Posted on 03/14/2005 6:32:38 AM PST by PJ-Comix
I have been saying for a long time that if you want to see a good example of the mentality of the DUmmies then just take a look at the “kids” at the Billy Jack School.” Remember those chip-on-the-shoulder kids from the Billy Jack movies? They were politicized hippie type kids who learned NOTHING practical at the Billy Jack School. Instead they were given lessons on performing Improv theater and on how to hate the evil corporate bosses as epitomized by Mr. Posner. Of course, this was just a movie and most of us have moved beyond it but NOT the DUmmies as you can see in this THREAD titled, “Where did the hippies go? Billy Jack in Hiding?” The DUmmie Billy Jack school kids rantings with that closed fist ala the end of Billy Jack are in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, wearing a black Billy Jack hat, is in the [brackets]:
Where did the hippies go? Billy Jack in Hiding? The music? And confession Is this what we have become, an 'undergound' website where the avg american does not see the message?
[Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley folk below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore
They'd have it for their very own.]
In the 60's and 70's we had a cause, the people - black, white, Indian (ala Billy Jack in an odd way and others) - it was about Americans the people, not America the business.
[Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of Heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after who...
One tin soldier rides away.]
Where did my hippies go? Those wild and crazy people who touted free love, rode buses, made music and movies, those people who still today make us pause when we think of the era.
[So, the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill
Came an answer from the kingdom,
"With our brothers, we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there"]
Our leadership was not the DLC or Dean or Kerry, it was the wild eyed and tye dyed people. It was the people who challenged our sterotypes, it was the people who banded together to put the brakes down on a corrupt government. We had a cause outside of 'the man' in power (though that was one thing, and I still remember songs about that). It was about principle, freedom, love.
[Now, the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses, draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain people
So, they won their just reward
Now, they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turn the stone and looks beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.]
I am tired of bush bashing myself, I think the government as a whole has taken a crappy direction - bush or not. Someday soon we will gather again as a people and fight the power. I am not sure what the catalyst will finally be that gets us together, but I hope we do it soon. Each day new laws get passed, more power passes from us to them, and our rights get drained. I am a leader at work - but like many others in this world now I try to balance family, work, bills, life in general and fear of how our government might destroy those who oppose it. Where did all our hippie leaders go, and how do we get them back?
[Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of Heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after who...
One tin soldier rides away.]
Funny you should mention fighting the power. My husband and I were just talking about that this afternoon, that the way things are going, a real revolution may be the only thing to save us. I was one of those hippies you were talking about, but like so many others I got caught up in settling down, raising a family, taking care of our immediate needs, and not paying much attention to our country's downward spiral. Now that I've reawakened (this past election robbery is what really did it for me, although I have been deeply suspicious since 9/11), I'm just so angry and frustrated. It feels so much like our hands are tied and that even when we send people to Washington who we think are going to work for us, they get corrupted and they vote against our best interests time and time again. I don't know what the answer is, but I think at some point if we're going to save ourselves, it's going to have to get really ugly. Revolutions happen in other places...maybe it's time for one here.
[Bernard, I want you to know... that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I'm supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and nonviolent like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see this girl... of such a beautiful spirit... so degraded... and this boy... that I love... sprawled out by this big ape here... and this little girl, who is so special to us we call her "God's little gift of sunshine"... and I think of the number of years that she's going to have to carry in her memory... the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours... I just go BERSERK!]
Back before Reagan created a permanent homeless class, there were a group of vagabond types who begged on the streets and crashed with other hippies in "crash pads". Some worked and some got money from home. Others did crafts and tried to survive on that, but there was always a place one could sleep at at the end of the day and a place where free food was distributed. There were communes and there was an infrastructure that made this possible like free clinics and other ways to get basic health care if it was needed. Most of it is gone and what is left, the neocons are trying to destroy.
[He's still in the rapture of the vision. A great Indian holy man, Wovoka, is speaking through him.]
How did the hippies turn into the yuppies? How many "hippies" were along for the party and cuz its what everyone was doing, and dropped the "values" when fashions changed? How many old hippies are driving around in black windowed SUV's with magnetized Chinese plastic yellow ribbons on the back? Corporations bought your hippie dreams and sold em back plastic wrapped and Clearchanneled.
