How we got to where we are.

MeAgain · Sep 25, 2013

I don't normally make long posts like the one that follows, but I had shown it to someone in a PM and it was suggested that I post it here for all to see. Without me making any comments on the contents at this time, let me just say that it is a very good explanation of how we got to where we are today in relation to politics and the current state of the world.

It was written by the theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra, the author of The Tao of Physics and several other books.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Reflections on the Spirit and Legacy of the Sixties

December 1, 2002

The 1960s were the period of my life during which I experienced the most profound and most radical personal transformation. For those of us who identify with the cultural and political movements of the sixties, that period represents not so much a decade as a state of consciousness, characterized by "transpersonal" expansion, the questioning of authority, a sense of empowerment, and the experience of sensuous beauty and community.

This state of consciousness reached well into the seventies. In fact, one could say that the sixties came to an end only in December 1980, with the shot that killed John Lennon. The immense sense of loss felt by so many of us was, to a great extent, about the loss of an era. For a few days after the fatal shooting we relived the magic of the sixties. We did so in sadness and with tears, but the same feeling of enchantment and of community was once again alive. Wherever you went during those few days — in every neighborhood, every city, every country around the world — you heard John Lennon's music, and the intense idealism that had carried us through the sixties manifested itself once again:
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
and the world will live as one.

In this essay, I shall try to evoke the spirit of that remarkable period, identify its defining characteristics, and provide an answer to some questions that are often asked nowadays: What happened to the cultural movements of the sixties? What did they achieve, and what, if any, is their legacy?

expansion of consciousness

The era of the sixties was dominated by an expansion of consciousness in two directions. One movement, in reaction to the increasing materialism and secularism of Western society, embraced a new kind of spirituality akin to the mystical traditions of the East. This involved an expansion of consciousness toward experiences involving nonordinary modes of awareness, which are traditionally achieved through meditation but may also occur in various other contexts, and which psychologists at the time began to call "transpersonal." Psychedelic drugs played a significant role in that movement, as did the human potential movement's promotion of expanded sensory awareness, expressed in its exhortation, "Get out of your head and into your senses!"

The first expansion of consciousness, then, was a movement beyond materialism and toward a new spirituality, beyond ordinary reality via meditative and psychedelic experiences, and beyond rationality through expanded sensory awareness. The combined effect was a continual sense of magic, awe, and wonder that for many of us will forever be associated with the sixties.

questioning of authority

The other movement was an expansion of social consciousness, triggered by a radical questioning of authority. This happened independently in several areas. While the American civil rights movement demanded that Black citizens be included in the political process, the free speech movement at Berkeley and student movements at other universities throughout the United States and Europe demanded the same for students.

In Europe, these movements culminated in the memorable revolt of French university students that is still known simply as "May '68." During that time, all research and teaching activities came to a complete halt at most French universities when the students, led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, extended their critique to society as a whole and sought the solidarity of the French labor movement to change the entire social order. For three weeks, the administrations of Paris and other French cities, public transport, and businesses of every kind were paralyzed by a general strike. In Paris, people spent most of their time discussing politics in the streets, while the students held strategic discussions at the Sorbonne and other universities. In addition, they occupied the Odéon, the spacious theater of the Comédie Française, and transformed it into a twenty-four-hour "people's parliament," where they discussed their stimulating, albeit highly idealistic, visions of a future social order.

1968 was also the year of the celebrated "Prague Spring," during which Czech citizens, led by Alexander Dubcek, questioned the authority of the Soviet regime, which alarmed the Soviet Communist party to such an extent that, a few months later, it crushed the democratization processes initiated in Prague in its brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In the United States, opposition to the Vietnam war became a political rallying point for the student movement and the counterculture. It sparked a huge anti-war movement, which exerted a major influence on the American political scene and led to many memorable events, including the decision by President Johnson not to seek reelection, the turbulent 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Watergate scandal, and the resignation of President Nixon.

a new sense of community

While the civil rights movement questioned the authority of white society and the student movements questioned the authority of their universities on political issues, the women's movement began to question patriarchal authority; humanistic psychologists undermined the authority of doctors and therapists; and the sexual revolution, triggered by the availability of birth control pills, broke down the puritan attitudes toward sexuality that were typical of American culture.

