The Road Not Taken: the 60's Generation's Missed Opportunity

Because we were products of the Golden Age, the perception was that we had it all. We were considered spoiled.

You are absolutely correct. The world could have changed for the better. But, then on the other hand, it did. Women are working in practically all fields at the highest levels. African Americans who were trapped in poverty are now in the middle class. It's not perfect. There are still oppressed women. There are still poor African Americans. But, it is much better than it was before the civil rights movement.

On the subject of peace. It took way too long for Nixon to bring home the troops. The peace movement did not create the change that it had the potential to do.

Things are still better today than they were. George W. Bush will be gone in two years.

THANK GOD HE WILL BE GONE IN TWO YEARS.. THIS COUNTRY CAN'T AFFORD MORE OF HIM AT ALL UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE STUCK FOR TWO YEARS...
I WONDER WHERE THE WORLD WOULD BE TODAY IF JOHN KENNEDY HAD REMAINED IN OFFICE?! HE WAS AGAINST VIETNAM AND HAD NO INTENTION OF GOING INTO IT, I THINK THAT IS WHERE THIS COUNTRY MADE IT'S BIGGEST MISTAKES....

The protesters were deliberately undone.

Here is part of a very long comment on an article by Today's Illusion.
This remark was posted by High Flying Spider Woman Liz Rice-Sosne

Partway through the long comment. . . came this. . .

FBI and CIA counter-intelligence programs to disrupt and destroy progressive movements in the 1960s and 70s; systematic police brutality against Chicano/as, Blacks, Native Americans, and Puerto Ricans.
and - - - - - -
further into the comment, this. . .
. . . During the 1960s and 1970s ruling elites in the United States-and throughout the West-were challenged with militant protest from a wide cross-section of the public: workers, Native Americans, ;Blacks, women, poor people, students, Chicanos, Asian Americans, gays, environmentalists. The antiwar movement shook the bipartisan foreign policy consensus which was grounded in the Cold War and U.S. supremacy. Pressure mounted for a more equitable and democratic political, economic, and social system.
- Protest was nonviolent and violent, organized and spontaneous, short-lived and enduring. Hundreds of thousands of people marched on Washington, a wave of riots hit major cities and universities were shut down. The ruling class response was often brutal. Protesters were beaten and jailed, leaders were murdered. Students, white and Black, were shot down at Kent State and Jackson State. Police brutality was widespread, especially in minority communities. The FBI escalated its counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) against Black, Native American, and Puerto Rican liberation struggles; the New Left; the antiwar movement; and the Women's movement. The CIA carried out a covert action campaign within the U.S. and abroad against U.S. citizens assumed to be involved in antiwar activity known as Operation M HCHAOS (MH standing for matters related to internal U.S. security and CHAOS signifying its goal of infiltrating and destroying anti-war groups).
-In 1975 the Trilateral Commission released its book-length study, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. Noam Chomsky best summarizes the theme: "Trilateral's RX for Crisis: Governability Yes. Democracy NO."
- The 1960s are the point of departure for the trilateral analysis. J Samuel Huntington, author of the chapter on the United States, describes this period as the "decade of democratic surge and of the reassertion of democratic egalitarianism." What must follow, as the trilateralists see it, is the reassertion of elite rule and decades of public apathy. Thus, domestic items on the trilateral agenda include: reducing the expectations of the poor and middle class, increasing presidential authority, strengthening business-government cooperation in economic planning, stricter press self-regulation and government oversight, and pacification of rank and file labor... More followed.

The movement did not fade away into selfishness, it was murdered, however,
Those same hippies did become the yuppies of the 1980s, and now many of them are conservative, religious members of the Republican Party, that is what is a mystery to me.

So what do we need a new movement?

Aging boomer liberals for peace and individual rights?

I agree with Joe, we did manage to squeeze out some progress for individuals and entire groups.

We could do it again, our children are grown, we are not lost in our careers.

Yes, Cena, I share the same disappointment about how many of my friends became conservatives. It never bothered me when they talked about getting the government off our backs, reducing the size of government, watching the pocketbooks, etc. etc. Then, suddenly, women who were assertive became the enemy (even amongst gay rights advocates). And, gays and lesbians were considered a problem. Affirmative action was an imposition. And, the perceptions continued to get uglier and uglier.

I think that the tide is changing again. You are absolutely correct when you say it's not over. We are not dead yet.

I agree with High Flying Spider Woman Liz Rice-Sosne. I believe that each of us can and do make a difference everyday. The question is... what direction do we choose to make a difference in?

Well, yes I know they infiltrated various groups in order to distract and destroy them, and yes I know that each of us individually can do things to make the world better, but there was a much different feel to it all back then -- like anything was possible and a sense of community that I have never felt since then -- and I live in a State which is probably the most community oriented in the country. Perhaps it was just youth, perhaps I am hit by nostalgia -- don't know. We have in Vermont probably the largest per capita percentage of Viet Nam Vets and Middle-aged hippies as anywhere -- and we have created a culture here somewhat better than in the rest of the country, but its still not the same. I have my own opinions as to what may have gone wrong -- the draft ended before we could achieve critical mass (same may happen now if the Democrats take over one or more houses of Congress before Bush does even more damage), perhaps when we couldn't sustain our community we looked for other communities and wound up in the communities being created by the fundamentalists (don't know where the Jesus Freaks went), perhaps it is because so many people either went to jail because of drugs or wound up in treatment centers. I don't know -- but some how we need to get something similar back and it is going to have to be a group effort, because the opposition is organized and individual actions are not going to be sufficient.

It was probably all the drugs that make you think that. Sounds like you are still having flashes

Just Joe, could be! But I don't think so. Look at the search for community that seems to be pulling people in whether it be certain fundamentalist groups, the gay/lesbian communities -- you can see the lingering concepts of the 60/70's.

Interesting point of view.