[Martin, do you know what mental toughness is? Well, mental toughness is the ability to accept the fact that you're human and that you're going to make mistakes - lots of 'em - all your life. And some of them are gonna hurt people that you love very badly. But you have the guts to accept the fact that you ain't perfect. And you don't let your mistakes crush you and keep you from doing the very best that you can.]
I don't watch TV, I try to shop only at family run businesses (I work in one myself and have for the past 27 years) and I drive a beat up old pick up truck with the paint peeling off. I can not STAND the sight of (looks like an ass-hole to me) *, am horrified at the deception hiding the death and destruction of so many for so few and I am absolutely heartbroken at what the elite criminal class has done and is continuing to do to the working class of this country. I still maintain that reality is a social construct and, therefore, can be changed. However, clearly we of the 60s vastly underestimated the ruthlessness of the structures of power behind the ongoing theatre of politic. That doesn't mean we were wrong. Did some of us give up? Hell yes. Were some of us only in it for the 'cool factor'. Of course--what do you expect? We were the most pampered darlings on the planet and we were handed the world on a platter. The amazing thing is that so many of us so quickly caught on to the fact that most of what we were taught about how great our country was, how noble and honerable, was nothing but a LIE. We actually SAW that--saw that it was a potential but not an actuality--and began to try to figure out how the hell you change it from the inside out. We're still working on it! And a lot has changed. Hey, we're here. We're having this discussion as a result of technology 'we' invented and the world is still more insane and out of balance than it ever was. One thing is for sure. The powers that be learned from their mistakes. They'll NEVER again report what is ACTUALLY going on in the cultural scene in a way that makes real revolution even remotely fasionable. I marched with 100,000 people before the Iraq war even started and the media coverage was almost NILL. That didn't happen in the sixties. They've learned that for the masses, if it isn't presented by the CON (corporate owned media) then it is AS IF IT DOES NOT EXIST. That is where we are now--down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. There is enough energy and talent in the country to have a REAL revolution, but it will NOT be televised. Meanwhile there is a giant farting pink elephant in the White House masquerading as president.
[I'm gonna take this right foot, and I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face...and you wanna know something? There's not a damn thing you're gonna be able to do about it.]
We in the SDS did not find the colorful Countercultural people to be of much use in our efforts to change the political and social structure of our society. Doing this long term demanded a lot of discipline and mental rigor, not qualities the "hippies" were long on. But now and then we could get enough of them to rally for progressive causes to make some impact.
[So easy for you to die dramatically! It's a hell of a lot tougher for those of us who have to keep on trying!]
funny . . . I've been wondering lately whatever happened to . . .Sam Brown, the mega-organizer of the 60s and 70s . . . anyone know? . . .
[Not "dead", their brains blown out! Because YOUR people wouldn't even put the same controls on their guns as they do on their dogs, their bicycles, their cats, and their automobiles.]
Phish called it quits. The hippies are in mourning. Or, at least, I am.
[By going on the mountain and being bitten by the snake over and over. Then he passes into unconsciousness for the last time. And if he lives, he has a vision. And in this vision, he finds out what his life's mission will be and who the spirit will be to guide him on this mission.]
What more needs to be added.
Mona Charen has some great stuff in "Do-Gooders" about how the homeless problem was 100% caused by liberals. They made it harder to commit people, and most of the "Reagan" homeless were folks who would have been institutionalized a generation before. The media was alaways careful to pick out the exception--a white middle class family who had been put out on the streets. I'll admit this much though: Charen overlooks the fact that most typical homeless people would be difficult to interview, being victims of mental disorders so profound they either could not or would not hold a job and take proper care of themselves.
The example she gives of a man who literally terrorized a section of 96th street for years because he couldn't be committed is worth the trouble of getting the book, all by itself.
You are absolutely correct that they predated the Reagan administration - by a very long stretch of time :-)
"Carefree, having whole foods delivered on horseback from the farming commune, bathing in our secret lagoon complete with waterfall, we shared free love and free drugs "
One thing that really confuses me is that the whole foods, free love and drugs thing doesn't really go together. I mean, why worry about eating healthy, pesticide free foods to nourish and protect your body when it doesn't really matter because you are into free love and drugs which ravage the body?