The radical questioning of authority and the expansion of social and transpersonal consciousness gave rise to a whole new culture — a "counterculture" — that defined itself in opposition to the dominant "straight" culture by embracing a different set of values. The members of this alternative culture, who were called "hippies" by outsiders but rarely used that term themselves, were held together by a strong sense of community. To distinguish ourselves from the crew cuts and polyester suits of that era's business executives, we wore long hair, colorful and individualistic clothes, flowers, beads, and other jewelry. Many of us were vegetarians who often baked our own bread, practiced yoga or some other form of meditation, and learned to work with our hands in various crafts.

Our subculture was immediately identifiable and tightly bound together. It had its own rituals, music, poetry, and literature; a common fascination with spirituality and the occult; and the shared vision of a peaceful and beautiful society. Rock music and psychedelic drugs were powerful bonds that strongly influenced the art and lifestyle of the hippie culture. In addition, the closeness, peacefulness, and trust of the hippie communities were expressed in casual communal nudity and freely shared sexuality. In our homes we would frequently burn incense and keep little altars with eclectic collections of statues of Indian gods and goddesses, meditating Buddhas, yarrow stalks or coins for consulting the I Ching, and various personal "sacred" objects.

Although different branches of the sixties movement arose independently and often remained distinct movements with little overlap for several years, they eventually became aware of one another, expressed mutual solidarity, and, during the 1970s, merged more or less into a single subculture. By that time, psychedelic drugs, rock music, and the hippie fashion had transcended national boundaries and had forged strong ties among the international counterculture. Multinational hippie tribes gathered in several countercultural centers — London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Greenwich Village — as well as in more remote and exotic cities like Marrakech and Katmandu. These frequent cross-cultural exchanges gave rise to an "alternative global awareness" long before the onset of economic globalization.

the sixties' music

The zeitgeist of the sixties found expression in many art forms that often involved radical innovations, absorbed various facets of the counterculture, and strengthened the multiple relationships among the international alternative community.

Rock music was the strongest among these artistic bonds. The Beatles broke down the authority of studios and songwriters by writing their own music and lyrics, creating new musical genres, and setting up their own production company. While doing so, they incorporated many facets of the period's characteristic expansion of consciousness into their songs and lifestyles.

Bob Dylan expressed the spirit of the political protests in powerful poetry and music that became anthems of the sixties. The Rolling Stones represented the counterculture's irreverence, exuberance, and sexual energy, while San Francisco's "acid rock" scene gave expression to its psychedelic experiences.

At the same time, the "free jazz" of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, and others shattered conventional forms of jazz improvisation and gave expression to spirituality, radical political poetry, street theater, and other elements of the counterculture. Like the jazz musicians, classical composers, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany and John Cage in the United States, broke down conventional musical forms and incorporated much of the sixties' spontaneity and expanded awareness into their music.

The fascination of the hippies with Indian religious philosophies, art, and culture led to a great popularity of Indian music. Most record collections in those days contained albums of Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, and other masters of classical Indian music along with rock and folk music, jazz and blues.

The rock and drug culture of the sixties found its visual expressions in the psychedelic posters of the era's legendary rock concerts, especially in San Francisco, and in album covers of ever increasing sophistication, which became lasting icons of the sixties' subculture. Many rock concerts also featured "light shows" — a novel form of psychedelic art in which images of multicolored, pulsating, and ever changing shapes were projected onto walls and ceilings. Together with the loud rock music, these visual images created highly effective simulations of psychedelic experiences.

new literary forms

The main expressions of sixties' poetry were in the lyrics of rock and folk music. In addition, the "beat poetry" of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and others, which had originated a decade earlier and shared many characteristics with the sixties' art forms, remained popular in the counterculture.

One of the major new literary forms was the "magical realism" of Latin American literature. In their short stories and novels, writers like Jorges Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez blended descriptions of realistic scenes with fantastic and dreamlike elements, metaphysical allegories, and mythical images. This was a perfect genre for the counterculture's fascination with altered states of consciousness and pervasive sense of magic.

