Lib to Con---What the heck happened

[Skidmore]

to my generation? We participated in one of the most liberal movements in our nation's history? How the heck did our children end up being so conservative? Sometimes I feel we are getting squeezed between our parents and our children. Or are my perceptions off?

[Prodemsouth]

1. What generation? baby boom? Many baby boomers became

Conservative because they were only exposed to the radical fringe elements of the 60s.

[cornermouse]

3. I'm sorry, but I think the 60s were not the complete and total

moral collapse of a generation.

1. Not everyone became a hippie.
2. The hippies actually had several major things right; the war, the environment, caring about other people's welfare.

[Prodemsouth]

4. Hippies?? Where did I mention hippies?? That is not what I am talking

about. A hippie was someone who dropped out of society and was part of a drug culture. Don't confuse activist with long hair with hippies. If you could be transported back to the 60s and you called a male politcal activist from the 60s a hippie, they would think you were trying to insult them. There are many people who think of the drug culture with being liberal. It is sad that a big progressive move in the US in the 60s was hurt by sideshows. My earlier post was talking about people like "Whorowitz" - the right's favorite- "ex leftie from the 60s". But I would bet, in fact I know from numerous personal conversations with "hippies" that are living today that they considered their drug culture days to be an experience with being "liberal". That confusion is part of what haunts and hurts progressive movements to this day. It seems many progressive or liberals are helping Conservatives dismiss the 60s by placing unrelated groups together. Edit: add on most "Hippies" didn't care about the things you are talking about they were simply drop outs. The counter culture were not "hippies"

[cornermouse]

5. Most people in the areas that I grew up in

and still live in consider anyone with long hair to be a hippie and everything connected to the 60s to be addicted to drugs. Actually, that was pretty much the way they were portrayed on tv as well, as I recall.

Stereotyping is still alive. Sorry if I offended you. I do remember things that were definintely worth keeping from that era, though.

[Prodemsouth]

8. Not offended at all just wanted to make clear what I was talking about.

There is much I want to keep alive from the 60s. Not all Americans were free before the 60s. I share your disdain for the distortion of the 60s. I think it is something we should try to correct. Your right the media , TV had alot to to do with this, I remember seeing old repeats of Dragnet, the sterotypes were so outrageous- I sometimes wonder if Jack Webb was trying to say someting else.

[sled]

16. Did we even listen?

Kind of goes with that 30 yr. cycle of things, but this song stuck with me, through the years...what's old, becomes new again...

Hard to blame it on hippies, & such...maybe we just wake up, thinking it's a whole new world, everyday, when actually, we were warned...even Jefferson warned us, & maybe we've got our eyes wide shut...read the sixth paragraph...hard to blame anybody, but ourselves...

To Samuel Kercheval Monticello, July 12, 1816
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl246.htm


* * * * *


"Suicide" - Steppenwolf (circa 1970)

The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

(America)

America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

[cornermouse]

2. I think it could be part of trying to find an identity that

is different from your parents, but that's only a guess.

Also, let's face it, you turn on the radio and what side of the political equation do you hear? You turn on the tv and what side of the political equation do you hear? You pick up a paper and what side of the political equation do you see? The democratic point of view has been pretty well locked out. I found the 12/16 interview of David Brock on NPR to be something to really stop and think about. I think it supplied quite a few answers.

Although, last I heard, people going to church were definitely a minority, they are a dedicated minority and can possibly be counted on to actually vote, although not to the extent that I keep hearing on the media (again, just my opinion).

(typo correction)

Addition: I suspect your grandkids will actually be liberal. After I was an adult, I remember one day my grandma waited till my mother left the room, she leaned forward and whispered "I don't know why _____ is the way she is, we didn't raise her to be that way."

[sled]

6. Born again!!!

I think folks overlook the fact of how many Americans identify with Jr., cause they're just like him. How many Americans actually served, during Vietnam, or since, for that matter? How many were total screw-ups, just like Jr., & his henchmen, & can claim "born-again", & act like life's a complete do-over, so anything they did before, never happened, in the first place?

How many of his generation did anything, period, during Vietnam, opposing, or fighting that debacle? The Reps, I know, from that generation, are exactly like him? While some of us were serving, during those years, & others were trying to end that quagmire, many more were home, using every legal means available, to make damn sure they didn't go, while screwing up 90 mph, doing all the things, that are now dumped on us. Now they're the "moral values" crowd, & all the crap, they did, we're now, somehow responsible for, cause we don't believe in their no-fault religion, where you can reinvent yourself, at the drop of a hat, just by claiming "born-again".

Maybe I travel in smaller circles, than most folks, I just don't know, but it's been my experience, that this whole "moral values", "I'm a conservative"'s just a charade, for those guys, to outrun their pasts, while the rest of us, with no past we wish to deny, get shit on, at every opportunity.

It's nothing but a flag-waving, "moral values", born-again facade, of a lot of folks, who just can't look in the mirror, & admit to their mistakes, from the past. It's easier to just deny, any of it ever happened, in the first place.

It makes me ill...

[housewolf]

9. This reminds me...

Something a wise person told me in the past. It's that "Americans have one major character default - and that is that they refuse to examine their character defaults."

Seems true....

[Prodemsouth]

10. Yeah I see some of those too!

I have actually heard many of them call their involments with narcotics: Their "liberal" days. They now go to church, they think because they were weak and needed a God we all do.

