By Ed Rogers
Reflecting back on my life, as most of us old farts do, I realized that most people only know about the sixties through history books, newspapers, or bullshit stories that people like me tell. I don’t claim to have been in the belly of the beast, but I had a hold of its tail.
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| Flower power |
The conversion from the child who believed like their parents to the person that stopped believing anything the government or their parents said came when the first big lie fell. It was then that most of us knew there were more lies being told than just about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. But that was not the political turning point; everybody, sooner or later, discovers the sex lie. If sex was a sin...then call me a sinner.
Then there were the movies. Marijuana would drive you crazy. One joint and you would become a rapist or a murder. There were stories of teenagers holding up stores to feed their habit. They had talks in gym class, and pictures on the walls—all this to scare us straight. But after our first joint, most of us understood that our whole life had been a lie.
Marijuana became the glue, the common link, between all protest groups. I can’t remember going to any meeting or rally where there was no Marijuana. It was not the killer weed they have today, where a couple of hits and you are a zombie. We were not tuning out, we were turning on. We really believed we could change the world. We had seen the light and once the American people saw how corrupt the government was, they would join us. There are a lot of the pictures from those days showing stoned-out hippies hanging in parks and so forth. Although they got all the attention, the hippies were a small percent. The powers that were at the time wanted to paint everybody who smoked pot or had long hair as unwashed pothead scum who wanted to overthrow the American way of life. The truth was, we were their sons and daughters. But we had become true believers.
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| Joan Baez and Bob Dylan |
As a side note, did you know it was Dylan who turned the Beatles onto smoking marijuana?
After Nixon was re-elected everything died. The drug scene in Cali had gotten so bad, it was being reported on the news everyday. Americans preferred a corrupt government and hated us for saying the King had no clothes.The war ended, and the civil rights movement stopped after King’s death. The women’s movement lost its power, and membership dropped. There was nothing left that was worth fighting for.
I married and moved to Northern Cali in the seventies. The music changed and the drugs changed. I tried to change, but I could not climb that mountain. That story didn't end well either. As the years went by, my hair got shorter and shorter and less and less. I have lived long enough to vote for a black president—I guess that is saying something.
In a lot of states the kids who were smoking pot and marching on the streets back then are congressmen and governors today. I know everybody wants to sing along with Dylan: “The world it is a changing.” But don’t get your hopes up, yet. There are forces that will fight to their last breath to stop or roll back any change.
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Copyright © 2013 by Ed Rogers
| Please comment |
Ed, this is one of the best, most all-encompassing, "insider" perspectives of the '60s, that I have ever read.
ReplyDeleteYour closing line speaks volumes. Since you have seen the ebb and flow firsthand, what - in your opinion - are the forces that will fight change, or roll it back when they can? Is it the manipulative power of a certain group, the tendency of the masses to accept what they have rather than keep up the fight for what they want, or is it something else?
Ed, this is one of the best, most all-encompassing, "insider" perspectives of the '60s, that I have ever read.
ReplyDeleteYour closing line speaks volumes. Since you have seen the ebb and flow firsthand, what - in your opinion - are the forces that will fight change, or roll it back when they can? Is it the manipulative power of a certain group, the tendency of the masses to accept what they have rather than keep up the fight for what they want, or is it something else?
This is only my opinion and based on little or no facts, but that doesn't stop the talking heads so here it is.
ReplyDeleteBack then it was all about power. The war machine was fighting for it's life. The corporations stood to lose billions. Maytag was making napalm, G.E. was making bomb sights---there was not one corp. that did not have their fingers in the pie. If the American people had turned against the war and questioned, why and who had got us there. These money people would have been back in the days of Teddy Roosevelt. That did not happen. Instead the voters bought the lies and keep buying the lies. The biggest of which is that everybody can be rich. The casinos and lottery offer the poor the dream of the Mansion on the hill and the rich have drawn lines that keep them in power. I thought there would be riots in the street when gas hit $2.00---not a peep.
The corp. have won the war and most of the people never knew they were apart of it and have no idea what they have lost.
Ed, book-end your opinion by adding Monsanto's involvement in developing the atomic bomb back in WWII, and whatever corporation we will ultimately find out is making a fortune by having North Korea again do its saber rattling this week - and I am inclined to agree with your assessment.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you one better, ITT or as I like to call them---the deep pockets of the CIA. All the chemical companies spring from the pit of hell."the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones" There will be very little good interred with their bones.
ReplyDeleteThere are two wars winding down. If you make a bomb; you need a reason to blow it up. North Korea is a good of a place as any. If we can keep China out of it, we could be fighting for a good 14 years. Unlike the middle-east there is lass of chance of a spill over.
I read a little piece the other day that hit home: "I do my best proofreading after I hit send."
ReplyDeleteMaybe the glitches are just easier to spot on the nice green background of the Moristotle page, than on the harsh white background of the draft box. Of course, just about any time you can add a lass to any sentence or any situation, it makes it better.
ReplyDeleteYour point about North Korea is noteworthy, and not just to use up some traditional bombs. Of all the areas in the world that tactical nuclear weapons could work with minimal spillover, North Korea is very close to the top of the list. Another is Kashmir. If I recall correctly, the Clinton administration wasn't exactly rushing to stop Pakistan and India from going nuclear there during one of their spats. Ironic to think that if they had, 9/11 probably never would have happened.
The only problem with a place like Kashmir, is there would still be spill over. Had anything came of it we would have been pulled in, on the side of India, and that would have put us right in the crap pile we are in now. No one cares about North Korea; their only friend was China and I believe the Chinese are fed-up with their bull----. It's the dream world for limited warfare. There is only one reason to make weapons.
ReplyDeleteIf China is fed up with North Korea, and if - as many people suggest - U.S. troops are there to keep South Korea in rather than to keep North Korea out, then China might actually prefer a nuclear strike against N. Korea rather than an attack with traditional weaponry. Nuclear inundation would create the same buffer between China and South Korea as does the current mess in North Korea, and China wouldn't have to subsidize it after the fact. It is sort of ridiculous that millions of people here and there just trying to find a way to get by would be put through such an ordeal by their brilliant leadership, but that does seem to be the way of the world.
ReplyDelete