In addition to the Latin American magical realism, science fiction, especially the complex series of Dune novels by Frank Herbert, exerted great fascination on the sixties' youth, as did the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and Kurt Vonnegut. Many of us also turned to literary works of the past, such as the romantic novels of Hermann Hesse, in which we saw reflections of our own experiences.

Of equal, if not greater, popularity were the semi-fictional shamanistic writings of Carlos Castaneda, which satisfied the hippies' yearning for spirituality and "separate realities" mediated by psychedelic drugs. In addition, the dramatic encounters between Carlos and the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan symbolized in a powerful way the clashes between the rational approach of modern industrial societies and the wisdom of traditional cultures.

film and the performing arts

In the sixties, the performing arts experienced radical innovations that broke every imaginable tradition of theater and dance. In fact, in companies like the Living Theater, the Judson Dance Theater, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, theater and dance were often fused and combined with other forms of art. The performances involved trained actors and dancers as well as visual artists, musicians, poets, filmmakers, and even members of the audience.

Men and women often enjoyed equal status; nudity was frequent. Performances, often with strong political content, took place not only in theaters but also in museums, churches, parks, and in the streets. All these elements combined to create the dramatic expansion of experience and strong sense of community that was typical of the counterculture.

Film, too, was an important medium for expressing the zeitgeist of the sixties. Like the performing artists, the sixties' filmmakers, beginning with the pioneers of the French New Wave cinema, broke with the traditional techniques of their art, introducing multi-media approaches, often abandoning narratives altogether, and using their films to give a powerful voice to social critique.

With their innovative styles, these filmmakers expressed many key characteristics of the counterculture. For example, we can find the sixties' irreverence and political protest in the films of Godard; the questioning of materialism and a pervasive sense of alienation in Antonioni; questioning of the social order and transcendence of ordinary reality in Fellini; the exposure of class hypocrisy in Buñuel; social critique and utopian visions in Kubrik; the breaking down of sexual and gender stereotypes in Warhol; and the portrayal of altered states of consciousness in the works of experimental filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and John Whitney. In addition, the films of these directors are characterized by a strong sense of magical realism.

the legacy of the sixties

Many of the cultural expressions that were radical and subversive in the sixties have been accepted by broad segments of mainstream culture during the subsequent three decades. Examples would be the long hair and sixties fashion, the practice of Eastern forms of meditation and spirituality, recreational use of marijuana, increased sexual freedom, rejection of sexual and gender stereotypes, and the use of rock (and more recently rap) music to express alternative cultural values. All of these were once expressions of the counterculture that were ridiculed, suppressed, and even persecuted by the dominant mainstream society.

Beyond these contemporary expressions of values and esthetics that were shared by the sixties' counterculture, the most important and enduring legacy of that era has been the creation and subsequent flourishing of a global alternative culture that shares a set of core values. Although many of these values — e.g. environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, global justice — were shaped by cultural movements in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, their essential core was first expressed by the sixties' counterculture. In addition, many of today's senior progressive political activists, writers, and community leaders trace the roots of their original inspiration back to the sixties.

Green politics

In the sixties we questioned the dominant society and lived according to different values, but we did not formulate our critique in a coherent, systematic way. We did have concrete criticisms on single issues, such as the Vietnam war, but we did not develop any comprehensive alternative system of values and ideas. Our critique was based on intuitive feeling; we lived and embodied our protest rather than verbalizing and systematizing it.

The seventies brought consolidation of our views. As the magic of the sixties gradually faded, the initial excitement gave way to a period of focusing, digesting, and integrating. Two new cultural movements, the ecology movement and the feminist movement, emerged during the seventies and together provided the much-needed broad framework for our critique and alternative ideas.