[housewolf]

7. Political Cycles

I took a political science course about 10-12 years ago. I learned a lot of things in that class, and one of the things that stuck with me was the teaching that there are cycles of popularity of political ideology that last about a generation. Every 30 - 40 years or so, the dominant political thought shifts from right to left and then cycles back again 30 - 40 years later. Each time the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it starts to swing back to the other side.

If we entered a cycle of liberalism around 1940, and then a cycle of conservatism around 1970, we should be about due to enter a new cycle of liberalism. But the time frames aren't fixed and the switch seems gradual until all of sudden something happens and it tips quickly.

You might take a look back at our political history and see if you can discern the cycles.

All is not lost, as dark as it seems right now. Our nation has endured other dark periods. In the midst of the darkness it is impossible to know the long-term outcome. I hold on to hope when I view life as a process of growth. Watching a child grow, you notice that he takes a few steps forward and then appears to regress for a few days, then bursts forward again. My hope is that we are in one of those regressed phases right now, preparing to burst forward in our own time, when we are ready.

[Prodemsouth]

11. The 1930s Great Depression began Liberalism. The inability of Jimmy

Carter to win release of the hostages in Iran and the humiliation of the US is when the tide shifted to Conservatives in 1980. The Iranian hostage situation is the unchallenged albatross that still hangs around us till this day.

[sled]

12. Exactly

I swear, it's as real, as real can be. I watched "Born On the Fourth of July", the other day, & it was so much like today, it scared the bejeezus, out of me. The problem being, at the end, when they show the Republican convention, in Miami, I can only believe, though I don't remember, that I saw that crap, in real time, & trotted my little happy ass, down to the recruiters, & signed right up, because I was a dumb kid, that got caught up in all that flag-waving horse crap, & thought it was the "American" thing to do.

I'll be the first to tell you, the vets against that war were right, & I was terribly wrong. And now it's deja vu, all over again...& again...& again...it's like a damn broken record, we're on...

[Malva Zebrina]

13. mystery to me also

I sometimes think I have had the good fortune to live the majority of my life from the end of WWII, until about four years ago. I have lived in a real golden age, methinks.

There were problems yes--but as a result, we saw democracy--we saw people marching for civil rights, unafraid and led by a strong leader, Dr. King. We saw women marching and subsequently elevated from their "housewife" role and we saw them granted equal rights in the workplace , as well as in career opportunites. and there is more.

In these conversations, people mention the influence of TV and also the influence of corporations, marketing and materialistic longings resulting from it all.

No one mentions one biggy on the scene--and that is the introduction of the computer.

I am no political or societal analyst, but I would be interested in knowing just how much influence, or change, was brought about by the widespread use of the computer--where instant knowledge and communication was just a click away.

[cornermouse]

14. human nature vs. computer knowledge?

Is it possible that no matter what technological advances we make, human nature still comes shining through?

[GreatAuntK]

15. I want to believe that

After all, the internet is where I mainly get my news now, and it's allowed me to connect with like-minded people.

I don't have good feelings about the near-term, though.

[tx_dem41]

17. You got old and greedy. n/t

[NAO]

18. Ronald Raygun played a great con leader on TV

latent racist/xenophobe tendencies were fired up;

poor were scapegoated;

mystique of "free market" as all powerful, morally righteous, self-correcting system was propounded endlessly;

religious right added electoral muscle and ideological infrastructure;

political right funded massive infrastructure for manufacture of ideological system AND acquired media infrastructure for dissemination of ideology.

[yellowdogintexas]

19. talk radio..Moyers opened his Fri nite show with a description

of what he and his wife heard on the radio on Nov 1...

talk/hate radio rose to prominence by feeding the fears and resentment of those who believe their "rights and privleges" were being stolen by those who are (in their mind anyway) inferior to them).

Opportunists like Limbutt just opened the feeding frenzy...and so it spread, creating the perfect scenario for an idiot like ** to slip in and take over (or actually his handlers)

The onslaught of what Moyers described was just incredible. Just the excerpts alone were bonechilling; people listen to this drivel all day, and if you are dumb enough to listen to it, you are dumb enough to be persuaded by it if you are in the least undecided. Or to get off your ass and vote for ** even if you had not intended to vote up until then.

so all of us "commie pinko liberal hippie fag doper longhairs" from the 60's and 70's were so hated ...and all those who hated us and what we stood for are getting their revenge, so to speak.


sorry for the ramble, on re read not sure it makes sense.

Remember on "Family Ties"...Michael J Fox's reactionary son to the sweet liberal parents and how they could not understand where he came from? It was happening even back then...and portrayed on TV

[sandnsea]

20. Jesus Freaks

I think we're all forgetting Campus Crusade and the Jesus Freaks. And Jesus is just alright with me, and Spirit in the Sky, and Put Your Hand in the Hand... the seeds were there, we just ignored them.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

21. I sometimes see DU members posting about how their children are Repubs. I

think that understanding how this process occurred would provide some insight.

If they grew up in some place like TX or Indiana, it wouldn't be a surprise to me. You spend all your time surrounded by RW cultural influences and peers and that can supercede what you get even from your parents.

[sandnsea]

22. 20 years of comfort

Reaganism left unrebutted, right wing radio denegrating liberals. And a tendency for kids to reject anything their parents say anyway.