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philosophy ("free food, free clothes, free medical care, free love, free weed") were the biggest threat to Korporate Amerika's Konsumer Kulture ever to arise since Jesus whipped the money-changers in the Temple (only thing he ever got mad at).
Love has to be a commodity. It has to cost money. It cannot be free. And if you give it (or anything) away, you threaten the very foundation of predatory Kapitalism. All things must cost.
The Hippies were the closest thing we've ever had to the earliest Christians, who were communal, and egalitarian. Almost communist (minus the "dictator"). And true Christianity is about as impractical as it can be, when regarded by the cold eyes of predatory Kapitalism. Jesus gave EQUAL VALUE to Martha, the busy worker--cleaning the house, cooking the food,--and to Mary, who sat at his feet quietly listening and praying. When Mary was criticized for "doing nothing," Jesus defended her apparent inactivity as having equal value with hard work.
The Hippies were mostly criticized for "doing nothing." For being non-productive. The most frequent charge thrown at antiwar protesters in the Sixties, by drive-by yahoos, was "Get a job!", which didn't make any sense to the doctor, or teacher, or mother, who was demonstrating against the war. Most had jobs. It was meant for the "Hippies" who were either students (sort of half-Hippies, weekend Hippies), or people who were actually living an alternative, low-key lifestyle, sometimes in communes, in which they didn't need much money, because they weren't into acquiring a lot of things. They appeared to be idle moochers because they weren't slaving away to pay off a mortgage or buy a new car. It suited the drive-by yahoos to regard all antiwar protesters this way--even if they obviously were not Hippies.
Neither thing--the Hippies or the early Christians--could survive long in societies based on acquisition (money, land). The early Christians were soon supplanted by empire-builders and "patriarchs." And the Hippies, after the brief glory of "love, love, love," mostly faded back into the accumulative, ego-centric society we see around us now. Some never lost their ideals--and have become, oh, organic farmers, artists, peace activists, the founders of non-profit groups--but the notion of living for free (via sharing) in a society in which everything has a price didn't last long.
Also, the hippie communities, and the youth rock culture, were soon flooded with bad drugs; and rock music was commercialized and corporatized. The initial inspiration slipped away. And the ridicule and hatred of those ideas have never ceased--with the corporate news monopoly depiction of long-haired, unhealthy-looking, drug-addict criminals, and other "hippie" stereotypes.
There was also the horror of the "Manson Murders"--supposed hippies who committed atrocious murders in Hollywood in 1969--an event that seemed designed to destroy all communal ideals. I remember that's when I stopped hitchhiking. Free rides, anywhere, in perfect safety, was the norm at that time; and any flowery VW van meant food, warmth, friendliness and good music, and getting wherever you needed to go, at no cost. After the Manson Murders, that feeling of freedom and safety was gone.
The other big factor in all this--in the huge cultural changes that were stirring in the '60s--was the Vietnam War. The "cannon fodder" were supposed to shut up and play their part in the big, war profiteering monster that the U.S. was saddled with at the end of WW II, and that moved onto Korea, then to Vietnam. This is not true capitalism in any sense (competition, "free trade"), but rather was huge corporations, even then going global, who merely sucked on U.S. taxpayers as on a big tit, and had to keep war going in order to keep those sweet billions flowing their way. And young American males were expected to wave the flag and join up, and go slaughter peasants in Asia, and be slaughtered. They were not expected to think or question, or to resist being so used.
But they did--most especially because of the Draft (forced soldiering). And the two ideas--"love, love, love" and NOT being the willing "cannon fodder" for senseless war--intersected. BOTH things were profoundly threatening to the powers-that-be, for whom everything must have a price (that they get most of, in profit) and for whom war had become an ADDICTION. They MUST have war, to keep the engine of the U.S. war economy going--an economic engine based on TAXPAYERS feeding big military contractors and subsidizing big corporations with tax breaks and many other benefits, in the name of "national security."
