Many people have read this article off and on since I wrote it in 2010. So, today I saw more people were reading it I decided to reprint it. What is important about this article is that I was 21 years old in Los Angeles and living in Venice, California in August 1969. So, a lot of this is just what I observed first hand being 21 and having friends in Venice, Long Beach, Palos Verdes and the San Diego area and being single and going to college. Also, between 1969 and 1974 I drove about 30,000 miles a year in my 1966 VW bug which got 30 miles per gallon. So, I traveled a great deal all over California from north to south to San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mt. Shasta, Yosemite, the desert, and even to Santa Fe, Denver and into Utah, Arizona and Nevada. In 1969 gasoline could still be purchased for 16 to 17 cents a gallon a the Mohawk Station in San Pedro then as well. And the minimum wage then likely was around $1.15 an hour. You could buy a brand new VW bug for about $800. So, cars and gasoline were much more affordable then even if you were only making $1.15 an hour maybe 10 to 20 hours a week and going to college then.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
The Social Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s
- - - -took all of us to the brink of insanity and suicide who were
young adults then. It was impossible for those of us who were critical
thinkers, who COULD actually think our way out of a paper bag unlike
many of our peers who we watched die, commit suicide directly or
indirectly, to take people over 30 years old then seriously. Their
general points of view were basically insane to us of that time. This
was the general view among intelligent young people of the U.S. in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. "Why are you sending our classmates from
High School into a war with no real meaning? Why are you drafting them
and forcing them to go when they haven't even grown up yet enough to
even have 1 chance in a hundred of surviving the Viet Nam War? Are you
insane? Unfortunately, many of our answers were, "Yes. You are insane!"
However, eventually I had to be 29 and the addage that many of us lived
which was "Don't trust anyone over 30" became ridiculous as I
approached 29. Was I suddenly to be one of the untrusted ones just
because I was going to be 30 soon. The error of this thinking burned
into my mind then. Because for the previous 10 years I had been one of
many who had believed it and lived it. That didn't mean that I didn't
have teachers and employers over 30, it just meant that there was an
imaginary wall between us called "trust". Trust wasn't there. Trust had
gone with the Viet Nam War and 50,000 people my age killed for no good
reason and 250,000 wounded for no good reason and up to 2 million
Vietnamese civilians killed for no good reason by both sides. Nothing
at all was accomplished by that war by millions of deaths of mostly
civilians who mostly had no real interest of who won at that time.
Out of all the deaths by one reason or another both in Viet Nam and the U.S. at that time came a scream for "Justice" and for human rights. And somehow this morphed into a green revolution that started on college campuses and for women's rights, black rights, brown rights, gay rights, Native American rights, every minorities rights and in this sense this social revolution swept around the world on the songs we all listened to and sung by the Beatles and all the others. The social revolution swept literally into almost every country to a greater or lesser degree and began all the changes you see now around the world. Even the fall of the Iron Curtain really got going from this social revolution behind the Iron Curtain. The songs we sang brought down all the walls everywhere. The problem was: "WE also threw out the baby with the bathwater" so to speak and we have been trying to recover the baby ever since.
Note: added May 25th 2013: This era began the mistrust in government. When the Viet Nam War Began in the trust in government was already beginning to falter from the 77% trust in Government after World War II. The first major blow was "The Cuban Missile Crisis" (see "Dr. Strangelove" for a good parody of this). The second major blow was the assassination of President Kennedy because many believed that extreme right, and Mafia as well as Castro and the Soviet Union were somehow involved in his assassination and still do. These are some of the reasons trust is in the single digits up to only 20% at the highest of all the institutions of our government now. Faith in our government taking care of us is gone. We want to believe but know by our government's actions (especially Congress) that they are no longer thinking about the common people by what they do every day. So, the American People are very discouraged by Congress and this is also why so many Congressperson's and Senators are quitting as representatives this last 20 years or so.
Even though I personally don't agree with the point of view of the 90% who want Background checks on Guns I still think they should have been able to get background checks through Congress because they were the majority. It is just one more instance of the will of the people (even though I might consider that particular point of view ill advised) was not listened to. When the will of the people of this land isn't listened to by Congress about big things demonstrations aren't far away. At least we still have the right to demonstrate for what we believe in.
Out of all the deaths by one reason or another both in Viet Nam and the U.S. at that time came a scream for "Justice" and for human rights. And somehow this morphed into a green revolution that started on college campuses and for women's rights, black rights, brown rights, gay rights, Native American rights, every minorities rights and in this sense this social revolution swept around the world on the songs we all listened to and sung by the Beatles and all the others. The social revolution swept literally into almost every country to a greater or lesser degree and began all the changes you see now around the world. Even the fall of the Iron Curtain really got going from this social revolution behind the Iron Curtain. The songs we sang brought down all the walls everywhere. The problem was: "WE also threw out the baby with the bathwater" so to speak and we have been trying to recover the baby ever since.
Note: added May 25th 2013: This era began the mistrust in government. When the Viet Nam War Began in the trust in government was already beginning to falter from the 77% trust in Government after World War II. The first major blow was "The Cuban Missile Crisis" (see "Dr. Strangelove" for a good parody of this). The second major blow was the assassination of President Kennedy because many believed that extreme right, and Mafia as well as Castro and the Soviet Union were somehow involved in his assassination and still do. These are some of the reasons trust is in the single digits up to only 20% at the highest of all the institutions of our government now. Faith in our government taking care of us is gone. We want to believe but know by our government's actions (especially Congress) that they are no longer thinking about the common people by what they do every day. So, the American People are very discouraged by Congress and this is also why so many Congressperson's and Senators are quitting as representatives this last 20 years or so.
Even though I personally don't agree with the point of view of the 90% who want Background checks on Guns I still think they should have been able to get background checks through Congress because they were the majority. It is just one more instance of the will of the people (even though I might consider that particular point of view ill advised) was not listened to. When the will of the people of this land isn't listened to by Congress about big things demonstrations aren't far away. At least we still have the right to demonstrate for what we believe in.
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