Myths of the Golden Era -- Exploded!

[LizzieMaine]

The hippies I've known have always been satisfied to live up in the woods like Nature Boy, living on twigs and berries and mushrooms and such.We still have plenty of them -- you see them wearing orange vests from October to December to avoid confusing the deer hunters.

It's hipSTERS who I've found to be incorrigible moochers and freeloaders. (Not that we want to go down that road in this thread, since there are already three others dealing with that topic in the OB.)

 

[Fletch]

Maybe I'm the political one saying this, but the collective life is ok if it's not organized beyond a local level. Your hipster archetype is embracing makerism and hackerism lately, perhaps because Occupyism failed the tests of coherency and persuasiveness. (Which was the only reason it was allowed to go on at all. Can you imagine the crackdown that would have ensued if it had amounted to anything serious?)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Either that or they just decided it wasn't "cool" enough anymore. Hard to imagine the Bonus Marchers being so shallow.

 

[vitanola]

Am I hearing a political dog whistle in this thread?

Good thing that many of us have some upper register hearing loss, lest the "dog whistles" blown by friend James and others cause heads to explode.

Even so, that "dog whistle" sometimes sounds to me like a calliope, but then I come from Hillsdale, where one is sensitized to this sort of thing, where there is an industrial concern which devotes its energies to the manufacture of said noise-makers.

 

[Atticus Finch]

James just has an obsession. We're used to it.

Yep. I haven't seen the word "hippie" written this many times in one document since I first subscribed to Rolling Stone in 1970.

AF

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Either that or they just decided it wasn't "cool" enough anymore.

Q: Why did the Occupier cross the road?
A: Because the resume he submitted to Goldman Sachs in February got him an interview.



There was a grocery workers' strike out here a few years ago which affected the supermarket near my house. I remember the first week or so it was a party-like atmosphere because apparently most of these kids thought they were going to wave the signs around for a couple weeks, management would "come to their senses," and they'd all be back at work -- apparently the rent wasn't due yet. Instead, this thing dragged on for several months and as time went by the picket line got noticeably smaller.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I didn't know they needed unpaid interns.

 

[Undertow]

I'm most definitely against brutal crackdowns by "security" forces - but the Occupy movement, while handled roughly and poorly, was not killed in the streets as we've seen in uprisings of the past. I think it's an important perspective to keep. Let me not mince words - as a whole, Western society has become so very sensetive to violence against themselves (we won't worry about all of the killings that take place in other countries as a result of our button pushing...but that's political, so I won't go there )

An Occupy protester:

A Civil Rights protester:

Occupy:

Civil Rights:

I think the Occupy Movement has some valid concerns - albeit disorganized and seemingly murky at best. But do you see the difference in these pictures? While the Occupy photos are relatively calm, even expected, the Civil Rights photos are brimming with a scary uncertainty. Both sets of photos depict brutality, but whereas the Occupy protesters are concerned about a night in jail, the black protesters were afraid of being killed in the street, and no one doing anything to save them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Excellent comparison. For all the fetishization of "nonviolent change" that we hear about, there has never, ever been meaningful change without violence of some kind, either offensive or defensive. Real revolutions aren't preceeded by "mother, may I?"

"You haven't got a revolution that didn't involve bloodshed -- and you're afraid to bleed!"
-- Malcolm X

 

[Angus Forbes]

The famous 1960's pictures of police dogs tearing into demonstrators in Alabama may have been what pushed the civil rights movement over the final hurdle.

 

[Angus Forbes]

whoops -- posted my thoughts about Vertigo in the wrong thread! Sorry . . .

 

[Undertow]

whoops -- posted my thoughts about Vertigo in the wrong thread! Sorry . . .

(Great movie though, right?! Oh wait...or were you referring to the phobia? Darn.)

 

[jamespowers]

The hippies I've known have always been satisfied to live up in the woods like Nature Boy, living on twigs and berries and mushrooms and such.We still have plenty of them -- you see them wearing orange vests from October to December to avoid confusing the deer hunters.

