Posted on 05/14/2025 5:09:00 PM PDT by DallasBiff
This BBC film examines the myth behind the sixties, which was itself created before the decade was even out but has since lingered in all of our minds. What we have lived with however is merely a mirage and this documentary sets about exposing the truth, suggesting that we are living on borrowed time as a result of those who indulged whilst an unchecked Britain experienced an industrial decline. Looking back on old archived footage and the political atmosphere of the time a case is built against the decade we all consider to be filled with dreams
(Excerpt) Read more at documentaryheaven.com ...
Sex, drugs and rock’n roll. Make love, not war. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Have you ever been experienced? Long-haired freaky people. Morals and decency went out the window. Loss of family values. Vatican II. Free “love”. We witnessed the corruption of the Greatest Generation right before our eyes. Our friend’s parents grew their hair long. Our adult school teachers grew their hair long. Hair-length determined whether you were on the Bus or off the Bus. Whether or not you were part of the counterculture. There were “spontaneous” happenings everywhere. Pot smoke was everywhere, indoors and out. Cops didn’t care. You could pass a joint to a cop. There was massive and total societal breakdown. The balance was upended. A big part was the explosion of the boomers in the population. We outnumbered all other age groups. That’s why the Stones can still tour. We called the shots.
Music was good: Petula Clark and the Monkeys.
Politics was bad: race riots and reading the daily casualty totals from the Vietnam war in the newspaper.
Not everybody is bad, of course. However, the abandonment of sexual morality is pretty much the root of all evil in our society from disease, to abortions to the inability to commit and parent children.
Right on, man! Peace, brother! “Burn the bra!” Hari Krishna! Let’s have a love-in! The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is gonna be at my crash pad for a happening! Be there or be square! There’ll be lava lamps and black lights. Bring your own homemade psychedelic posters! Up the establishment! Power to the people! Next week we plan an electric kool-aid acid test! Do ya wanna dance? Do ya wanna join a cult? Do you wanna join a band? We’re gonna have a draft card burning. The SDS is gonna be there! “They closed the New York Thruway, man!” Timothy Leary is running for president! John Lennon wrote his campaign song, “Come Together”!
I’m sorry, for me it was a great time, the only bad thing is that it will never be repeated.
Of course their parents were worse with electing FDR four times and their grand parents were even worse because they elected Thomas Woodrow Wilson who never held an actual job to run the country and then when he ran the second time as a potato they elected him again.
I vaguely recall two cent bottle deposits. I definitely recall candy bars skyrocketing in price from 5 cents to 10 cents, right around 1966.
I well remember ALL of the 1960s and I most assuredly LIVED THOUGH ALL OF THAT DECADE AND AS SENTIENT PERSON; 1/2 OF IT AS AN ADULT!
Part of it...yes; all of it....HELL NO!
JFK was HORRIBLE and did NOTHING "good" at all!
Not the first 1/2 of the ‘60s! They were pretty much an extension of the ‘50s!
That’s the second 1/2 of the decade and wasn’t the same everywhere.
I don’t know how you can say that. There was no more going about their lives. Their home lives were changed. TV changed. Magazines changed. Music changed. Movies changed. Fashion changed. Lingo changed. The War was fought in your living room. Your friends changed. The local Ma and Pa store changed. (They now sold Zig-Zag rolling paper.) No more boppin at the hop. Camelot ended with a gunshot (or eight). High school changed. College changed. Taboos and mores changed. It was widespread and rampant and spread like a wildfire. No more ‘45s. All LP and many double albums. No more Hot Rods. Hitchhiker’s crisscrossed the nation. The country was open twenty four seven. It was inescapable.
My wife and I were in the Dollar Store yesterday and they had comics for $ 1.25.
My father brought me to the Gettysburg Centennial Celebration in 1963. A ten day affair that to this day is the biggest event I have ever attended. I saw Eisenhower there. I was nine years old. Then in August of ‘63 I saw JFK in Hyannis. Two months later he was assassinated. That rocked my world. Like I mentioned, that opened up the floodgates. Civil Rights was huge while The Gettysburg centennial was going on, and I wasn’t paying attention to it. But a budding folk singer named Bob Dylan had attracted my attention. I think it is just a coincidence that he overlapped the sixties and that he would have been somebody in any decade. But by design or not, he heavily influenced at least the music scene. And that was early sixties. I cut my teeth on late fifties radio. From late fifties on I pretty much had my ear glued to the radio.
“I don’t know how you can say that.”
I can say that because that is what I experienced. I think that is the case for every generation. Things change in every generation and people adapt and go about their lives the best they can.
Wilson was worse. Not by much.
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