The European student movement, which was largely Marxist oriented, was not able to turn its idealistic visions into realities during the sixties. But it kept its social concerns alive during the subsequent decade, while many of its members went through profound personal transformations. Influenced by the two major political themes of the seventies, feminism and ecology, these members of the "new left" broadened their horizons without losing their social consciousness. At the end of the decade, many of them became the leaders of transformed socialist parties. In Germany, these "young socialists" formed coalitions with ecologists, feminists, and peace activists, out of which emerged the Green Party — a new political party whose members confidently declared: "We are neither left nor right; we are in front."

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Green movement became a permanent feature of the European political landscape, and Greens now hold seats in numerous national and regional parliaments around the world. They are the political embodiment of the core values of the sixties.

the end of the Cold War

During the 1970s and 1980s, the American anti-war movement expanded into the anti-nuclear and peace movements, in solidarity with corresponding movements in Europe, especially those in the UK and West Germany. This, in turn, sparked a powerful peace movement in East Germany, led by the Protestant churches, which maintained regular contacts with the West German peace movement, and in particular with Petra Kelly, the charismatic leader of the German Greens.

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, he was well aware of the strength of the Western peace movement and accepted our argument that a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought. This realization played an important part in Gorbachev's "new thinking" and his restructuring (perestroika) of the Soviet regime, which would lead, eventually, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the end of Soviet Communism.

All social and political systems are highly nonlinear and do not lend themselves to being analyzed in terms of linear chains of cause and effect. Nevertheless, careful study of our recent history shows that the key ingredient in creating the climate that led to the end of the Cold War was not the hard-line strategy of the Reagan administration, as the conservative mythology would have it, but the international peace movement. This movement clearly had its political and cultural roots in the student movements and counterculture of the sixties.

the information technology revolution

The last decade of the twentieth century brought a global phenomenon that took most cultural observers by surprise. A new world emerged, shaped by new technologies, new social structures, a new economy, and a new culture. "Globalization" became the term used to summarize the extraordinary changes and the seemingly irresistible momentum that were now felt by millions of people.

A common characteristic of the multiple aspects of globalization is a global information and communications network based on revolutionary new technologies. The information technology revolution is the result of a complex dynamic of technological and human interactions, which produced synergistic effects in three major areas of electronics — computers, microelectronics, and telecommunications. The key innovations that created the radically new electronic environment of the 1990s all took place 20 years earlier, during the 1970s.

It may be surprising to many that, like so many other recent cultural movements, the information technology revolution has important roots in the sixties' counterculture. It was triggered by a dramatic technological development — a shift from data storage and processing in large, isolated machines to the interactive use of microcomputers and the sharing of computer power in electronic networks. This shift was spearheaded by young technology enthusiasts who embraced many aspects of the counterculture, which was still very much alive at that time.

The first commercially successful microcomputer was built in 1976 by two college dropouts, Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs, in their now legendary garage in Silicon Valley. These young innovators and others like them brought the irreverent attitudes, freewheeling lifestyles, and strong sense of community they had adopted in the counterculture to their working environments. In doing so, they created the relatively informal, open, decentralized, and cooperative working styles that became characteristic of the new information technologies.

global capitalism

However, the ideals of the young technology pioneers of the seventies were not reflected in the new global economy that emerged from the information technology revolution 20 years later. On the contrary, what emerged was a new materialism, excessive corporate greed, and a dramatic rise of unethical behavior among our corporate and political leaders. These harmful and destructive attitudes are direct consequences of a new form of global capitalism, structured largely around electronic networks of financial and informational flows. The so-called "global market" is a network of machines programmed according to the fundamental principle that money-making should take precedence over human rights, democracy, environmental protection, or any other value.

Since the new economy is organized according to this quintessential capitalist principle, it is not surprising that it has produced a multitude of interconnected harmful consequences that are in sharp contradiction to the ideals of the global Green movement: rising social inequality and social exclusion, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the natural environment, and increasing poverty and alienation. The new global capitalism has threatened and destroyed local communities around the world; and with the pursuit of an ill-conceived biotechnology, it has invaded the sanctity of life by attempting to turn diversity into monoculture, ecology into engineering, and life itself into a commodity.

