Posted on 07/05/2021 9:05:16 PM PDT by MNDude
I was just sitting in a Cub's parking lot waiting for my wife. It seemed there was an endless parade of what I would call freaks-- girls with blue hair and pierced noses, men with dreadlocks and huge inserts into big holes in their ears, women covered with nasty tattoos. You know what I mean.
I realize there has always been unusual people, but if you were alive before the 1960's, do you remember if there was a concept of trying to make one look as idiotic as possible?
In some sections of some cities, sure. But the rest of the country wasn’t affected.
Reporter: Are you a Mod? Or a Rocker?
Ringo: Ah’m neiver. Ah’m a Mockah.
LOL, classic Ringo.
Or sent to “reform school.” That was always a big fear of mine. I never knew anybody who was actually packed off to reform school.
There have always been freaks, we just lost the necessary instinct to suppress their pathologies.
There was an expectation of people to conform to societal norms. That really started breaking down around 1964 or 1965 as the “counter-culture” ramped up concurrently with the massive Vietnam war.
A couple decades later and “tolerance” became the new mantra and norm. Now we tolerate everything including public squares filled with drug-addled bums, graffiti covered cities, rampant and blatant theft, families without fathers, unfathomable murder rates, multiple “genders,” and every perversion under the sun.
The “respectability rating” of old institutions like the military is rapidly crumbling. This will not turn out well.
First, let me say that people now thought of as “hippies” never used that word to describe themselves. People who looked like, say, the Allman Brothers, called themselves “freaks.” It was an entirely different usage of the word from the unfortunates who worked in carnival freak shows.
It signified a break from the “establishment” and its values, but even so, they weren’t as bad as the scumbags we have today.
Where I lived in the 50s and 60s, growing your hair out and trying to look like a freak would get the stuffing stomped out of you quite promptly.
Schools had dress codes, and they enforced them.
The freaks would say they grew their hair out and wore those clothes to express their freedom. In fact, freaks had uniform regulations that were as strict as the Marines.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash (don’t remember whether Young was with them or not) had a song called “Almost Cut My Hair” with a line that went, “I feel like letting my freak flag fly.” His hair was his “freak flag.” And it was a hard-core “us against them” mentality.
I went to concerts and freak hangouts, but I was not accepted by those people. It was kind of like a dog being able to sense bad intent—somehow they just knew I wasn’t one of them.
In general, they were much better educated than young people today. There were philosophical underpinnings to what they were doing. All BS, of course, but at least they had something. And for the most part they were not sympathetic to the hard left, although there were a few around.
As Frank Zappa sang sarcastically, it was all “peace, free love, flowers and beads.” Except not really. It was no utopia. There was hypocrisy, dishonesty, cruelty, selfishness, guys pimping out young runaways to middle-aged “straights” (which meant people who were not freaks)—I’m not sure there wasn’t more of it than among the “establishment” of which they were so critical.
The main thing to remember, perhaps, is that everything they thought and believed was wrong, but I don’t think it was as malevolent, as downright Satanic evil as what we face today.
Although they were far from freaks and were the greatest patriots, the WWI Veterans who were burned and disfigured by the mustard gas were the scariest humans I saw as a young child.
I’ll never forget the pain I saw and felt when they entered the room.
Freaks in appearance only, but true Patriots underneath.
As a result, I try my best to look at the goodness in people’s souls rather than outward appearance. Some of the freaks have glowing hearts of gold and many of the glamorous have the darkest souls.
It is not mine to judge, as in doing so, I too will be judged. But still I faulter and fall short.
How many of those “hippies” exchanged their flowers and beads for disco suits in the 70s?
Interesting that Hitler was injured by mustard gas in WWI, and that's the reason he never chose to use it during WWII. That's how nasty it was.
asylums!!!
Side Shows in
Circuses, Carnivals!!!
Their not Freaky, they are sexy. Only that middle guy is wearing his ducktail backwards. :-)
Bernie Sanders kinda reminds me of the frazzled haired eccentric old cranks who hung out at the Greenwich Village beatnik coffee shops spewing commie rhetoric while some short bearded beatnik in a beret would play the bingo drums.
My father was a personnel manager for a very large industrial plant in the 1950s-70s. Most new hires passed in front of him. Before he got into their work experience or resumes, If they showed visible tattoos, they were not hired. If they had long hair, they were not hired. unkempt beards or razor stubble - not hired. Dirty fingernails - not hired. Stained clothes, or smelled of alcohol - not hired. Being a strict Navy man himself, if he saw a veteran trying to conceal a tattoo, he would ask about it, but usually was forgiving for what a guy may have rashly done years ago on leave in Manila or Hong Kong, as being a veteran moved you up the hiring list.
Beatniks were odd. Then The Beatles were a big shock.
Sounds like EDS under Ross Perot. EDS would buy out a company, then the employees of the bought-out company, would be met at the door and told to go and cut their hair and shave before they would be let in.
Signs, Signs
everywhere a Sign.
.
Beam me up ,Scotty!
The Movie, FREAKS. 1932.
Like IDIOCRACY,
WE are Living in It.
God Help Us.
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