The "threat of communism" was almost completely an invention of this perpetual war machine. For instance, Vietnam had an elected president, Ho Chi Minh (U.N. monitored elections in 1954). Ho Chi Minh was an admirer of Thomas Jefferson and quoted the Declaration of Independence in letters to our government. He was the leader of the resistance to the FRENCH occupation and colonization of Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought for their independence and achieved it, after WW II. Further, the Vietnamese had experienced thousands of years of resisting Chinese invasions, and maintaining their independence. Their freely elected government was communistic, but they were not about to be the pawns of any big country, communist or otherwise. Their passion, their heart, was in independence. And they ironically thought that the U.S. government would support that desire.
The U.S. could have cultivated Vietnam as an ally--as it could have a number of other countries in rebellion against colonialism and into creating governments that were more just and more democratic than any that had gone before them (Cuba, Chile, the Congo, Iran, Nicaragua--the list is long and heartbreaking). Instead, the U.S. saw everything as a war game against "communism." The idea of workers sharing the wealth certainly sent chills through the corporate board rooms--but that was not WHY "communism" became "the enemy," not in the main. The U.S. war machine HAD to have an "enemy" and therefore pretty much invented one--just as it has done today! "Terrorism" is NOT a military problem, and CANNOT be solved by military means--but it has been magically transformed into the ILLUSION of a military problem by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, for the purpose of keeping the war machine going, and for profligate war profiteering, beyond anything dreamed of before.
The U.S. could have acknowledged the justice of the workers' and peasants' cause in Soviet Russia (if ever there was an oligarchy that deserved overturning, it was that one), and sought peace with the Russians, rather than driving them into paranoia and the building of nuclear arsenals. The "Cold War" was utter madness. Even a limited nuclear exchange will kill all life on earth (as Carl Sagan explained in his book "The Cold and the Dark"). Why keep that madness up? Because it was LUCRATIVE. It served the war machine.
Anyway, into this madness came the Beatles (and their shadow selves, the Stones), and the Diggers, and the Jefferson Airplane, and the Flower Children, and the Civil Rights movement, and the Free Speech movement, and a whole lot of people whose eyes were opening up, all protesting the whole absurd paradigm of war and "smashing communism" and putting a price on everything. What on earth were we doing, sending U.S. boys to Southeast Asia to kill peasants in straw hats and sandals who were fighting for their independence--for their CHOICE of governments? What was so great about our own rather empty "consumer society" that we would think we had the right to do this?
Back up one step more, and figure in the JFK assassination in 1963. JFK's youth, and intelligence and humor, and liberalism, were combined with a committed "cold warrior." With his death, that combination ceased to be attractive. The "cold war" became absurd to most young people. It was no longer represented by a stirring and inspiring figure. That representative had been ripped away--leaving the "cold war" quite naked as a war profiteering death machine.
This movement for change grew very, very fast, and very big--and became a profound shift of consciousness that is difficult to describe, it was so multifaceted, and such a big break from the past in so many ways. The no-nukes movement. The environmental movement. The women's movement. The civil rights movement. The movements for equal rights for gays, Lesbians, the handicapped, and other minority groups. The product safety/corporate accountability movement (Ralph Nader). The ecumenical movement within churches and synagogues. It was an astonishing era--of which the Hippies were merely the leading edge (a fundamental questioning of everything having a price--predatory capitalism, consumerism). And it was all-encompassing. It touched nearly everyone at once, in some aspect of their lives. And what it added up to was an overwhelming progressive majority--committed to new ideas of peace and justice.
The right wing was a cauldron of hatred at that time--as it still seems to be. It has never had anything positive to offer. Bush's handlers have tried to give it a positive spin--a sort of Christian "manifest destiny," but that is really old hat (and in truth very negative--a Christian jihad, in effect). The bigots, the war-mongers, the McCarthyites, the sexually repressed, and the have's (property owners, and the rich--so-called "conservatives," who want things to stay the same, because they have it all)--seethed with resentment at this amazing opening of consciousness, and rightwing billionaires formed "think tanks" to defeat it--to reinstitute repression of women; to recreate unthinking "cannon fodder"; to gain iron-fisted control over American culture with media monopolies; to recycle the "demonization" of targeted minorities (then, it was blacks and Catholics--no kidding!--now it's gays); to privatize everything and put a price on it (schools, parks, beaches, medical care, elections); to destroy the liberal base (the prosperous middle and break-even lower classes); to recolonize third world countries with global corporate piracy, and to wipe any "hippie" ideas off the face of the earth.
