THE SIXTIES
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THE SIXTIES
I once heard a media figure say that “history is pop culture.” While that statement might ring out a certain measure of truth it certainly is far from the whole truth. I put forward that history just plain is, and that anything else that we gleam is simply our interpretation of it and the “spin” that we apply. With this in mind it is of no great surprise that a media figure would think of it as pop culture when that very thing is his stock and trade. This is not limited to people who actually work in the entertainment business. The consumers of pop culture, nearly all of us, are equally guilty of shaping our thoughts, our perceptions, and even creating a mythos of who we are in the same manner that we shape our entertainment. In many ways, history, politics, and any subject you care to name really are nothing more than entertainment, to most people, in our society.
The late author Michael Crichton, stated in one of his novels, that the great enemy of our time is boredom. I know that many would disagree with this statement but, judging from how much money we spend on entertaining ourselves, how many resources we pour into it, and how much ingenuity that is expended, I’d say that per capita, Crichton has a case. If you accept this or are at least willing to entertain the idea then it should be no surprise that most politically active people treat their parties as if they were sports teams and elections as if they were the big game. They also view history as if it were a movie with bad guys, good guys, and a definitive ending when the reality of the situation is plainly obvious and quite the opposite.
What does this have to do with the sixties? It goes right to the heart of the matter actually. Even the term “the sixties” has long since come to mean something other than just a decade. That’s pop culture at work. When you hear someone say it the term conjures up images of very specific things that have little to do with a boring time line in a history book. People most often think of Woodstock like images of hippies gathering in a park or field, listening to folk rock, protesting a war, and doing drugs. While these things did happen the scope and effect of them, on the nation as a whole, have been widely distorted in the decades that followed. The reason is pop culture.
Every society will conjure up images and icon’s of it’s identity. It is like decorating your living room. These are the things you want others to see and identify with you. They say something about who you are and ultimately shape how others deal with you. This is all that the “the movement” of the sixties has become. It is an attempt to reshape, even replace, the icon’s that most Americans consider their own.
Why else would some people loathe John Wayne? When you hear someone talk badly about him, and I’m sure we all have, ask yourself why? He was an actor. He made movies. Most people, if not all, that you hear talking about him like dirt have probably never even met him. Why is it so important and emotional? It is because he is an icon and one that they wish replaced. Wayne represents the cowboy, the explorer, and a spirit of America that came to stand for who we are. This “movement” hates it and wants it to be something else.
They concentrate on this public relations campaign for one reason only. It is because this “movement” failed at everything else it tried. It is all they have left.
Naturally, you will not hear the fans of “the sixties” saying this. In talking with many of them you get a very interesting view of what they think history is. They become emotional and sometimes even irrational when confronted with evidence that is contradictory to their claims, even when they don’t dispute the very facts that have made them so. While these people are obviously a minority they are the modern driving force behind many political agenda’s. That does make them hard to ignore because they wish to re-write history and, from their point of view, give it a happy ending like reality was a movie that they personally are one of the actors on that screen.
Once upon a time there was a land that was under a shadow of darkness and evil. It was a land where the innocent were slaughtered and enslaved by greedy men for their own profit. All others were forced to conform by a heavy handed authority and because of this others starved, or languished in poverty. Then came the sixties where new ideas were born, the arts flourished, conformity broken, races freed, and this bloodless revolution changed the world forever. It’s uniform was long hair, it’s armor was faded jeans, it was armed only with flowers, and the battle formation was the protest line on the college campus. The battlefields were the Haight-Ashbury, Kent State, the streets of Chicago, and Woodstock, while their campaigns were named things like “the summer of love.”
What a load of crap! Just the fact that this is all hindsight spin says volumes about the fact that this is a work of pop designed to create a sub culture that can be used for modern political ends. If you believe the description above then you are probably a bit irked at me right now and quite possibly you are even considering dismissing this article out of hand. If you are even still reading at this point you might ask yourself why you feel that way? Why is this emotional? Why get mad about it? Why not examine another point of view?
Propaganda, of any kind, seeks to isolate it’s intended target from other points of view. It most often does this by billing contrary information as evil that needs to be purged. If you think that you should not look upon the face of this evil, that others who disagree with you should not have their say, then you are a victim of propaganda. Someone who believes in their cause, and knows it is correct, will not attempt to squash counter points because they know the facts will eventually prove them right. Someone who seeks to limit information will attempt the opposite and usually because they know they are lying. They will attempt to enlist others, usually unwittingly, in this attempt.
