Damn Hippies
POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 20:49
VIEWED: 3615
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Jeez, what a whiner.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Yeah, hes a whiner... but he learned from the best...
"Never in the history of this country has there been a generation that's cast a longer shadow without really having done anything to earn it than the children of the 60s -- specifically the so-called Woodstock Generation. For the most part, they're thoroughly undeserving of the immortality they've pretentiously bequeathed to themselves."
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Okay, I guess an aging "hippie" has to speak up in defense. I've never considered us any of those ranting-over-personalized titles, and nobody I know of that time does, either. For the most part we considered ourselves very lucky to have lived through those years, and a generation that tried to accomplish a bunch of things, succeeded at some, failed miserably at others.
Wasn't at Woodstock. At the time, while it was considered something amazing that happened, it was equally remembered as being a horrible mess, muddy, filled with drugs, rain and misery. It's been polished up since then, but that wasn't what it WAS.
Selective memory is a great thing, but I don't have it and nobody I know my age has it. There were wonderful things that happened, yes, and you guys have probably never experienced the REAL sense of adolescent community we did, but free love wasn't such a great concept and we're all paying the price for some of it's less-savory aspects.
The one thing I wonder when I hear people grousing about the hippie generation is, "Yeah, okay, so what have YOU done? Personally, I mean?" Today's children--THIS generation, I can't speak for others--seems to me nihilistic, what he said about "and just not give a shit about anything". That's nothing but a ruddy excuse.
Yeah, there were weird, painted idiots at marches--there are everywhere people gather...look at football games. But the vast majority of us were perfectly normal people marching SERIOUSLY for things we believed in. And we did some good. No, we didn't stop Vietnam, but we made our voices HEARD--most of the time without organizations with scads of money telling us to go out and shout people down with lies we swallowed hook, line and sinker. Sure, some of that happened, it does in every society, but you see it en mass now; you didn't then. We set the stage for the end of the war, and we had one small part in bringing it down.
The communal house I lived in, every guy had a draft card. We sat around the TV in terror as the numbers were pulled. One guy went to Canada. The rest served--some didn't come back--and we all marched against the war, just as we and many of the young people today are doing against Iraq, because it was WRONG!
We took women out of the kitchen. Whether that's good or not is for history to decide, and certainly there are negative aspects of it. But my mother was a 50's mother, and I can't imagine a single one of you wanting to be one of THOSE. We challenged the glass ceiling, the first generation ever to do so. We fought for civil rights--and sowed the seeds that achieved it.
If anyone's interested, what bankrupted our country was YOUNG men mostly, greedy sons-of-bitches who cared nothing for anyone but themselves. They weren't hippies, and their parents for the most part weren't either. We weren't the entire society, you know; we were a small part of it that got hyped--we fought against a much larger culture which continued unabated after us. Don't blame us for everything, that's the easy out.
We fought against the killing of whales, couldn't eat tuna for years and years until they started coming up with dolphin-free nets...I love tuna, I remember that. We warned about the dangers of global warming, of extinction of species, of overpopulation. We took America out of it's "innosence", yet we held our policians responsible; we wrote letters, demonstrated, called our congressmen, cared to EDUCATE ourselves on the issues. Look around you; how many do that now?
My group didn't consider ourselves "hippies", by the way. Hippies were dirty, did drugs and hung around the Haight. Yeah, we did drugs, but more often LSD, mescaline, psylocybin, hashish and marijuana, and disdained those who got into the "hard stuff" and gave away their lives. We called ourselves "heads"--a term lost in history now. We shared some values with hippies and, yes, went to the concerts at the Fillmore, but we also disussed issues, sat up all night doing so, and were ACTIVE.
We challenged authority, challenged it on its merits, got bea
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Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chez-pazienza/what-a-long-strange-thoro_
b_273774.html
What is the entirety of your contribution to the world, Wulfie? What have YOU done that actually made a difference, that accomplished anything?
Mike
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No.
While I agree that some did some good things... most were as described.
Hippies pushed for the end of the Vietnam war, that much is true. But they also spit on those who came back, and called them (among other things) "baby-killers".
Hippies did push for civil rights. But ended up creating ghettos, and tying an entire culture down to ignorance, and self destruction.
