responses

 

One of the hardest things to do is the seemingly simple act of just doing your job.  Now, in the long ago I was an offensive tackle.  All I worried about was the act of making my block.  I was good enough that a full scholarship to a D-1 school was my ticket out of the Ag industry in Northern Utah. 

I have to revert to that mindset.  Back in the day, I didn't worry about if the other players were doing their job.  If somebody was having trouble with their assignment, you tried to help if you had a pushover, but otherwise they were on their own.  That is where I have to go.  I can't save the team, I can only do my part.

Today's Screed

Got a comment back yesterday (my first on this site) about my description of the Hippies.  Brought up the fact that, back in the days of Hippiedom, there was also a movement for civil rights.  I will allow this as valid.  To a degree, the politically correct side of me wishes to apologize for this oversight, but the rationalist part of me has to push back.

Yes, there was a movement in the sixties for equal civil rights, but the gains made during the Eisenhower days were being consolidated with the Federal Government pushing hard against the states.  Truth be told, the Fed was winning, the change had been made and progress was happening.  The trouble with the civil rights movement is that it took a hundred years to go from slavery to an admission that equality is required for a just society.  It is probably going to take another fifty years to finish the job, but big progress has been made.

But in the land of the Hippie, civil rights was always a sideshow.  Like it or not, the Hippies were a product of a racially divided country and were, in their prejudices, a reflection of the prejudices of the society they were raised in.  So in my mind and in my memory, the Hippie's devotion to the civil rights movement was limited to a not unsubstantial subset of the Hippie General Population (HGP), my estimate was maybe 20%.  

So, while the civil right movement was there, the vast majority Hippies really only paid lip service and tried to snag credit.  They succeeded in both these noble goals.

Nope, the Vietnam war was the Hippies main beef.  Shit war, shit idea, shit planning, shit ethics; the war was a humiliating defeat and a national shame for the leadership of our country.  

The hippies protested because (and rightly so) they didn't want to be part of this national shitshow.  This protest was the vital unifying principle of the movement.  When we declared victory and left, the hippie movement really lost it's raison d'etre and began the fragmentation into the identity politics of today