In my high school years between 1969 and 1972, I was known as a hippie or a freak, those being the opposite of a redneck. In Mississippi you were one or the other. Unless you were black, (now re-named African Americans as if re-naming a race could make up for terrorizing a race for centuries). Freaks had long hair, smoked pot, wrote poetry, befriended blacks, and protested the war in Vietnam. The rednecks, drank beer, played football, drove fast cars, and beat up blacks and hippies.
We hippies, being the new wave revolution, could see that life on Earth was becoming a threat to life on Earth. We were killing people in Nam, on the highways, and at the gallows so to speak, and we were tearing up the land and all of the Earth’s resources. I remember being saddened by the loss of anything in this world, a tree, a bush, or a life. And we stood to be included in the movement of the time to revolutionize America again, and revert to the wise and better ways our American forefathers had envisioned in the eighteenth century.
The freaks talked about revolution and we sided with the militant black groups, the war protesters, and any offbeat group or movement we heard about. In Mississippi we were a decided minority then, and many of us wanted to move to California where the movement was huge and the people were so much more tolerant of our views. We thought.
Mostly I remember talking about the war, and I had a reason to hate it. I would turn eighteen in 1972, and the draft was still in effect. I had known people who had been drafted, and left to fight that war, some coming home, and some not, some without legs or some gone blind. I never admitted it but my main problem with the war was not the killing of people and the destruction of that country, but the fear of my being killed in it someday, or even worse coming back a cripple.
Our revolution didn’t turn out like we envisioned it. There was no armed uprising. We all grew up. Our voices did light a fire for Americans, and the country sickened by the ever-lasting “Police Action” in Southeast Asia, finally forced America to abandon its futile effort to make those citizens of the “Nam” free like us.
We did enjoy some success. Our world began to be more concerned about the planet, the people, and our world. We closed the war in S E Asia. But seems human propensity to destroy is beyond our ability to save, and we are arguably in worse shape than ever.
When did we sell out? Was it when we got our first real jobs and started saving money, buying cars, houses, and gas and food? Were we afraid that we couldn’t continue our fight to be better people because we might have to give up some of the things we had grown accustomed to? Could we have been mistaken in our ideals in the first place? I know we all say we want to save the world, but are we willing to sacrifice so that we may? In 1972 we had been more than willing. We fought on the campuses and at the rallies, speaking our indignant minds, and railing for freedom.
Today the heroes of my generation run businesses, live in expensive homes, burn outrageous amounts of precious fuel in SUVs, and save for retirement. We don’t gather for protests, in fact most of us side on the other side today against those that protest. We don’t expand our minds with poetry, art and abstract ideas. We listen to the music that we have sold ourselves, we watch the news that we make, and we live in the comfort we have designed and marketed. We have conquered so many things, and we have begun to rest on our laurels, not half way to the ends we dreamed of.
Kids today look at us like we looked at our parents, and like our parents looked at theirs; they protest our way of running this world, and they should. We haven’t done so well in many respects.
We were aghast to learn that a president could stoop so low as to break laws and cover his tracks when Nixon resigned the Presidency in 1972, but now we don’t do more than write blogs or rants on Craigslist about the incredibly stupid things we do while we shape and run our world
Those avante garde heroes of the sixties are now Senators and Congressmen, as well as doctors, lawyers, and chiefs of industry and commerce. We run the world, and we live among our best efforts, just trying to stay afloat in a world gone crazy with possessions and comfort. And the few that still stir the muck about the injustices of our world are decidedly outcasts, called, derisively, tree-huggers by the very ones that protested excesses back when we were kids. The best we offer, as the leaders of the world, is an opportunity to vote for, (for the most part), either a so-called liberal Democrat, or a so-called, conservative Republican, neither of which is interested much in the betterment of our world, only the betterment of their personal lives. And in many cases we don’t even vote. And there might even be a strong case for not voting, what difference does it make?
We had high hopes and dreams 40 and 50 years ago, just as our children do now. Hope they do better
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