In reality there was nothing “new” that emerged from the counter culture movement of the sixties. In reality, it was a very American thing that was born of the very spirit encompassed in it’s most hated icon, the cowboy. American’s have always embraced individuality and rebellion right along with having a good time at the expense of everything else. The cowboy myth is littered with these exact same themes. Even the war protest was not born in the sixties and it has been apart of almost every conflict this nation has fought.
World War Two is the main reason we seem to have forgotten about the war protest. We hold the second world war up to a standard that we judge all other conflicts. To most people, this was a war that is the way all wars are supposed to be. It was an exception and not the rule. Almost no wars are fought to such a resolute conclusion. Almost no wars are so clear in cause as that war was. Take the war that was most like the second world war and one can see the differences. That war was the first one with the title World War.
A substantial “peace” movement emerged and resisted World War One. Americans were divided by which side we should fight on and seriously questioned if we should even be fighting at all. Woodrow Wilson had the leader of that movement, Eugene V Debbs, jailed without charges. Wilson sat on it, hard, and only after the war was it’s impact felt. It’s impact, after the fighting, was so profound that the US went into a very isolationist period until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
This movement was not limited to only the First World War. As far back as you go you can find similar movements. During the Civil War they were called Copperheads. Quite often they are billed as southern sympathizers but, in reality, if you read the letters of these people you find that most were only opposed to fighting a war over the matter and not particularly sympathetic to the southern cause.
In the Mexican War, the leader of the dove faction was, ironically, none other than Abraham Lincoln who, as a US Congressman, issued the Spots Resolution. It questioned if the spots where the battles were being fought were actually on US soil. In that war an entire regiment of US troops deserted and joined the enemy because they felt the conflict was wrong. Could you imagine what would have happened had the 101st airborne deserted and joined the Viet Cong?
The resistance to the War of 1812 was even greater. Many merchants refused to do business with the US Government. New England actually had a very active secessionist movement. They were so opposed to the conflict that they were actively trying to set up their own country and even drew British support. Not only did the British send representatives to help them but, the Royal Navy did not even blockade the coast of New England because of the anti war sentiment there.
I could go on all day but, I think that point is made. There was nothing new about war protests in the sixties and, in comparison, they were rather mild compared to past efforts. The effectiveness of these protests have also been over stated. The claim is that this resistance to Vietnam ended the war. Once again the evidence does not bare this out. In fact it seems to have done just the opposite. Looking at just the protests it is quite clear that they did shift election results but, not in the direction they had hoped. If they somehow managed to bring about the change they wanted then how do they explain the election of Richard Nixon, a man that was considered the hawk candidate in 1968. It has been often cited that the counter culture riot in Chicago was the event that propelled Nixon into the White House. I’m not sure how true this is but, it seems very clear that the nation as a whole had finally had enough of them at this point.
The activities of the protest movement nearly died away after Chicago. Their leaders seemed to have realized that they not only failed but managed to trigger a backfire. They were not gone, mind you, they were simply waiting for the right moment to come back. The invasion of Cambodia provided them with an opportunity and Kent State gave them the media platform they were looking for. Despite their brief resurgence, what did they accomplish? In the end, it seems that all they managed to do was create another myth. That being, they found their arch villain, Richard Nixon.
This is a perfect example of the pop culture aspect. Ultimately it was not the counter culture that managed to do Nixon in. He did that to himself and they used it. Nixon, due to Watergate, became a negative image to the nation as a whole and suddenly the attention of this movement centered around him. Again this ignores certain basic facts. If you look at the PR that comes from this crowd (and their media allies) Vietnam is always paired with Nixon. This ignores the fact that Johnson, even Kennedy, started the war and that Nixon was the one who ended it. They never actually say he started it but, the propaganda simply wants the two names, Nixon and Vietnam, paired together. They want to make it Nixon’s war.
Even the biggest icon’s of the sixties are fleeting illusions. The summer of love, a sudden influx of runaways in San Francisco, was rejected by some of their hero’s such as former Beatle, George Harrison. He went there, saw it, and said this was not the utopia he was told. If anything the sixties rock star was in complete agreement with future President Ronald Reagan. Harrison said they were all “dirty little teens” while Reagan said, “they look like Tarzan, have hair like Jane, and smell like Cheetah.”
