Archived: Feb 18, 2008

> Editorial

Fiddling on the magic bus while Rome burns

Counterculture of the ‘60s offers no lessons for the 00s

By Joshua McCracken

You gave up.

I have to admit, there are days when I feel like a flesh-and-blood Eric Cartman when it comes to my opinions on the ’60s. Granted, the free love, music and drugs are pretty much all anyone remembers about them, and I’m sorry to say, those are the only things worth remembering about them.

We can wax nostalgic about the protests and demonstrations until the cows come home, but really, where were the results? The irony that many of these ’60s protestors became the ’80s materialists and the ’00s war hawks is not lost on me, and it’s these facts that explain why there isn’t more of a response to the Iraq War among younger people today. We feel completely let down, screwed over and, frankly, lied to.

I have not seen any protests on the level of the stuff I’ve seen in ’60s news reels, and really, why should we? We saw what happened to the hippies, and in the end the only thing that the counterculture movement of the 1960s taught my generation is “Never give up… until you can afford to.”

The wonderful Sen. Hillary Clinton was a feminist radical during college, but that didn’t prevent her from wholeheartedly supporting both the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. You can say “Oh, she didn’t know” all you want, but every person that I spoke to about the war right before it began was able to smell a rat, and I don’t think that the people in Washington are that stupid.

Former hippies everywhere complain about the apathy of today’s college students, so I am directing this question to them: What example did you set for us? You gave up. The hippie movement essentially ended with the Manson murders.

If they had really stood by their ideals, then a little bit of bad press thanks to some rotten pomegranates would not have made one lick of difference. Instead of patiently soldiering on and biding their time, they decided to take the money, play the game and eventually stop caring if they were only helping to turn the wheels of the “cyst-m” that they used to rebel against.

Now, we are being saturated with nostalgic images of the Summer of Love, and having to hear from the older generation about how wonderful it was; our generation could never appreciate just how important the whole business was. You’re right, we can’t – and we shouldn’t.

The ideas of the counterculture movement may have been noble and good, but when it came time to put their money where their mouths were, they simply sat on their hands and clucked a couple of times like bored hens. Ringo is pitching ads for Pizza Hut with the Monkees, the Doors reunited for the sake of milking the cow for just a few more drops of sour milk, the Rolling Stones seem to have about as much direction now as a pebble in a tornado, and all of the other fiddlers and fools are either bitter over what’s happened to their movement or CEOs.

Maybe because I wasn’t there I can’t appreciate just how special it may have been and blah, blah, blah. I wasn’t there for the Battle of Gettysburg either, but I can still appreciate just how brave and dedicated the people on both sides were, regardless of the cause they followed.

I’m extremely hopeful that this generation, now that it’s seen the ’60s for exactly what they were, will make a point of not following the example of the fiddlers and fools and actually use their brains to make the world a better place for everyone else, not just for themselves and their wallets.

There is nothing funny about peace, love and understanding, and it’s not something that can be bought and sold like a cheap trinket either. Imagine that.

> Comments

Imagine.. on Feb 18, 2008 at 10:38 AM:

bahahahahhaahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha

Johanan Raatz on Feb 18, 2008 at 11:55 AM:

"I have to admit, there are days when I feel like a flesh-and-blood Eric Cartman when it comes to my opinions on the ’60s."

You have no idea how refreshing it was to hear that.

History Lesson on Feb 18, 2008 at 12:51 PM:

Joshua,

1) Comparing news reels of today with those of the 1960s will not reveal reality. The media do not report protests (on March 19, 2003, the U.S. had the LARGEST protests in its history; the media did not report it because they backed the war liars and wanted viewers to think that the war had public support). How about the May Day march every year? Bigger than what the 1960s offered, yet the news outlets either fail to report it or intentionally underestimate the numbers in every city in the U.S. Also, all of those newsreels are of marches that took place five to ten years into the war in Vietnam. If you place the movement today contextually, it is actually considerably stronger and more diverse than what was produced in the first five years of the Vietnam era (Civil Rights movement excluded).

2) You are right that everyone hates hippies, on the left and on the right. But the representation of hippies in movies and television programs INTENTIONALLY neglects to confront the actual politics of the counter-culture (even Woodstock, for example, was a political festival, but the politics were edited out the major documentaries made about it; incidentally, during the festival, Woodstock was the 2nd most populated city in NY and had the lowest crime rate per capita in the U.S.). Every movie presents hippies as "sex, drugs, and rock n roll"; Malcolm X and the Black Panthers as violent, anti-white racists; and MLK as a liberal. None of these representations are true. They are intentional misrepresentations. Declassified documents reveal that the U.S. government actually believed that the country was on the verge of a revolution in the late '60s; actions have been taken to discourage the following of that model.

3) Tons of hippies and radicals sold out. Very, very true. Nobody likes yuppies. But what about the FBI's Cointelpro program, which illegally murdered and falsely imprisoned hundreds of movement leaders? Google it: "Cointelpro." Those people didn't sell out, they were killed by their own government (Were you aware that the government stalked, harassed, spied on, and blackmailed MLK?)

Joshua McCracken on Feb 18, 2008 at 03:40 PM:

I did not address this column to the leaders who were killed, I addressed it to the common folk who gave up. Since both of my parents were in fact very involved in these protests, I have had a first hand report from them on how these things went down, and I stand by every single thing that I said. And you must be right on these recent protests, because I had not heard of them, but one great burst doesn't compensate for continual movement. You try to break a door open with one kick and walk away, nothing happens. I did not say that I hate the hippies, if I remember correctly I did highlight a few things about them that I do like. You make it sound as if the deaths of their leaders justified a mass giving up. Didn't stop the founders from signing the declaration of independence, even though most of them were either killed or imprisoned following the signing. In fact, if I remember correctly, many of them were dead before the end of the Revolutionary War. The soldiers fighting did not give up because of this, they believed in their cause. I'm very sorry, but the hippies clearly did not believe in their cause enough to keep it going.