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In fact all those good things have went very. very bad.
The civil rights movement seems to not have worked out very well...this country is racially polarized.
The womens rights and equal pay? Womens pay is still not equal. But don't tell them it's because they chase useless degrees.
The environmental movement..remember all those DON'T LITTER commercials and PSA's? Well they have turned into a special interest propaganda fest of THE WORLD IS GOING TO MELT IF YOU DON'T GIVE GREEN INDUSTRIES A MONOPOLY ON ENERGY NOW!!
Questioning the government has led us to the point where people just remain apathetic. What's worse is there is much more awareness as there was. The rape over of this country is happening in front of our face. The government doesn't even hide it anymore. To make it worse, this generation doesn't care that they are being watched and data mined perpetually. What's the point of talking the talk of counterculture if you are going to be pro-establishment?
Civil Rights: We're not there yet, by a longshot, but we don't have segregated lunch counters and the like any more. People of all races can go to the same schools. ETC.
Women's rights? Women doctors, lawyers, and engineers were rare. There were actually probably more women med students in the 60s/70s than women engineering students. Again, we're not there by a longshot, but we've come a long way, baby. And get off this crap about "chasing useless degrees". These degrees are no more useless than the "business" degrees the football players at my D1 school took when I was a student there in the 60s/70s. My husband's elite college did not even admit women until about 1970.
We've made progress in the environment, too. I can remember when Lake Erie was too filthy to swim in. Just one example.
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Originally Posted by mb1547
Cocaine was the drug of choice in the late 1970s, and the worst part is that it was sold to kids as being perfectly safe and not addictive.
It sure was. I can remember a drug counselor once saying that the major side effect of cocaine was "poverty", like there were no physical/mental side effects.
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Originally Posted by lerner
Today's hipsters spend a lot less time calling returning veterans 'baby killers'.
That was a crying shame and it's good it's changed. I do think some of this "support our troops" stuff is over the top, though. I"ll support the individuals who were sent to Afghanistan and before that, Iraq as well, but I'll be dipped if I'll support the govt. decision that sent them there.
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Originally Posted by Taratova
Hippies wore faded jeans , shirts clothes , were against capitalism,yet they went to the best schools, were radical and odd , were anti-american, yet they went to the best schools. They became the capitalists , yet pretended not to be, always leaned left , like to buy foreign vehicles, smoked pot and grew long hair. Today they are the rich democrats who use every capitalist tool they can and are against anything conservative or preserving old school ideas that worked for the country and the people.
Oh, there were "hippies" at just about every school in the country back in the late 60s/early 70s. I went to a state university and later lived in another state university town, lots of hippies in both places. DH went to an elite private college and they didn't really have much of a hippie movement, though they did have an anti-Vietnam movement.
There are people taking to the streets and committing violence over abstract issues as we read this...
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Originally Posted by Hot_Handz
In Egypt
That's just it--if you live in Egypt, the repressive government there isn't an abstract issue--it's their daily reality. That's why they're protesting. Americans take to the streets if their basic rights are abridged too--Vietnam (the draft) and the civil rights movements are major examples.
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Originally Posted by Seabass Inna Bun
I don't pay much attention to the kids these days, and I wasn't around in those days, but hipsters strike me as having more in common with the mods than the hippies. The hippy thing was countercultural, it was a reaction to what seems to me to have been a pretty stifling society; the 1950's. Hipsters are just following some fashion. If something other than skinny jeans and geeky glasses were in style, they'd wear that. I can't really see them shoulder-to-shoulder with the Angels at Altamont, they might get their shoes dirty.
I don't know--I think some of what's going on with them is push back against the Yee-Haw anti-intellectualism of the last couple of decades. Is it as compelling as the Vietnam war protests? No. It's a different generation with different issues, but the issues are still there. The big difference to me is that they don't work for any kind of change. It's almost like they believe that their personal statement is enough. I don't know why hipsters would upset anyone though--they're completely harmless.
My dad was(is) a hippie. He was 19, back in 1969 in California...still to this day he was long hair (gray now) and won't wear a tie, plays guitar, grows and smokes his own weed. Married a mexican girl (mom) and had me while living in a VW van, where we traveled around to hippie communes.
To me that was what hippies were about: non-conformity, anarchy, anti-war, willing to starve while seeking other like minded people to protest the war. Later it became about the music and getting laid.
I don't think hipsters really have much in common. Hipsters aren't really a movement, they are just trying not be mainstream.
What do you mean, "it's very trivial?" I was part of that generation, and I have family and friends who went to Vietnam. I lived through it. My husband had a high draft lottery number (and he had a college deferment before that) so fortunately they ended the war before he had to go. It wasn't trivial to the kids who were dragged to fight in a war that made no sense, that they didn't support, that it became more obvious by the day that we would never win, and where they saw their friends go home in body bags or crippled for life. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Kids today serve BY CHOICE. There are no protests because if you go, its because you signed up. People in the 60s and 70s protested our involvement in Vietnam because they didn't want to die (or see their friends and family die) for something they didn't support or believe in.
There's a disconnect here. You're talking about how people rallied because they didn't like people being drafted and sent to war That makes sense. What didn't make sense was being so reviled when we came home. Where was the support then? I certainly didn't feel any.
There's a disconnect here. You're talking about how people rallied because they didn't like people being drafted and sent to war That makes sense. What didn't make sense was being so reviled when we came home. Where was the support then? I certainly didn't feel any.
You weren't.
The VietNam Vets Against the War was big on most college campuses.
I don't know of people being reviled.
Anecdotes don't count and they have mostly been debunked.
Were we against the war, hell yes.
Were we ticked that 55,000 US kids were killed, absolutely.
Tell me what the hippies did to the vets?
And tell me how many vets became hippies.
There's a disconnect here. You're talking about how people rallied because they didn't like people being drafted and sent to war That makes sense. What didn't make sense was being so reviled when we came home. Where was the support then? I certainly didn't feel any.
The way we treated soldiers returning home from Vietnam was disgraceful. People were forced to go, and then they were attacked for going, but I"m not sure it was all by the hippies. I think broad public coverage of atrocities like the My Lai Massacre had something to do with it--that in the minds of some, every soldier unfairly got lumped together as "baby killers" Tensions and emotions were so high that everyone in a uniform became a symbol of the war for some. It was wrong, and I'm so sorry that you went through that. One of my brothers served in Vietnam and he still struggles with dealing with his experiences there.
I think cheilgirl is wrong--some soldiers did have a hard time of it when they came home--but she's right that vets against the war chapters were really active on college campuses and in the antiwar movement. It was a mixed bag. One of the hardest things for my brother was dealing with the reaction of older vets when he came out (after he got out) as being against the war. Some of the older WWII and Korea vets understood, and some thought he was a traitor for not defending the country, right or wrong.
The way we treated soldiers returning home from Vietnam was disgraceful.
The way Viet Nam vets were treated was an embarrassment to the country.
Amnesty to those who refused to be drafted was a real kick in the face to those who served.
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