It has become increasingly clear that global capitalism in its present form is unsustainable and needs to be fundamentally redesigned. Indeed, scholars, community leaders, and grassroots activists around the world are now raising their voices, demanding that we must "change the game" and suggesting concrete ways of doing so.

the global civil society

At the turn of this century, an impressive global coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many of them led by men and women with deep personal roots in the sixties, formed around the core values of human dignity and ecological sustainability. In 1999, hundreds of these grassroots organizations interlinked electronically for several months to prepare for joint protest actions at the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. The "Seattle Coalition," as it is now called, was extremely successful in derailing the WTO meeting and in making its views known to the world. Its concerted actions have permanently changed the political climate around the issue of economic globalization.

Since that time, the Seattle Coalition, or "global justice movement," has not only organized further protests but has also held several World Social Forum meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil. At the second of these meetings, the NGOs proposed a whole set of alternative trade policies, including concrete and radical proposals for restructuring global financial institutions, which would profoundly change the nature of globalization.

The global justice movement exemplifies a new kind of political movement that is typical of our Information Age. Because of their skillful use of the Internet, the NGOs in the coalition are able to network with each other, share information, and mobilize their members with unprecedented speed. As a result, the new global NGOs have emerged as effective political actors who are independent of traditional national or international institutions. They constitute a new kind of global civil society.

This new form of alternative global community, sharing core values and making extensive use of electronic networks in addition to frequent human contacts, is one of the most important legacies of the sixties. If it succeeds in reshaping economic globalization so as to make it compatible with the values of human dignity and ecological sustainability, the dreams of the "sixties revolution" will have been realized:
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
no need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
and the world will live as one.

Click to expand...

Any comments would be welcome, especially from those who do not agree with some of the points Capra made. (Agreeable people may also respond!)

scratcho · Sep 25, 2013

Thank you. Youngins' should read this.

MeAgain · Sep 25, 2013

Not many comments there Scratcho....takes some effort to read more than a sentence or two....

Sig · Sep 26, 2013

*sigh*

Pressed_Rat · Sep 26, 2013

The Rockefellers, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski... this is the shit they all believe in. Global economy, global government, blah blah blah...

This is why I don't like left wingers. They pose as peaceniks, but they support evil agendas that masquerade as being for the good of mankind. I would call them all hypocrites if they weren't just gullible. They believe more government is the solution to everything, when the government is run by some very dangerous people who create problems to give themselves more control.

Why has America turned to shit as the government has gotten bigger and bigger? I thought the government was supposed to fix things? Yeah, right.

Ranger · Sep 26, 2013

Thanks for posting this me again. I awoke this morn wondering why Jimi is not as honored as MLKjr in terms of dissolving racial barriers?

NoxiousGas · Sep 26, 2013

I was thinking along those same lines last night as I watched an episode of Barney Miller.
It struck me how blatantly "socially aware" the shows of the '70's attempted to be, at least the ones created by Norman Lear.
Prior to the '60's TV was full of ludicrous gags, perfect families, and utopian neighborhoods and NEVER mentioned anything negative.

Then you have Norman Lear with the show that first broke the mold; All in the Family. By taking on real social and political issues and presenting them in the context of comedy, America began to be exposed to elements that many had been shielded from or things that simply were not discussed.
For example in one episode, I believe in one of the early seasons, Edith is almost raped in her home. She struggled with the dilemma of whether or not to say anything, but ultimately told what happened.

After that episode aired, reports of sex crimes against woman began to increase, A LOT, because of an example on some situation comedy.
If you look at a lot of the shows that came out in that era, there are many that adopted the "show the gritty side and impart a moral lesson" formula.

So, as I was watching Barny Miller; an episode with a guy going to blow himself up to protest environmental pollution, I realized that Norman Lear altered a generations viewpoint on a lot of topics and I'm sure got a lot of discussions and arguments started all across America every week.

I also realized that people like Pressed Rat have always been around and they always will be. I could easily picture him or StpLsd sitting there with dynamite strapped to themselves. LOL

and to answer people like PR,
dude, give it a rest already.

MeAgain · Sep 26, 2013

Pressed_Rat said:

The Rockefellers, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski... this is the shit they all believe in. Global economy, global government, blah blah blah...