It's hipSTERS who I've found to be incorrigible moochers and freeloaders. (Not that we want to go down that road in this thread, since there are already three others dealing with that topic in the OB.)

Obviously you have a different breed of hippie out there. They are on every block in San Franfreako playing guitars and begging for money and making a general mess in their areas. Then they go off and buy dope and the process starts over the next day.
If I had your hippies then I wouldn't care so much.
Hipsters are the same here. That is why I said--same difference.

 

[sheeplady]

I'm most definitely against brutal crackdowns by "security" forces - but the Occupy movement, while handled roughly and poorly, was not killed in the streets as we've seen in uprisings of the past. I think it's an important perspective to keep. Let me not mince words - as a whole, Western society has become so very sensetive to violence against themselves (we won't worry about all of the killings that take place in other countries as a result of our button pushing...but that's political, so I won't go there )

I think the Occupy Movement has some valid concerns - albeit disorganized and seemingly murky at best. But do you see the difference in these pictures? While the Occupy photos are relatively calm, even expected, the Civil Rights photos are brimming with a scary uncertainty. Both sets of photos depict brutality, but whereas the Occupy protesters are concerned about a night in jail, the black protesters were afraid of being killed in the street, and no one doing anything to save them.

If those occupy protesters were non-white, non-middle class, and some group that our society harbors racism towards, I doubt we'd see so little violence. One of the reasons why the police were so brutal against the civil rights protesters is that they overall saw Blacks and African Americans as non-humans. Many of them thought the protesters were less than dogs and treated them as such. I really don't believe that we've come so far in the past 50 years that there is no group that a bunch of people see as less than human.

I think about the recent case of the border patrol officer who denied an illegal alien water and posted photos and messages on his facebook about hunting these people to kill them- as if killing another human being is for sport and pleasure. If the occupy protesters were first-generation latino/latina immigrants (or even appeared to have latino heritage) I have no doubts that this idiot (if a police officer) wouldn't beat the crud out of them and encourage his buddies to do the same just because he felt they were not human. He obviously feels this way already.

I mean no insult to police officers in my statement- those that commit acts of brutality don't deserve to serve with the many officers I know today that would never in a million years consider committing acts of brutality and find such attacks to be as disgusting as I do.

 

[Fletch]

I've read a lot about the Bonus March of 1932, which was like Occupy times a hundred in the impact of 43,000 WW1 veterans massed on Washington. Their own fellow soldiers had to clear them out under General MacArthur, who countermanded even President Hoover's orders to show restraint. And these were just men asking for an advance on the service bonus for their own sake.

If Occupy - a national movement across classes - had somehow arisen in 1932 America, I am confident things would have turned out much worse than they did for the Bonus Army, whose rout only took 2 lives and was limited to the District of Columbia. The business community was flirting with all flavors of paranoia then, and the Communist Party USA was on standing orders from Moscow to take over all left-wing activity (or at least claim responsibility for it). Scarce resources - on the part of the citizenry at large and a skeletonized military - would probably have been the only thing standing between us and civil war.

 

[Undertow]

Sheeplady, so you're suggesting that if the Occupy movement were instead staged by a majority of [enter minority race], we would see more violence?

It's not that I disagree with you - I'd only be guessing at what the police response to those protesters would be. Yet, if anything, I think there would be less police reaction for fear of creating a racially-motivated riot.

Here's a picture of a 1934 labor strike; notice that most, if not all, men are white:

And even further back, you have situations like Ludlow where white protesters were even armed with firearms:

Anymore, it would seem that modern protests are relatively civil on both sides. The police and national guard aren't crushing protesters, or shooting them in the streets, or crippling them.

Let me note, there have been injuries and deaths reported at the Occupy movements. A Marine who had recently served in Iraq was shot in the head by a teargas cannister, apparently causing skull fracture and brain swelling.
Occupy Protester Shot in Head
or this:
Two Occupy Deaths Seem Unrelated

In either above case, it seems these were unintentional injuries, unrelated deaths, or at least not directly linked to police intervention. There have been some others, such as protesters shot with rubber bullets and such - but do you see the difference in ferocity? Even if each case above were specifically planned and executed to cause death or grave injury, you have a massive movement where very, very few people are being hurt or killed.