The DUmmie criticizing the hippies because they didn't help the SDS enough stood out in this article. I immedaitely thought of the Weathermen, and how unhippyish they were, but how their core philosophies were pretty much the same stuff, only more focused.
Aw, man, you're, like, wreckin the VIBE, man, with these meaningless, like, QUESTIONS. Do you, like, wanna be one of their little puppets? Just go with the flow, just like all the rest of us, man. Don't conform, just join the crowd. Man.
Yep, like you I had the (dis)pleasure of watching these people as I grew up and being the first generation to bear the burdens of their legacy of "free" love and rampant drugs. Billy Jack is their nostaligic illusion of who they think were, but the reality is they were more like street bums (smelled about the same, too). So many of my friends in high school got STD's or got pregnant and had abortions, it was almost as common as discussing what to wear the next day. None had the emotional maturity to handle being thrust into making adult decisions, but none equated their circumstance with their behavior and quit doing what caused their problems in the first place.
When I was in college, the women's movement was real big (that ERA nonsense) and I got involved in that briefly. I was SO angry and depressed all the time...what else could I be, since I was a victim of patriarchal society. Before I had this lightening bolt of discovery, (courtesy of the women's studies department), I seemed to get along just fine. Then one day I was standing outside my history professor's door reading some inane political cartoon about Reagan causing all the world's problems in between milk and cookies and nap time. It dawned on me that if Reagan really was this old, senile, and stupid, how could he possibly be responsible for all the ills of the world, let alone keeping women oppressed.
I mean, here I was in college, studying literature (something I was...and still am...passionate about) paid for in part by the same government I protested against regularly and hated vehemently, because it was supposedly oppressing me...couldn't get that kind of irony and nihilism if I woke up and found Gregor Samsa lying next to me (then again, the kind of men who are usually attracted to radical feminists are rather like insects). When I stopped listening to angry, bra-less women with saggy boobs and realized I only felt like a victim after I started listening to their bile, I was a much happier person. Shortly after that, I met my husband to be. So, "never underestimate the power of a pretty little red dress" turned out to be a better philosophy than "men are pigs ". Go figure.
Cindie
He's a punk all right. It supports my initial impression of him when I first saw him doing Billy Jack.
Women's Issues. I was/am all for equal pay. However, I figured out after a bit that they really didn't much care about "normal" women and cared even less about children. That really did me in - as though children are not the ultimate women's issue.
Look at them now - can you image a group less devoted to women's issues?
ROTFLOL
Have you ever heard "Old Hippie" by the Bellamy Brothers?
1.
He turned thirty-five last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense
2.
He gets off on country music
Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
Buts he's just too friggin old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock
And the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy
And the silence made him cry
Yea he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why
CHORUS:
He's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
His new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He just trying real hard to adjust
3.
He was sure back in the sixties
That everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam
On his senior trip
And they forced him to become a man
While he was still a boy
And in each wave of tragedy
He waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can't change no more
CHORUS
4.
Well he stays away a lot now
From the parties and the clubs
And he's thinking while he's joggin' 'round
Sure is glad he quit the hard drugs
Cause him and his kind get more endangered everyday
And pretty soon the species
Will just up and fade away
Like the smoke from that torpedo
Just up and fade away
I have a video copy of a good PBS documentary about R & B. In one scene, Wilson Pickett talked about seeing a cotton field with black people picking cotton not far from Fame studios in Muscle Shoals, where all his hits were done. He sort of implied a fear that, if he screwed up in the studio, it'd be the cotton patch for him. Even more amazing is the studio band on those recordings (and Aretha Franklin's hits) was almost all white men, something some of my black friends STILL find hard to believe.
No, silly. Al Gore created the internet!
Check out the signs from this thread at DU, post #2. Does anyone know if this is real or where it happened? Sad, but still kind of funny! :-)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1658554
eeewww! Hillary had bad skin. And now we know where Chelsea got her ugliness....er.... looks from.
Oh my, how very sad!
"Hippies created the internet?"Of course.Didn't you know Al Gore was a hippie before he went mainstrem?:)
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