in some ways, they are better in others. I wouldn't trade the present for the past.
The boomers and the millienials love getting together in crowds to celebrate themselves. When Joan Didion was asked what came to mind when she thought of the women's movement, she replied 'parades'.
I was there - as a little kid. My hippie mom took us. It was nice.
She also took us to the Love-In and later I went myself to the Smoke-In.
Didn't prevent my becoming a constitutional conservative years later... like the saying goes:
If you aren't liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you aren't conservative when you are old(er), you have no brain'.
"If millenials and Gen X's had stood up and told their Marxist Boomer professors to stick it up their asses, I would have cheered. Instead, it looked like they unquestionably accepted radical politics and are eager to find new and better grievances and offenses."
I agree.
I made it clear at the beginning that I was talking about the Boomers on the Left.
That was called 'dancing'. Evidently one can't point out that a large part of the Generation heralded a seismic shift in Society and the Family. The Sixties and Seventies make me think of the Colin Powell "Pottery Barn" line: 'you broke it, you bought it."
Since then the Left has been ascendent: once things went "Lord of the Flies" you aren't going to undo the damage easily. If ever.
Again: necrosis.
I am Laslo.
BJM said...
"Firstly, You're welcome. Whom do you think developed the devices that enable you to bitch about us."
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford thank you, too.
I am Laslo.
Lost our big chance to nuke from orbit.
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