The protests of the past have been much more violent resulting in many more deaths, crippled protesters and casualty.

 

[jamespowers]

I've read a lot about the Bonus March of 1932, which was like Occupy times a hundred in the impact of 43,000 WW1 veterans massed on Washington. Their own fellow soldiers had to clear them out under General MacArthur, who countermanded even President Hoover's orders to show restraint. And these were just men asking for an advance on the service bonus for their own sake.

If Occupy - a national movement across classes - had somehow arisen in 1932 America, I am confident things would have turned out much worse than they did for the Bonus Army, whose rout only took 2 lives and was limited to the District of Columbia. The business community was flirting with all flavors of paranoia then, and the Communist Party USA was on standing orders from Moscow to take over all left-wing activity (or at least claim responsibility for it). Scarce resources - on the part of the citizenry at large and a skeletonized military - would probably have been the only thing standing between us and civil war.

Am I hearing a political dog whistle in this thread? Do I have to call Lizzie in here to tap tap tap on the virtual floor?

 

[Fletch]

If I'm pushing a partisan view, tell me where and I'll clean it up.
If not, I was doing historical analysis, as I intended.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The protests of the past have been much more violent resulting in many more deaths, crippled protesters and casualty.

Absolutely. There hasn't been much violence because the Authorities know they have nothing to worry about from a bunch of underfed art-history majors. If the Occupiers had been true revolutionaries, there would unquestionably have been tanks in the street -- but there also would have been bankers swinging from every lamp post.

I think Fletch is absolutely right about the mood of things in 1932-33. The United States has never been closer to revolution, either from the Left or from the Right, than it was that fall and winter, and only one thing kept it from happening: the results of the 1932 election. The mood in the midwest, where farm foreclosures were devastating thousands of families, was especially ugly: When Judge Charles Bradley of Iowa refused to stop presiding over foreclosures he wasn't just greeted by farmers carrying signs. His courtroom was sacked by members of the Farmer's Holiday Association, he was dragged off his bench, and he was very nearly lynched in the street. That's just a preview of what could very easily have happened on a mass scale in Depression America -- and the very real fear that it *would* happen drove the real social change which came out of that era.

 

[sheeplady]

Sheeplady, so you're suggesting that if the Occupy movement were instead staged by a majority of [enter minority race], we would see more violence?

It's not that I disagree with you - I'd only be guessing at what the police response to those protesters would be. Yet, if anything, I think there would be less police reaction for fear of creating a racially-motivated riot.

I think that it would have to be a combination of:
A. A police force that had enough individuals who were racist
B. the protesters would have to be of the group those officers are racist towards (or enough of the protesters are of that group)
C. an environment where such deeds are considered acceptable
D. possibly demands which additionally trigger racist feelings in the attackers.

My point is that the civil rights protests were a combination of those four (with racism long standing in the south, so we're talking about deeply embedded systematic racism). I'm not saying that even if you had all of the first three come together you'd see the violence towards individuals you saw in the civil rights protests; but you would definitely see more deadly violence. To be honest, I can't see a group of Arab protesters faring too well in my community; they don't even fare too well avoiding extremely racist comments when they go grocery shopping from the general public. Granted, I wouldn't expect them to be purposefully killed, but badly beaten to the point they could die? I could easily see that.

As far as fear of a race riot; I doubt that is the first thing on racists minds when they are beating someone. It might factor in on how the heads of whomever was launching the breakup of the protest; but in my personal opinion, it didn't factor into other events that have happened in U.S. history that caused a race riot. Most racists see their behavior as being "just" and "right" and it doesn't occur to others that their words and behaviors hurt people; yet alone cause issues. If a riot occurred, most racists blame it not on the events that started it, but on those "uppity _______s' who don't follow the law."