Eventually this gathering broke up in the face of increasing crime and a lack of direction. Many of their leaders, such as Janis Joplin, died from excessive drug use. However, I think one of the best critiques came from someone who participated in the events around the Haight-Ashbury. He said that all people saw was the freak show and could not hear their words. They could not see the internalization of ideas that was going on. That says it all. If these kids had listened to their parents and dressed better then others might have actually taken them seriously and listened.
Despite this ultimate failure those who walked away from it have re-acclimated themselves in society and are now trying to dress it up. It’s an old tactic. If you loose then claim victory and keep on saying it till someone finally believes you. If you did not achieve your goals then claim those goals were something else. If someone else did succeed then say they were one of you. None of this is more clear than with the biggest icon of the sixties that will forever be associated with “the movement.” That is a name that nearly everyone knows, Woodstock.
Billed in pop culture as a weekend of peace and love, where millions of kids came together from all over, without violence, and showed the merits of free love, drugs, and their music. Even the cover of the Woodstock record Album shows how much an illusion this is. It shows a young boy and girl, standing in a field, embraced, and rapped in a blanket. These two people are not unidentified. They are in fact married today (so much for free love) and even still have the blanket from the photo. They did not come from far away. They lived fifteen miles from where the photo was taken and still do today. They said they traveled to the concert, didn’t like it, and left the same day they came. So much for the traffic jams myth and the idea that it was some monumental draw.
Woodstock did not even happen in Woodstock. Due to the politics that arise from such ventures it wound up settling in another location that was thirty miles away from the original proposed site. While it has been billed as a free concert that was not it’s original intent. It was a business venture that was undertaken for the express purpose of making money. As one of it’s promoters said on stage, “for those of you who don’t think that capitalism isn’t all that weird,” it is obvious the organizers did not. When they financially failed due to large numbers of trespassers, who simply pushed down the fences and entered, they quickly figured out another way to make money. They used the flack from the press to package the event, create a myth, and sell the idea to a movie studio. The resulting film and record made them rich.
I guess Woodstock really is the perfect example of “the sixties.”
Pete Longstreet @ October 20, 2009
Global Weather Warming Cooling Change
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Here I am in the deep south. It’s October and getting towards the end of that. It’s not even Halloween yet and I’ve already seen my first snow fall of the season. Now I do realize that some people from the more northern extremities of the country might think, “big deal.” The thing is that I live in Atlanta and I’m used to still wearing shorts at this time of year. Last year also produced a long, cold, hard winter as well. This year is starting to look pretty much like a repeat (gasp). Now if you fall into the category of a lot of people these days you are probably saying, “you see! It’s Global Warming!”
That’s no joke, I’ve actually heard people blame cold weather on global warming and, while we can safely laugh at most of them, I get rather disturbed when I hear a meterologist on The Weather Channel say it. They really did this for a while until someone must have finally pointed out that it was making them look foolish so they finally stopped. The only problem here is that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They simply changed their terminology.
It is a sign that Al Gore’s power point is running out of power. Global Warming seems to be wearing out it’s welcome and I expected that. You can only get so much mileage out of any line. Saying it a lot might get a lot of people to believe it but, it also wear’s out your welcome rather quick like. So, what is it they’re saying now? Global Warming has been officially renamed Global Weather Change.
Since even the most dim of dim are going to one day notice that the world is no hotter now than it was last year, or the year before and, so on and so forth, the weather is always changing (like from summer to fall and etc etc) so just call it something similar to Global Warming and then blame your political enemies for the latest thunder storm. I only wish it were a joke. I recently heard a reporter on the The Weather Channel blame our recent rains on Global Weather Change. That was right before he told the most blatant lie.
It is a cannon of law amongst weather geeks and professionals that our weather is made up of extremes and that those nice neat averages on the charts aren’t real. It’s the difference between getting a mean average and a modal average. One day it floods and the next day you have drought and the average of the two tells you that you got enough rain on both days but, not too much. This guy on TWC said that wasn’t true and I know that he had to know better.
It comes down to this really. How insane have we gotten? How far have we come? How moronic is this? We’ve politicized the weather? I mean come on now. The only thing that I can see that the weather gone mad pundits have accomplished is proving that Hitler was right. People really will fall quicker for a big stupid lie than a small rational one.
