kent state 40th anniversary!

[RJDiogenes]

People today who weren't there don't really understand what it was like in those days. They don't call it the Second American Revolution for nothing. During the 50s the McCarthyists and their sympathizers had spread throughout all levels of government. Throughout the 60s, Right-Wing segments of society were practically psychopathic with paranoia over the progress that was being made in expanding recognition of Human Rights and the diminishing influence of religion. There were many violent clashes between grass-roots protesters and establishment supporters, including many involving law enforcement. Kent State was not the only incident of National Guardsmen shooting and killing people who were protesting the Vietnam War or segregation. And it can happen again; note how Right-Wing extremists are becoming more and more aggressive over issues like Health Care and Gay Rights.

 

[Mallory]

And it can happen again...

And I fully expect it to.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I would not be a bit surprised.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I would not be a bit surprised.

You got through the last rough period. I'm sure you can get through the next one too.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If you mean will there be the occasional trigger-happy sort, then yeah, it might. But I don't think it was some organized effort by The Man(tm) to put down The People(tm) by shooting as many innocent souls as possible.

People keep telling me there's no such thing as black & white? Well, same story here. There are good cops & soldiers, and bad; conversely, there are also good protestors (those who truly want to change the world for the better), and bad (the assholes who just want to cause trouble and blow shit up, like the ones mentioned here who *wanted* to start a street riot).

To put it another way: For every Kent State, there's a Daniel Faulkner. Think of that.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ I mean that the future that America represents will continue to clash with the inertia of the bad old days.

I would not be a bit surprised.

You got through the last rough period. I'm sure you can get through the next one too.

I have no doubt about that, either.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I mean that the future that America represents will continue to clash with the inertia of the bad old days.

Well, yeah, I'm not denying that. There will always be clashes of some form. Utopia will never be achieved. There will never be total peace. (Of course we should still try as hard as we can for it, though.)

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Exactly. Although I'm not ruling out something like total peace in the fairly distant future.

 

[gturner]

But the bad old days were so bad because they were filled with hippies.

Why do we currently enjoy domestic tranquility that was absent back then? Well, we've got more cops and no hippies.

 

[clint g]

But the bad old days were so bad because they were filled with hippies.

Why do we currently enjoy domestic tranquility that was absent back then? Well, we've got more cops and no hippies.

Not 100 percent true, hippies did break into and vandalize the National Guard offices on my college campus about 2 years ago

 

[iguana_tonante]

No matter how hard you try and deny it, you enjoy your civil liberties because of hippies. We know it, you know it.

 

[gturner]

Well, if you're referring to my civil liberty to run them over in my SUV, well yeah!

 

[iguana_tonante]

Heh. I know you can't debate it, so let's go back at the tasteless jokes and bunny recipes.

 

[gturner]

Okay, please cite one civil liberty that hippies gave us.

They were the most self-indulgent generation ever produced, protesting in favor of totalitarian communism, protests which magically stopped the moment Nixon ended the draft - as if all they ever cared about was saving their own hides.

The result of their actions was a furthering of the conflict in Vietnam, while ironically guaranteeing a communist victory by causing the US to withdraw two years before the Army thought it should. So that tossed about 20 million people into a lifetime of communist servitude.

The other great hippy accomplishment was popularizing illegal drugs, overdoses of which have killed several hundred thousand Americans since Kent State, kept millions more trapped in poverty, caused a couple hundred thousand deaths in drug-related violence, and gotten whole generations of the least fortunate spending much of their lives in prison. On a more personal level, the drug culture they popularized killed Janis Joplin, John Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, John Entwistle, Judy Garland, Jim Morrison, and other notable "J's", not to mention every other letter of the alphabet.

They also helped foster the breakdown of the nuclear family, creating millions of latch-key children and an elite class of divorce lawyers.

And worst, the culture they created led directly to the disco era.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Okay, please cite one civil liberty that hippies gave us.

The counter-cultural landscape of the 60s gave way to social acceptance for gays and lesbians, political demonstrations as a mark of free speech, recognition for women's rights (with special relevance to the freedom of choice), environmentalism and ecological consciousness, and last but not least some damn fine pieces of art and music.

But I'm sure those are all bad things for people like you, who still live in fear of the Red Scare, think that woman should be in the kitchen (preferably pregnant and barefoot), some "kinds" of people should know their place and be grateful for what they are given, and that knowledge should be allowed only from state-sanctioned handbooks.

And Disco Inferno is awesome.

 

[gturner]

Okay, please cite one civil liberty that hippies gave us.

The counter-cultural landscape of the 60s gave way to social acceptance for gays and lesbians, political demonstrations as a mark of free speech, recognition for women's rights (with special relevance to the freedom of choice), environmentalism and ecological consciousness, and last but not least some damn fine pieces of art and music.

Nope. Political demonstrations have always been common in America, including protests during WW-II, prior to WW-I, riots all during the Civil War, etc. Hippies didn't invent them, they just aimed them at overthrowing the government so they could replace it with totalitarian communism where nobody would be allowed to protest ever again. They were tools.

Women's rights likewise had nothing to do with the hippies and everything to do with the changing opportunities for women in the workplace (which had been happening since the industrial revolution, accelerated after WW-II, and jumped forward with the pill). All hippies did was leave them with fatherless children, VD, and a conviction that acting just like men wanted them too was a mark of "freedom".

Likewise, the landscape for gays and lesbians changed far more in the 80's under Reagan than it did in the 60's, except for the part about gays getting into the drug culture (and thus killing thousands of times as many gays as cultural oppression ever did).

And environmentalism owes more to Nixon than the hippies, as it was Nixon who pushed for all the clean air and water regulations.

And as for art and music, you've got some darn fine music from all sorts of artists right before they O.D'd, and rock & roll would've proceeded just fine without the hippies (who followed the Beatles instead of the later, more innovative acts that didn't pander to hippies. Even Bob Dylan despised hippies.

Finally, it was the hippies who showed up on the starship Enterprise in their go-go boots and brought the series to a humiliating end, whereas it was the geeks and nerds who resurrected it in syndication.

 

[drychlick]

thank you for all your input love dr!

 

[Kirkman1987]

The Kent state shootings were horrific, and to disregard the counter-culture movement of the sixties is either extreme right wing fluff or ignorance. I mean, what's so horrible about standing in opposition to a controversial war. Those people were very brave.

 

[Pingfah]

i thank they did the right thing you had to restore order!

Big talk for someone who's not being shot to death by their own government.

 

[RJDiogenes]

As we can see, there are still many throwbacks to the McCarthy Era extant, trying to drag America backwards; just remember that the only antidote to negativism is positivism.