[Note: The riots on the UC Berkeley Campus to shut down a speaker took place in front of Sproul Hall; the place where I, along with hundreds of others, demonstrated for free speech back in 1964. It brought to mind my tiny role in that history.
"I knew a lad who went to sea and left the shore behind him.
I knew him well the lad was me and now I cannot find him."]
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you're free, the [Fascist Progressive] machine will be prevented from working at all!-- Mario Savio Speech, Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley (1964-12-02).
If you look closely at the radical Democrat/Progressive Diet for a Diminished America you see a familiar list of "ingredients." The list is composed of the ideological stock and trade of a significant segment of Americans to whom this nation, as conceived by our founders, and struggled for for more than 200 years is merely one long, large joke.
And I should know. After all, that boy in the picture up there -- that boy that thought Communism was "something we could live with" -- that young boy was me.
In my small way, I took part in the crafting of The Joke on America. For years I thought there was nothing funnier. Conceived during the waning months of World War II, I had no idea I was a Baby Boomer, but that, in the end, was what I was. And being a member of this large and fortunate generation gave me the leisure to develop quite a sense of humor when it came to basic human values.
When I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1960s, we were the brave new world's social engineers. We were the innovators. We were busy innovating the brave new world where everything about the old world of our parents seemed either hilarious or evil.
Our program was quite clear early on and it hasn't changed a jot, it has simply gotten more pervasive and elaborate. After all, we're older now and we're in control. We can finally fund these things. With your money.
God, if he didn't emerge from 500 mikes of pure Sandoz LSD, was just a funny old guy a little bit like Santa Claus but with less of a user base.
The Bill of Rights was okay as long as you could figure out someway to erase a few of the amendments involving guns and add a host of new ones involving groups.
The Constitution? Too long and too arcane to really read with care. It was a given so what did we care?
History? The only really happening history was the future, man. Ours.
The United States? They were really "AmeriKKKa" -- Satan incarnate.
The US Military? Baby killers and agents of Satan.
The Police? Pigs.
The Viet Cong, Fidel Castro, and a host of other evil dictators and fascists? Heroes of "The People."
The People? Really wonderful as long as you didn't really have to hang out with them.
Voting in political parties? Stupid. We were into "participatory democracy" which involved really long meetings. ( This is now known as "emergent democracy" and involves really long online discussion threads.)
We believed in sex and drugs and rock and roll.
We were determined to resist "the man" on all levels.
We were young.
And we were very, very stupid for college kids. Check that. We were stupid because we were college kids.
Many of the most committed of us, decades later, are still in college and even dumber. We're professors now and our ability to be dumb has never been deeper.
Others of us are well ensconced in the various parts of what passes for the media. We're there with a lot of others just like us and, even if we thought differently, we'd never say it for fear of losing regard, position, grants, or promotion. Besides, we've been around others who think like us for so long its no problem at all to top up the latte and nod in blind agreement.
Nope, we never sold out. We bought in. But we kept the Che poster pinned up forever in our hearts.
And now, we've arrived at our rendezvous with history.
In our aging but fitness-crazed hearts, we hate what we've become and, like any good group of neurotics, transfer that hate to the country that gave us everything including the Long Peace in which to enjoy it.
We're the first in line to bitch and moan and hate a country that makes our freedom possible. More than that we're also in love with the privilege, comfort, money and safety that makes it possible for us to mouth off without limit. And finally, we're coming to understand that we are not our parents' generation, we're "The Not-So-Great" Generation and deep down we're cowards.
We say we're 'afraid' of losing our cherished 'freedom' to the jackbooted legions of Conservative Brownshirts that might stifle our dissent from every street corner. That's really what a lot of us think. That's really just how bull-goose looney we've become.
Excerpted From Goodbye to the Way We Were @ AMERICAN DIGEST
Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 3, 2017 9:40 AM
It was probably those, Tea Partiers, or, those evil Trump supporters, or, just possibly, George Bush. After all. He's been the fault of everything, for the last eight years.
Posted by: candymanal at February 3, 2017 10:32 AMI was a mid-thirtyish father of six in that era, flying air transport for a living and enjoying life, as were all my co-workers, friends and neighbors. Lived in LA towards the end of it. Hardly knew all that stuff was going on. I think it looked a lot bigger from the inside than it did from the outside, especially from a distance.
Posted by: BillH at February 3, 2017 1:28 PM
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