This is why I don't like left wingers. They pose as peaceniks, but they support evil agendas that masquerade as being for the good of mankind. I would call them all hypocrites if they weren't just gullible. They believe more government is the solution to everything, when the government is run by some very dangerous people who create problems to give themselves more control.

Why has America turned to shit as the government has gotten bigger and bigger? I thought the government was supposed to fix things? Yeah, right.
Click to expand...

PR has some good points as far as Kissinger, but Brzezinski is usually considered to be the opposite of Kissinger so I don't see why they should be grouped together.

As far as a global economy, it is a fact that it can't be stopped and I believe it will have more benefits than faults. With the rise of the internet, environmental awareness, and global transportation of goods and people, the small individual local national markets are being replaced by multinational corporations and exchanges.
This is a process that has always occurred as we moved from isolated villages to interdependent city states and onto national governments and economies.
We are merely entering the next phase whereas the entire world is being integrated into one market.

This integration is leading to a need for intergovernmental regulations. Commerce, pollution, human rights, and individual freedoms all need to be regulated across national boundaries. This means that each independent government must work with each other, and must learn to work toward common goals and compromise to reach those goals.

Some see this as a problem because they perceive that the multinational corporations are only going to work toward their own ends at the expense of the common man. I assume this is what PR was referring to when he brought up the Rockefellers. I agree that this is a huge problem and we can see it very clearly in the oil industry and their pursuit of profits at the seeming disregard, or at least little concern, for the environment and the need to end our dependence on non-renewable power sources with all the political ramifications that brings with it.

In addition, they can see examples of people in various national governments, including the U.S., that blatantly support those morally repugnant multinational corporations. On that I can agree. In the U.S. there are many elected and appointed officials that fall into this category.

Where I would differ with PR, is that I can't see how these multinational corporations can be brought under control without a concerted effort on many fronts.
They must be attacked in the marketplace by refusing to purchase their products whenever possible, this is something we can all do to a degree.
Their policies and procedures must be made public. This can be done at a grass roots level by individuals utilizing the internet, through investigative reporting, and expository books.
The mass media can also take part. As NG observed TV once played a huge role in changing the public's attitudes.

But none of these avenues can work on their own if the laws that benefit all of mankind are not enforced, enacted, or changed instead of those that promote the pursuit of profit at the expense of everything else.

We need government to do that. And we need governmental cooperation across national borders. Some call this the "New World Order" as they see it only as a negative. But it can have positive outcomes if it is conducted properly. If the various governments of the world do not unite, as the 13 original colonies of the U.S. did to herald a rule of the common man instead of monarchies and despots, who will fight the morally negative multinationals if not ourselves united through our own democratic governments?
We are united in our government and we must learn how to use our government to our benefit, not to the benefit multinationals that are only concerned with profit.
As Capra stated:

However, the ideals of the young technology pioneers of the seventies were not reflected in the new global economy that emerged from the information technology revolution 20 years later. On the contrary, what emerged was a new materialism, excessive corporate greed, and a dramatic rise of unethical behavior among our corporate and political leaders. These harmful and destructive attitudes are direct consequences of a new form of global capitalism, structured largely around electronic networks of financial and informational flows. The so-called "global market" is a network of machines programmed according to the fundamental principle that money-making should take precedence over human rights, democracy, environmental protection, or any other value.
Since the new economy is organized according to this quintessential capitalist principle, it is not surprising that it has produced a multitude of interconnected harmful consequences that are in sharp contradiction to the ideals of the global Green movement: rising social inequality and social exclusion, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the natural environment, and increasing poverty and alienation. ....
It has become increasingly clear that global capitalism in its present form is unsustainable and needs to be fundamentally redesigned.

Click to expand...

It is equally clear that the global economy will not go away, it will only grow.

So the question becomes, how can we turn it to our advantage? And that is what I would like PR and everyone else to address, we (as the sixties generation) really tried once, we succeeded in some areas and failed miserably in others. Some of us still hold those ideals but, in my opinion, most turned into self-serving Yuppies.

