[Note: This column was written and posted while listening to the Rush Limbaugh program for Thursday September 17, 2009.]
Just as the Sixties were beginning, click here;President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a farewell speech which warned about the emerging power grab from the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. Vietnam was a former French colony know mostly only to Americans who got A's in geography, when he said: "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
On a day when Rush Limbaugh is doing his best to refute the wisdom of the move to scrap plans to build a missile shield in Europe, the lesson of America's war in Vietnam seems to be this: if a long war was good, a state of permanent war is even better.
On September 11, 2001, Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear page 161) wrote: "Make no mistake about it: We are At War now - with somebody - and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
Finally the hawks can relax and not worry that those damn hippies are going to keep singing their peacenik songs until World Peace arrives.
The author of Operation Chaos is asserting that President Obama is promoting the chaos and furor about race that is currently the top topic of conversation. Listening to Rush on Thursday morning, September 17, 2009, it seems like the Freedom Marches never happened.
Reading news reports that President Obama is deciding about sending more troops to Afghanistan, it seems like now more than ever hippies would need to hear some inspiring songs to encourage peace, love, and understanding.
Rush has informed his audience that the racism issue is being used to obscure the fact that Obama is (as el Rushbo wishes) failing.
Sociologists may well mark the week of September 13 - 19, 2009 as the week when the Sixties really ended.
Back in the Sixties, the City of New York urged citizens: "Give a damn!" Now, the Supreme Court seems to be on the verge of pitting large corporations against individuals and assessing it as an even fight. Surely the hippies who wanted to get involved will be smart enough to realize that if "you can't fight city hall," then it's total insanity to try to buck Wall Street. (Wouldn't real hippies use a slogan with a word spelled just s tad different from "buck"?)
Would Mario Savio back Rush's sarcastic remarks about President Obama as an example of Free Speech that had to be defended or would he condemn it?
Aren't any anti-war rallies, these days, more like a hippie reunion than they are an expression of a "youth-quake"?
Rush says that if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan (and Rush knows that he will), then any Democrats who speak out against it are racists.
The news on Wednesday that Mary Travers had passed away makes it obvious that the peacenik movement of hippies and older activists lies in the past. Peace activism must be laid to rest. It brings to mind the title of a Waylon Jennings song: "Living Legends Are a Dying Breed."
It's time for hippies to face the truth: http://www.hippy.com/hippyquotes.htm>;RIP the Sixties.
Joni Mitchel put it this way: "They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had."
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