Pete Longstreet @ October 19, 2009
What Happens Next?
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Our Country is falling apart. Job losses are at record levels (I believe they are higher than the government is reporting), some States are facing bankruptcy (California is among 10 states that could collapse within a year, yet 41 are in deep financial trouble) We have a regime that wants to increase the size of our government yet we can’t afford it at its current size. States are beginning to flex their 10th amendment muscles by enacting sovereignty related laws. Our economy is predicted to get worse before it gets better, but without a real industrial base to pull it back into line how will that happen? Most talking heads don’t know how it will get better only that it will somehow. Our Nation is now the Worlds leading debtor Nation yet the fools in DC are considering yet another stimulus injection. There are people in our Country today that are openly seditious and that sentiment is increasing by the week. Some are openly advocating violence to what many deem a traitorous regime. This spirit has not happened in this Country on this scale since the 1860’s. Even the anti war and civil rights protests in the 60’s, while well attended, didn’t have the anarchist passions being expressed today.
World powers are plotting our Nation’s demise as well. It is evidenced by the international movement (China, Russia, Arabs, and the UN) to replace the Dollar as the world’s reserve currency and direct actions by some Countries to devalue it of late. Even they can see the misuse and abuses by the FED that our fat cats depend on to promote their various pet projects.
We are living in a revolutionary period in our Nation’s history. The old ways of doing things will not work anymore. The people of this Country are sick and tired of the inside-the-beltway business as usual politicians and want real leaders who will stand up for them. They want to replace the survivalist self-serving politicians that create problems and offer great sounding but ineffective solutions to those very same problems. Our Nation, while still great, is on the precipice. If we cannot remember what made us great in the first place we will fall.
admin @ October 11, 2009
Exporting Liberty?
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Exporting Liberty?
Back when our nation was founded we had a small group of radicals who knew that being a subject was not the same thing as being a citizen. They spoke up, stepped up, and banned together to fight the greatest superpower on Earth at that time.
The American Revolution unfolded and a great experiment in freedom had begun. Describing the battle of the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts in April 1775 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard ’round the world.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson “Concord Hymn” 1837
Emerson wrote that in 1837. He had the advantage of witnessing what indeed followed the American Revolution. “The shot heard ‘round the world” (American stand against monarchical tyranny), the Declaration of Independence, and (later) the US Constitution (especially the Bill of Rights) ignited a prairie fire of liberty and democratic ideas that took hold in France, Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Haiti, and nations throughout Latin America. Monarchies were falling or losing colonies all over the world. America’s ideas and deeds inspired the world. America spread freedom by example. This did not go unnoticed by American leaders.
Many of the founders (especially Thomas Paine) of this new nation believed that military force should only be used to defend its borders and her (economic) interests abroad. They, for the most part, adopted a non interventionist foreign policy which could be summed up in George Washington’s words:
“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have as little political connection as possible… Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalships, interest, humor, or caprice?… It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” George Washington’s farewell address
And by Thomas Jefferson:
“The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.” Thomas Jefferson on Foreign Policy
The new Republic’s foreign policy was challenged at the begining of the 19th century. Presidents Jefferson and Madison were tested with the Barbary Wars. The naïve idea that regional conflicts would be dealt with by neighboring Countries fell apart when no such “neighbor” stepped up to deal with the pirates who ravaged and looted American ships and held crews for ransom along the coast of North Africa. Britain and France paid tribute to the pirates and were unconcerned about nations not under their protection. Jefferson was contemplating paying tribute but decided that paying tribute would “only lead to further demands.”
“it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.” Jefferson letter to Ezra Stiles December 1786
Inevitably military force was used to protect US “commercial” interests overseas but the spirit of the non-interventionist foreign policy was maintained.
The US maintained a non interventionist foreign policy (with an occasional bump or two) until the Spanish-American War which had US troops occupying the Philippines. This was the first time a noncontiguous territory was occupied and controlled by the US. In spite of that brief foray into pseudo-colonialism sentiment for nonintervention remained popular in the US.
The 20th century rolled in with Woodrow Wilson’s victorious campaign slogan “He kept us out of war.” Of course – He didn’t and paid the price when the US Congress did not embrace the Treaty of Versailles or Wilson’s pet project, the League of Nations.