It started in California with tuition (sold as minor "user fees") in California's then-free university system, under Reagan (and with the tax code re-write, greatly favoring the rich, when he became president). It was under Reagan that homeless people began to haunt our cities. Not since the Great Depression had we seen people "fall through the net" and end up on the streets in such numbers--it almost never happened.
As for war, the Democrats had learned something from Vietnam (it had torn the party asunder), and the Democratic Congress forbade the government to conduct covert wars. Reagan defied this law, and funded death squads in Nicaragua and El Salvador. There were prosecutions for it (including some current Bush regime members), but Reagan got off scott free, probably because of the re-write of the tax code, and the growing divide between Democratic have's and have-not's. The Democrats remained progressive on social issues and on war, but not on economics (concluding, finally, with Clinton and the global "free trade" agreements--outsourcing of millions of jobs, destruction of worker protections and unions, and recolonization of the third world). The Democrats also continued mostly favoring military spending and the war machine, but were more responsible and cost-conscious than either Reagan or Bush I/II (profligate military spenders). (Some "conservatism," huh?)
The rightwing and its war profiteers were determined to stamp out peace and justice, and liberalism, and the awesome consciousness that had arisen in the Sixties, and to bend the U.S. to its will. They've succeeded in crumbling the foundation of that generous, progressive spirit--the economic prosperity of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And with Bush II, they have succeeded in seizing all of the reigns of power, but they have won few hearts and minds.
Let me just give you a few stats: 58% of the American people opposed the Iraq war BEFORE the invasion. I will never forget that number. Feb. '03. Before all the lies were exposed, before the full horror and costs were known. 58%! Across the board in all polls.
That is the legacy of Vietnam--and of the lessons learned from the terrible carnage of that unjust war. And that is the legacy of all of the hippies and the rockers and peace activists and draft dodgers and all the rebels of the Sixties who opposed it, and posited a new idea: peacefulness.
The great majority of Americans automatically distrusted any big war scheme like that--and continue to oppose it today in even greater numbers. (The only exception was a brief dip in the opposition during the actual invasion, with US troops at high risk.)
We just can't get our will enforced. I will get to that in a moment, but first...
63% of the American people oppose torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. May '04.
Not a fearful people, no. A people that sticks to its sense of justice, and ethics and lawfulness, despite relentless fearmongering. 63%. Yet we now have Alberto Gonzales, the torture memo writer, as chief law enforcement officer of the U.S.
Name the issue. The Iraq war. Torture. Social Security. The deficit. Women's rights. The majority of Americans oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 70% range.
They have not defeated the Sixties movement for peace and justice, so they have had to impose their agenda of war and repression upon us. They have had to DISENFRANCHISE the majority--literally, with Bushite companies now counting all the votes using secret, proprietary software. They've corporatized and privatized our elections--for two purposes, war and massive thievery by the rich (injustice).
The rich and the ugly and the greedy and the bigoted couldn't stand it that the majority of Americans wanted peace. And just like the inquisitors and witch-burners before them, they cannot gain legitimate power; they are a minority--they always have been, and they always will be. To have power they must impose it, by violence and by stealth.
They never agreed with the consensus of most Americans on the rights of black citizens, women and others, or on the overwhelming revulsion at the Vietnam war and desire for peace. In their little minds, I think they blame it all on "hippies and drugs"--and are still battling against that Hippie/Digger idea of sharing the wealth, kicking back, enjoying life, taking a mind trip, listening to the Beatles and "doing nothing." It was highly subversive in Jesus' time. It still is.
Can you imagine saying that to Jesus: "Get a job!" (Yeah, Ann Coulter probably would.)
Within that meditative state of "doing nothing"--however you may achieve it--where you are at ease, and at peace, because all around you are sharing whatever they have with you, and you have nothing to worry about--you will not starve, you will not be alone, you will not be homeless--you realize that the need for "enemies" is a sickness of the heart, and that "love thine enemy" are the profoundest words ever spoken.
That is what the rightwing and its war profiteer backers are still fighting--not the Hippies, which were just a brief little flowery thing that wafted away--but Jesus and what he really said. Can't have nukes and a war machine economy with nobody to hate.
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