Hippies did get women out of the kitchen. Now? We have soccer-moms, and women who pay to have their children raised by other people. Not to mention inflation.
Hippies didnt like the killing of whales or dolphins. Fought against that. But now? They drive Priuses and stand in judgment of those who dont. (See South Park)
Yeah, us Gen-Xers are self-absorbed and nihilistic. But who and what taught us to be that way?
ETA: Not to mention, hippies are the most adamant for government control.
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Quote:
The communal house I lived in, every guy had a draft card. We sat around the TV in terror as the numbers were pulled. One guy went to Canada. The rest served--some didn't come back--and we all marched against the war, just as we and many of the young people today are doing against Iraq, because it was WRONG!
Just try to wrap your head around that concept, Wulfie. Think about you and your friends sitting around, holding up your "lottery" numbers and waiting for them to be called, but instead of winning millions, you "win" the right to be the next to go and die for your country's foreign policy failures.
I know you like to get a hard-on sitting around and polishing your gun, dreaming of the day you get to kill someone, preferably someone blacker than you, but try to imagine the feeling of not even being in control of whether or not that happens.
I doubt you have the mental ability to make that leap, but you're quick to put down those who lived through it. And there's nobody on this site who complains more about the way things are, yet does less to change them.
Mike
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Hey-- I don't simply bitch and whine, I RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE! I spit and foam and snarl! Much wailing! Much gnashing of teeth!
Also, I (imagine I) subtly degrade anyone unlike me, and hold them secretly responsible for all my failures, shortcomings, cruelties...
Further, I have guns! Lots of 'em! Because at any moment "they" are gonna come litter in my yard. I sit in the darkened living room, twitching the heavy curtains--you think you're gonna rape MY yard gnome, you slightly different person!? Why, I--
Whoa...
Come on, Topher, that shit aint funny, quit putting that asshole in my head!
--WhoDied
_______________________
Yeah, we're mostly just giving each
other significant glances and
laughing incessantly.
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Awww...
I never said the draft was right, you douche-bag. It goes against everything this country (should) stand for.
I never said Vietnam, Korea, or Iraq were right EITHER.
What I DID say, was that for all the "marches", all the protests.... what REALLY changed things was when the people decided they had had ENOUGH.
Jebus, you would love to put me in a little box wouldn't you? It makes your life so much more bearable.
"THEM BAD! ME GOOD!"
Grow up.
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They also gave you the first and badly needed swift kick in the balls to the alphabet goons, from exposing cointelpro, to the weathermens well intentioned and badly handled* retaliation, to the crown jewels and the church committee.
Like the White Rose, the fact that they ultimately failed doesn't make their efforts any less laudable, despite being pretty halfass and filled with typical human selfishness.
But you need to re-examine the idea of hippies which has been sold to you by people you KNOW lied to you, Wulf - sure, you got whiny little slacker types, but there's quite a few first and second generation hippies within Anarchism, many of whom were the first to point out the harmful effects of a lot of food additives, years and YEARS before any admission of such from "official" sources - they're NOT stupid.
And contrary to popular belief, they're not the slackers folk take them for neither, society wants them viewed as "useless" cause the work they do doesn't enrich the elite powerbrokers, a lie you've fully bought into despite knowing better, but fact is a lot of them communes are still in operation and run quite well, cause their way of things is You don't work, you don't eat. which is pretty fair given that much of the work is food production, yes ?
I wouldn't take the lot of em for pacifists either, cause while most of em are, one particular commune in TX took the fund they'd been putting aside for a new tractor and bought a damn T-72 which used to belong to tankride, complete with all the proper paperwork and tax stamps (I should know, having been the one to handle that)(1) in response to the mess going down at El Dorado with the FLDS.
And yanno, it makes a pretty good tractor, since they've mounted the attachments off the old one to use the stuff they already had, and they're running it on SVO conversion(2).
Kinda funny to see a bunch of hippies doing land clearing with that horror and a peace sign flag flying from the radio antenna though.
Various other religious fronts also have functioning communities, Twelve Tribes, for example.
-Frem
(1)The fact that it NEEDED those tax stamps ought to give one a good idea of why they bought it.
(2) Straight veggie oil, which they produce themselves.
http://www.journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
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