WWII changed everything. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the US promptly joined with other warring nations to put down the Axis. With our justified involvement in this war we as a Nation felt empowered and just. We used the term “liberating” to describe our victories in Europe and Asia. The people of the US knew that it was the right thing to do. But at the close of that war we were confronted with new players on the world stage.
With recent victories over evil dictators still fresh – the USSR, communism, and the nuclear age forced many to begin to rethink America’s nonintervention. A battle was already underway between the Old Right and the New Right about what to do about this newly evolving Cold War. People like William Buckley, who were very anti-communist, helped reshape US Foreign policy into what it is today. The old days of Monroe Doctrine regionalism seemed to be over. Many Nation States could now project their military might anywhere on the planet. If you throw in ICBM’s the neighborhood drastically shrinks. Nonintervention as it was originally conceived was dead even though the underlying principals were still sound.
So how do you defend against the threat of nuclear armed communist Nations? You play a game called Risk. Unfortunately when the game board is the world “entangling alliances” do occur. And justification for international intervention requires popular support in a republic like ours. One of the methods classically used to win public favor is propaganda. In our case the rhetoric was about Spreading American Ideals, Spreading Democracy, and liberating the downtrodden from tyrants. We did this to win public support to fight proxy wars to weaken our cold war enemy. It took some time but ultimately it worked! The USSR collapsed but the Cold War interventionist policies remain and so does our very real game of Risk.
Enter 911. We have a new enemy – Global Terrorism and terrorist networks able to project worldwide. We are still using our Cold War strategies to fight them and our nationalistic propaganda to justify our intervention in the foreign Nations that harbor them. Will it work? Are we really spreading freedom and/or Democracy? Can those ideas really be spread by force? Or is it time to rethink our strategy and possibly our foreign policy? We must pursue and eliminate those networks. The real question is – how? We need a Thomas Paine or William Buckley for our new predicament. The Old Right’s nonintervention and the New Right’s Interventionism designed to fight Nation States will not work against this new threat. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between.
The idea of nation building was moderately valid when our enemy was a superpower. It pulled resources from our idealistic foe and created a buffer where the two superpowers could fight their proxy wars without annihilating each other with thermal nuclear weapons; albeit, at the expense of some third world nation and its people. But now the enemy while very real and very dangerous, is not a nation state, they dont have borders, they dont wear uniforms, they are ghost-like employing asymetrical warfare and terror. Our strategies were not designed to deal with this type of war, so we did what we thought would work. We went after Nation States that harbored them or were seemingly sympathetic to them. A strategy that did not win the US any friends and strained our relations with those who are. World leaders get nervous when a superpower flexes its military muscles. They can and have reacted in a variety of ways. Some use the opportunity to expand their own influence in the world as is the case with the EU, Russia, and China. Others simply hedge their bets and align with one of the other players while those that are left attempt to form new alliances to ward off intervention in their National interests. The nations of the world learned something from the fall of the USSR that the US has chosen to ignore - economics is the weapon that fell the Soviet Goliath.
The US has had the luxury and benefits of controlling the reserve currency of the world. It has helped protect the US economy many times in our recent past. The FED helped win the Cold War as much as our international game of Risk. But in the end a fiat currency will fail. The financial melt down in the US is predicted by many to worsen before it gets better. There is an internal effort to audit the Federal Reserve with the hope by many to expose corruption so as to return to a commodity based currency as outlined in the US Constitution. There is also an international effort to replace the US Dollar with other currencies as its reserve. The one-two punch could bring down the house of cards and If that happens the US economic safety net will be gone. Another warning by our forebearers unheeded and consequences soon to be reaped.
When you add it all up the logic is obvious. Our Nation must reel in our global intervention machine to levels of affordability. We must revisit our foreign policy so that it makes sense in todays world. We must also revisit our economic machine to prepare for the future. When we do this we must be mindful of the advice given by our founders and respect and follow the law of the land (US Constitution.) We will then be in a position to spread freedom and prosperity by example. Our friendships and economic ties with Nations would cause our new enemy to be virtually homeless. Our great experiment in liberty would continue for another two hundred years, or until our next test whatever that will be.
What would the founders think about our role in the world today? What would they think about our foreign policy? Would they chastise us for getting too involved? Or would they be astonished at how much influence we now have in the world and marvel at our creativity?
admin @ October 11, 2009
