"It's difficult to imagine a year more ludicrous, or more damaging to the country, in the long term, than 1968.A year chock full of deluded teenagers, of fatuous slogans, of bombs and sit-ins and bad music and worse films.
A year when everything the country believed in was turned on its head by extremely ill-kempt people who perhaps went a long time between baths. And even longer between shaves. People we should, by rights, have entirely ignored, or just smiled at indulgently.
A year of drugs, violence, "free sex",...the lionising of congenital idiots,...and a multitude of self- styled freedom fighters wearing frankly embarrassing headgear.
If you are looking for a year when things first started to go bad, when the lunatics at last got their grubby paws on the controls of the asylum, 1968 is it.
The remarkable thing is that the half-baked and narcissistic ideologies of that dismal 12 months are still with us, in our schools, in our law courts, in our social services; they have permeated every facet of our lives.
A disrespect for authority, contempt for the family unit, multiculturalism, "yoof culcha" and an emphasis upon rights rather than responsibilities.
A permissiveness and indulgence shown towards every anti-social phenomenon from the use of illegal narcotics to single mothers and suicide bombers ("We really need to understand them better") - all that stuff was forged in the rather tepid British spring and summer of 1968.
And now, as we celebrate that year's 40th anniversary, you can expect to see a parade of its noisome luminaries on your television screens - because 1968 is still a year dear to the hearts of many in the media.”
- From Rod Liddle, writing in The Daily Mail.
Sounds like personal grooming sucked in 1968, but can you think of anything else that might balance that out?
ReplyDeleteThe Civil Rights Act of 1968, maybe?
People who expect fashions and pop culture to stay frozen in time, fixed in concrete, while only their own pet causes evolve and move forward and change, are being naive.
When the pendulum swings from left to right (or back again) it brings everything with it - music, academia, politics - everything.
Not just the parts *you* approve of.
Yea, yea, everybody throws up the Civil Rights Act, like that's supposed to make up for all the nonsense that came along with it. Let's be clear: It don't.
ReplyDeleteBlack people earning equal rights, while hippies were fucking up the country we wanted to be part of - and demanding we turn on it as part of the cost of doing business - was like a junky giving somebody the gift of a jack-in-the-box, knowing it held a poison snake inside. You know, like thanks a lot, asshole.
And now they want credit for it. Like black people had no role in their own freedom. Like hippies were leading the parade and not joining it.
It's just one insult after another with y'all. Why can't you just sit down, shut up, and let the rest of us try to fix the damage you've done? You went too far - and never knew when to stop. You failed. You even failed black people. That's the verdict. Your time is done.
Now go away.
Nonsense? Like getting the country to actually look at an unnecessary war for what it was, rather than what the profiteers told them it was?
ReplyDeleteClaiming that blacks "earned" equal rights, while those nasty hippies were fucking up the country is even more nonsense than your typical sky is falling paranoia.
It is reassuring that there aren't lots of people chiming in with you here. If there were, it would be a sign that the country is really as fucked up as you always say it is.
I gotta make this short:
ReplyDeleteAnyone who uses the phrase "unnecessary war" - at this late stage in the game - is proving 1) they weren't paying attention when it mattered, and 2) they suffer from BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) and can't be trusted with issues of national security.
Neither one reflects well on the speaker.
And sure - it was hippies who told Rosa Parks not to sit on the bus that day - which she immediately followed with a public bra burning, inspired by a tab of LSD she got from Timothy Leary, who convinced her to "drop out", before he informed on her to the F.B.I. Yea, man, that's how it went. That's the whole fucking story right there. As Bugs used to say, what a maroon.
And finally, not many people comment on this blog but I get their e-mails, and we all applaud the brave souls who talk shit about me, or the country, anonymously:
It takes guts.
It just occurs to me the "unnecessary war" you were referring to might have been Veitnam. I think you're wrong there, too, and your use of communist rhetoric "profiteers" is telling.
ReplyDeleteYou'd do well to watch the videos I put up here: They could teach you a lot about where that nonsense you're spouting comes from and how you've been used.
Seen your videos. And they help make the point that you're just as "cultish" as the people you bitch about.
ReplyDeleteUm, you're going to have to explain that one, girlfriend.
ReplyDeleteNot to any rational person, I wouldn't. Anyway, I doubt you would understand the explanation if I did try. You'd just say it was more cult thinking.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like what you're saying here is that the Civil Rights movement is the only good thing that came out of the 60s.
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but it occurred in an ahistorical vacuum, somehow magically insulated from the anti-Vietnam war movement, Feminism, psychedelics, eastern religions, the Yippies, Rock + Roll, or any of the other huge social movements of the period - like an event from outer space, completely disconnected from all of these other sweeping changes.
Is that correct?
If so, what I wonder is - why was it the Civil Rights Act of 1968 then?
I mean, why not 1928, or 1888, or some other year?
What? A KGB agent, hanging out with Sexy Sadie and Jane Fonda, deliberately to spread nonsense amongst Americans so they'll talk like you, and you think blowing it off with a flip comment about a cult hunter being cultish is "rational"? Fine. Whatever floats your boat, dude: You're the one talking like Stalin's nephew, not me.
ReplyDeleteAnd Rock 'N' Roll, like the Civil Rights Movement, was a product of the 50's - not the 60's. Just because Johnson signed the paper in '68 (with more Republicans signing it than Democrats, I might add) doesn't make it some hippie invention. The rest of your list is bullshit, too.
I'm tired of this game now. Turn out the lights when you leave.
I see TMR is too cowardly to respond - I should have known!
ReplyDeleteThe loudest people usually have the least to say - this blog is no exception to that rule.
Bookmarked as "unintentional parody," will check back in future for cheap laffs but not bother to comment in future.
Cowardly? No, when I say I'm done with somebody, I'm done. You're not even remotely interesting to talk to - or debate with - so it's over:
ReplyDeleteI'm, simply, done with you.