Letters to the Editor
RobertGlass
Published Letters: 21 Editor's Choice: 4
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HIPPIE ENVY
[Read the article: Tangled up in Dylan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Suze Rotolo’s memoirs are “a remarkable portrait of living and making art in the 1960s,” indeed.
Mainly “living,” since “art” is one of life’s byproducts and artifacts.
Those who came of age in the ‘60s, now grandparents (including some Stones and Beatles), forever mark the fundamental social division that continues, fifty years on, to roil American and international political waters regarding not just music but gender, sexual hypocrisy, religion, war-making, commerce, education, science, fashion, mass-media, ad infinitum.
Depending on one’s age and geography at the time, you almost immediately became a revolutionary or a reactionary, to one degree or another, without thinking.
There was no time to think. Your polarization was instinctive and thoughtless. It came from your heart, somewhat dependant on your age and conditioning.
In fact, the era exposed your heart for you and all the world to see.
Conformity or rebellion? Clothing, politics, music, sexual relations?
“Make love, not war,” summed up the 60s zeitgeist in four words. “Tune in, drop out?” Same thing.
Fuck or fight. Simple. Devastating!
Religionists were aghast at the rampant acceptance of sex in all its permutations, among the young. They still are, because Religion is the ultimate follow-the-leader fascism of surrender to all-knowing shepherds by the sheep. THAT’S their exposed heart.
The hippie sheep basically shrugged their shoulders, did their drugs and created their own culture apart from the shepherds, from Haight-Ashbury to Washington Square. THAT’S their heart.
Unquestioned authoritarianism, regarding sex or war or political conformity, was forever rended. Long hair, bell-bottoms, tie-dyes, drugs, gender-fuck performance art, sit-ins, riots – the hypocritical heart of conformity was irrevocably shattered with a few years.
Result? Panic, chaos and reactionary oppression of non-conformity that’s yet to be quelled by the old, still old, powers-that-be.
There is Change, which is to say, Life. Maybe it feels like Chaos.
There is Stasis, which is to say, Death. Maybe it feels like Decay.
Since the 60s, since the Hippies, humanity’s comprehension of War has deepened and permanently altered with each generation’s increasing information and understanding of military-industrial slaughter (now, as in olden days, in the name of religion).
The Hippies were right about Vietnam. Even then-Secretary-of-Defense Robert McNamara admitted (20 years and 56,000 American deaths too late), “We were mistaken.”
No shit, Bob? Don’t bogart that joint, while we contemplate the 56,000 Americans you sent to death for . . . what?
The Hippies are right about Afghanistan and Iraq.
The arts? America went from Jo Stafford’s “Shrimp Boats Are A’Comin’” to “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” in one generation. From Norman Rockwell to “Piss Christ.” From “Pillow Talk” to “Bonnie and Clyde” to “Last Tango in Paris.” From Gale Storm to Annie Sprinkle to Madonna to Amy Winehouse.
From fifties’ Bishop Sheen (a notorious old Catholic queen) to the ongoing child-abuse Catholic Church scandals. Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. Et al.
The Hippies were right about religion too. See the impeccably researched and documented U.K. Times Online article, “Societies Worse Off 'When They Have God On Their Side',” by Ruth Gledhill, in 2005. And the ongoing documentation of the decline of religion in Western Europe, where churches can barely draw a 20% congregation of gray-hairs. (That’s right: 80% of the people don’t bother attending.)
Drugs? The Hippies tried them all, then reduced their intake to one: marijuana. Cocaine? Gone. Striates the heart tissue every time you snort. Heroin? A loser drug since at least James Taylor. Crack? Are you kidding? Meth? For white trash. The rest of the druggie permutations (none of which are new)? For “children” of any age who still think saying “awesome” is somehow cool. (It isn’t.)
The only drug Hippies still endorse is marijuana. Far less dangerous and socially costly than alcohol, Bubba.
In fact, the Hippies were right about everything. Their honesty about Sex, Drugs, Art, Religion and Living permanently undercut the then-prevalent and still-militant and malignant right-wing conformity that’s made America a second- if not third-rate country.
No wonder politicians and religionists still revile the Hippies.
By now it’s apparent the Hippie philosophy and insights have ripped the Establishment’s authoritarianism to shreds.
From stem-cell research to same-sex equality to women’s right to choose to anti-war negotiations to environmental awareness to global-warming . . . the Hippies were and always have been right.
Envy breeds contempt.
Okay. Enough. Pass that joint, dude.