By Ed Rogers
Reading Chuck Smythe’s story “A Creek Runs through It” the other day brought back to mind the misconception that we were all hippies back in the sixties. We had long hair and dressed the same as the hippies, and smoked the same weed and listened to the same music as the hippies. However, we were as different as night and day.
The hippie movement wanted nothing to do with society and tried to stay apart from it. We protesters, on the other hand, believed society could be better and fought to change it. I never saw one hippie in a march. Likely, the ones in Chuck’s story who didn’t make it in the wilderness were hippies. Hard work was never high on their list.
There was another distinction that set us apart. Most of us worked or were in school. I went into the army for three years and joined the peace movement in Washington State after getting out. We joined with the NAACP, unions, Democrats, anybody who was in the fight. While the hippies moved to Haight-Ashbury and turned on and dropped out, we were getting the shit kicked out of us by the cops.
Hippies were more along the line of libertarians, whereas we protesters were more like the progressives. Libertarians still smoke the same dope as we do, but that is about where we part company.
Let me end by saying that what the hippie believed was as right for them as what we believed was right for us, but there was a hell of lot more of us than of them, and the government lumped us with them as a way of dismissing our credibility. The term “hippie” was used like the n-word to write all of us off as unwashed bums hanging out in parks begging for your money.
It worked! Even today people refer to protesters as hippies, and even though the label has lost the power it once had, it is still incorrect.
| Copyright © 2020 by Ed Rogers |
Ed, I am deeply grateful for your blowing the whistle on what the authorities did to minimize the impact of the protests. Unconscionable. But also subtle and effective. The authorities ought not to be so clever. I look forward to Chuck's comments on this, which may amplify his description of living in that "hippy" community in Colorado those many years ago. Thanks in advance, Chuck.
ReplyDeleteEd, great piece, as always. Have you ever pondered that Richard Nixon--under whose watch was founded NPR and the EPA, and who promoted the Family Assistance Plan and tried to implement universal health care--would today be considered too liberal to be the Democratic nominee for president, much less be nominated as a Republican? What exactly did happen to all that positive liberal change the 1960s protests were supposed to bring to this country?
ReplyDeleteNixon was a crook but unlike the one in the White House now, he did care about the country and it's people. Morris has ask that I give more of an answer as a side story. Not sure I'll keep it within the word count but I never have been much of a joiner or rule follower. The Army and I never did see eye to eye.
ReplyDeleteThis takes into deep waters. Let's see...
ReplyDeleteIn that community, we called ourselves "hippies", or preferably "freaks" in an offhand way, much in the spirit that many blacks call each other the "N" word. The conversation about who was a Real Hippy never really happened. If it had, I'd have been run out of town. I had a Career, for god's sake! As I tried to convey in "Creek", there were all sorts of people out in those woods, for all sorts of reasons, with nothing you'd call a Tribe or an ideology. We were all relatively poor, thought that living out in the woods was cool, and that we were tough and hard working enough to do it. Odd basis for a tribe.
As for the gummint's part in this.. Several of you grew up in Tulare, and know as well as I that most people in that environment despised "hippies" from the beginning, and still hammer on them now that there haven't been an important number around for a generation.
Why? I asked my Dad that, once, back in the early days. The answer was that they believe, often correctly, that "hippies" despise the middle-class values that people like my parents had dedicated their lives to.
There is no question that the political trash exploited this to demean the opposition, but they didn't create that clash of values. They merely exploited it.
Paul, you put your finger on it. What the hell happened? How did the right get that widely accepted by apparently decent people? I don't understand either, and would desperately like to. A shrink once told me "Your mistake is that you think people are rational". I leave it at that in despair.
Meanwhile, I will join no Tribe that would have me.
Chuck, yes, to focus again on one very important issue that in the time of pandemic is shaping up as a litmus test: How did we go from a supposedly arch-conservative Republican president in the 1960s/70s who took a real swing at universal health care, to a Democrat who stands zero chance of being nominated because most of his own party members are terrified he might take a swing at universal health care? Today's "liberal" is more conservative than yesteryear's arch-conservative?
ReplyDeleteI don't have an answer on how this happened, but I have a theory, and elder "boomers" aren't going to like it (present company excepted, but possibly not excused). I'm a "boomer" but I'm at the back edge of the age group, 10-15 years younger than my three siblings at the leading edge. By the time I was old enough to vote, they and their ilk had made enough unexplainedly ridiculous choices with their votes to effectively run aground in a decade a country that had been on a steady rise for 200 years. Yes, elder boomers, we younger boomers--and the Gen-Xers, et al who follow--we all blame you. If our parents were the "greatest" generation, the boomers are the "selfish" generation. But not all the boomers: those of us who had not retired before the disastrous 2008 "Bush" recession that capped a laughingstock tragedy of a presidency are collectively better known as the "screwed" generations.
I compare the "boomers" reign of terror to the recent "Brexit" debacle in the UK. Paraphrased: "We have this system that worked really great for our parents, and so far has worked really great for us, so let's trash it, destroy most of the great opportunities we wanted for our children, and hope maybe their children or grandchildren will someday get things back on track. And let's hope, while they are at it, they also somehow figure out a way to pay off the bills we ran up with no intention of paying off."
Yes Chuck, you put your finger on it, people are not rational. But they sure can be self-centered, and they can somehow manage, en masse, to see the same mirage, instead of a very clear big picture.