December 12, 2014

"On any street in any town / In any state if any clown"

Seems some people in Berkeley want to have the army in their city ..... Oh really? Is that what they want? Well, they need to be careful what they wish for.

Speaking as someone who has been in Berkeley when the army showed up; someone who's been shot at, chased through the streets, and then gassed from helicopters, everybody out and about in Berkeley might want to just shut up, go home, sit down and chill out.

This is how the army in the cities rolls. And it gets worse.

Well, I seen the fires burnin'
And the local people turnin'
On the merchants and the shops
Who used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item
Watched the mob just turn and bite 'em
And they say it served 'em right
Because a few of them are white,
And it's the same across the nation
Black and white discrimination
Yellin' "You can't understand me!"
'N all that other jazz they hand me
In the papers and TV and
All that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don't appeal to him
(No matter if it's black or white)
Because he's out for blood tonight

You know we got to sit around at home
And watch this thing begin
But I bet there won't be many live
To see it really end
'Cause the fire in the street
Ain't like the fire in the heart
And in the eyes of all these people
Don't you know that this could start
On any street in any town
In any state if any clown
Decides that now's the time to fight
For some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree
There ain't no Great Society

Blow your harmonica, son!

Posted by gerardvanderleun at December 12, 2014 3:03 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Sounds like you were in the streets of Berkely during the People's Park riots as I was. :-)

Posted by: bruce lorraine at December 12, 2014 6:04 PM

Indeed I was. On Telegraph. For the days before and the days after....

Posted by: Van der Leun at December 12, 2014 6:50 PM

Credit where credit is due.

"Trouble Every Day"
---Frank Zappa

Posted by: Reynardine at December 12, 2014 7:05 PM

Speaking as someone who has been in Berkeley when the army showed up; someone who's been shot at, chased through the streets, and then gassed from helicopters, everybody out and about in Berkeley might want to just shut up, go home, sit down and chill out.

Was this before or after Wheeler Hall was torched, and did your group help with the torching? Before or after the sedition of the Weather Underground and the SDS? Before or after Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn bombed The Pentagon? In other words, before or after your brothers and sisters in spirit were exposed as the domestic terrorists they were then and remain today? This, THIS, coming from a coward who vents his venom almost daily on what he sees as pathetic perverts whose only crime is being born cursed with his damnable God's ironic sense of sadistic vengeance.

Posted by: Dagny at December 12, 2014 7:05 PM

I wasn't with a group, Dagny. I never did groups. You, however, might want to regroup. As for the before or after, you can assemble the dates by diligently applying The Google.

Posted by: Van der Leun at December 12, 2014 8:45 PM

In the meantime, let's take another look at what I learned from the experience: "everybody out and about in Berkeley might want to just shut up, go home, sit down and chill out."


Learning from experience. You know, what everyone with an intelligence above room temp is expected to do.

Posted by: vanderleun at December 12, 2014 8:47 PM

Zappa the rappa. Him and James Brown ahead of their time.
The troubles, they been with us since man started walking upright, or since getting kicked out, Garden of Eden.
Past revolutions were somewhat romantic. At least seemed so in retrospect.
I don't see how weekend warriors and FEMA camps will ever be glamorized.

Posted by: chasmatic at December 13, 2014 5:41 AM

A sharp man he was.

Posted by: pbird at December 13, 2014 8:39 AM

@Gerard

exactly...it was all fun & games at Sproul until shit got real and I had to call dad for bail.

Lesson learned.

Posted by: BJM at December 13, 2014 3:55 PM

The DC-area disturbances were ugly enough for me. Tear gas, pepper gas -- clinging to our clothes so friends couldn't come near us, and "we" weren't even participating.

Today's wannabe hippie/activists don't realize how PC'd the cops and guardsmen have become.

Of course, even the street theater in the 60's was nothing compared to what our HS classmates were enduring in the real war 12,000 miles away.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at December 15, 2014 10:05 AM

Don: it was ugly all over. I was in the military and I saw some things, did some things for flag and country.
Got gassed, stomped, come at by dogs; working undercover is gritty, it steals part of a man's soul.

"Today's wannabe hippie/activists don't realize ..."

http://dpjk.blogspot.com/2014/07/aint-half-man-they-momma-was.html

I was there as well and something inside me burned out. My uncle Letsgo, he and I talked about this stuff; he had been from Anzio to the Rhine.
He said in his Bela Lugosi accent, I wish I could properly convey it:
"dere are tings in life vorse den ... death."


Posted by: chasmatic at December 15, 2014 11:30 PM

This it it. And when the rioters win then what do you get? Why you get a good, hard reaction - and death - and those who are too eager for a confrontation - and everything spirals away into the hands of those who say they may bring quiet (not peace - they may say that but it will not be peace) and all of the pawns move back to their original places. And none of the pawns stand up and rip off the mask and say "If you want this, Al, then you come down here and you do this. I'm going home; I got a boy that needs a father."

And then a man tells his son what it means to be a man.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at December 17, 2014 9:32 PM