Instead of complaining and ranting, give me some concrete ideas and areas that we can agree on.

That's my B.S. for today.

scratcho · Sep 26, 2013

Excellent. As I thought, tooooooo-looooong for todays youth to bother with. Except the ones that always bitch and have no answers.

Ranger · Sep 26, 2013

Suggested reading, Frances Moore Lappe's "Food First:Beyond the Myth of Scarcity" and any of her latter books etc.......

http://smallplanet.org/about/frances/bio

Sig · Sep 26, 2013

scratcho said:

Excellent. As I thought, tooooooo-looooong for todays youth to bother with. Except the ones that always bitch and have no answers.
Click to expand...

You assume something is relevant, or worthy of response, simply because it's long?

rjhangover · Sep 26, 2013

Wow! Where to begin? I was there through it all. I remember JFK being killed like it was yesterday. Still today, a leftist got the blame as a lone gunman, with the magic bullet theory. He got off six shots in three seconds from two hundred yards, or something like that.
Then there was RFK and MLK. Then Tricky Dick and Watergate. Then Ford swept it all under the rug with a pardon.
Then Vietnam finally ended, and it looked like this country might have learned the lesson, that killing for the profit of the industrial military complex was a fucked up philosophy. But nooooooo...
After three progressives being assassinated, 55,000 Americans being killed in Nam, and a right wing nut job being busted for his criminal activity,....Ronnie Raygun fooled the country into tripling the national debt building nuclear bombs, supplying Iraq with chemical weapons, selling cocaine with Noriega, and using the profits to supply the Contras with weapons, along with selling weapons to Iran, which was keeping the Iraq/Iran war going, by selling to both sides of that war. Plus he had the Taliban in the White House, calling them freedom fighters, and giving them a half billion dollars worth of stinger missiles and other weapons to use against the Ruskies, which they ended up using against us in the Afghan war. Yet again, all that criminal activity was swept under the rug in the Iran/Contra trial. And still today half this country sees Raygun as a Messiah.
And then Shrub daddy doubled the national debt again in only four years. And finally Americans had had enough, and put progressive Bubba in the White House, who didn't get away with a blow job and was impeached for it, even though he balanced the budget, giving the government a surplus for the first time in my lifetime.
Then we got the dumbest president this country has ever had,or ever will have. He destroyed the budget in less than six months, by giving $3 trillion in welfare to millionaires, just adding it to the debt. Then he added yet another $3 trillion to the debt with the stupidest war ever in Iraq, killing a million innocent civilians, and installing Irans buddies, the Shiites. On top of all that, he destroyed not only the U.S. economy, but also the global economy, giving us the worse recession since the GREAT DEPRESSION. he left office with a trillion dollar deficit for fiscal year 2008. And for the first six years, it was all done with the cons running all three branches of government.
And the cons have been blaming Obama for all of it for the last five years. And half this country has been buying this con job. So the only explanation for the ills of America, is an epidemic of right wing stupidity.

As the song goes, "there ain't no cure for stupid", because cons are proud to be that way.

Sig · Sep 26, 2013

I was wondering when rjhangover was going to show up and make this about "dem evul cons". I see that history still isn't his strong suit.

scratcho · Sep 26, 2013

And I'm wondering why some on this forum continually stick up for those that need no help from anyone, that is, the ones that fucked the world economy up. The poor? Nope. The middle class? Nope. rj may have a strong way of presenting his points, but are they wrong? Nope.

Sig · Sep 26, 2013

scratcho said:

And I'm wondering why some on this forum continually stick up for those that need no help from anyone, that is, the ones that fucked the world economy up. The poor? Nope. The middle class? Nope. rj may have a strong way of presenting his points, but are they wrong? Nope.
Click to expand...

No, his history is pretty fucking wrong.

I'm not sticking up for anyone, btw.

scratcho · Sep 26, 2013

What's wrong about what he said? Who runs this fuckin' rig anyway? AGAIN=The poor? The middle class? Me? you? NO!! The 1 %. We are where we are because of what?

Sig · Sep 26, 2013

scratcho said:

What's wrong about what he said? Who runs this fuckin' rig anyway? AGAIN=The poor? The middle class? Me? you? NO!! The 1 %. We are where we are because of what?
Click to expand...

Do you honestly want me to go through it point by fucking point? You're not gonna buy it anyway.

We are where we are because Americans as a whole (the poor, the middle class, and the 1% you want to demonize) are fucking weak and we started getting weak, IMO, in the fucking sixties. Are the nebulous 1% assholes? Some yes, some no. Are the poor fucking assholes? Some yes, some no. Are the middle class? Some yes, some no. We're in this mess together because we all steered ourselves here together. Casting blame on anyone but ourselves is part of that weakness I was talking about. Thinking government can change that is just as fucking weak.

scratcho · Sep 26, 2013

Hey brother---do you have a single payer medical system?

And yes--I guess we here in the US should put much of the blame on ourselves. We are allowing those who control us, too much slack concerning their actions.

Anaximenes · Sep 26, 2013

rjhangover said:

Wow! Where to begin? I was there through it all. I remember JFK being killed like it was yesterday. Still today, a leftist got the blame as a lone gunman, with the magic bullet theory. He got off six shots in three seconds from two hundred yards, or something like that.
Then there was RFK and MLK. Then Tricky Dick and Watergate. Then Ford swept it all under the rug with a pardon.
Then Vietnam finally ended, and it looked like this country might have learned the lesson, that killing for the profit of the industrial military complex was a fucked up philosophy. But nooooooo...
After three progressives being assassinated, 55,000 Americans being killed in Nam, and a right wing nut job being busted for his criminal activity,....Ronnie Raygun fooled the country into tripling the national debt building nuclear bombs, supplying Iraq with chemical weapons, selling cocaine with Noriega, and using the profits to supply the Contras with weapons, along with selling weapons to Iran, which was keeping the Iraq/Iran war going, by selling to both sides of that war. Plus he had the Taliban in the White House, calling them freedom fighters, and giving them a half billion dollars worth of stinger missiles and other weapons to use against the Ruskies, which they ended up using against us in the Afghan war. Yet again, all that criminal activity was swept under the rug in the Iran/Contra trial. And still today half this country sees Raygun as a Messiah.
And then Shrub daddy doubled the national debt again in only four years. And finally Americans had had enough, and put progressive Bubba in the White House, who didn't get away with a blow job and was impeached for it, even though he balanced the budget, giving the government a surplus for the first time in my lifetime.
Then we got the dumbest president this country has ever had,or ever will have. He destroyed the budget in less than six months, by giving $3 trillion in welfare to millionaires, just adding it to the debt. Then he added yet another $3 trillion to the debt with the stupidest war ever in Iraq, killing a million innocent civilians, and installing Irans buddies, the Shiites. On top of all that, he destroyed not only the U.S. economy, but also the global economy, giving us the worse recession since the GREAT DEPRESSION. he left office with a trillion dollar deficit for fiscal year 2008. And for the first six years, it was all done with the cons running all three branches of government.
And the cons have been blaming Obama for all of it for the last five years. And half this country has been buying this con job. So the only explanation for the ills of America, is an epidemic of right wing stupidity.

As the song goes, "there ain't no cure for stupid", because cons are proud to be that way.
Click to expand...

The only thing Obama is failing in his original socialist plans of encouraging development along the lines of shared accessible wealth, in my mind, is in the pattern of acting out of the credit for all of those needing the financial support. Credit is due where the government already promised such by justified progressive policies. Maybe the people don't pay their credit in time. Maybe salaries are under paid and demanded back to the appropriately employed. But the records must be kept clean, and so far the records have been such.
The pressure for changing fiscal policy towards consistent profit has not yielded. The budget affords profit sharing distribution and re-distribution as far as the incentive to compete still exists-- sector economics for the newly determining necessities.

Each sector deals with it's own competition. :biggrin:

Sig · Sep 26, 2013

scratcho said:

Hey brother---do you have a single payer medical system?
Click to expand...

Are you asking me?

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