A Global Ban on Left-Wing Politics

[Scootaloo]

25. By point...

There was that whole sexual revolution thing, and women's rights, for instance. I think there were some hippies involved in that.

Certainly there were. 'Course, that movement has some roots far deeper than those participants, as you surely know. Saying women's rights is a hippy thing is sort of like saying that gay rights is an Obama thing.

And, of course, they were part of the antiwar movement. That may not have been an immediate success, but that, and the results of the war itself, certainly chastened our imperial impulses for a few years.

Not really. We were still involved in Laos and Cambodia. Our money kept getting funneled to dictators in South Korea, Indonesia, and the Phillippines to "contain the commies." At the same time we were arming and armoring Shah Reza in Iran against his own people, while we were fomenting a right-wing insurrection in Afghanistan (that was under Carter, the peacenick do-gooder). And hten of course our attempt to retake Iran, then our cozying up to Iraq (Carter again, at least initially) in order to get a lot of Iranians dead... Of course I'm sure you already know the catalogue of Reagan's wars. So i guess it comes down to how long you define "a few years," because there...really wasn't a break between fleeing Hanoi and these others.

Any lag in the fighting came from the double impact of having lost a war against a peasant army and a severe drain on the war chest. Protestors, hippy and otherwise, had been protesting Vietnam for almost a decade, to no impact. I see "we made the war end!" the same way I see the right's accusation that "the left cost us the war!" - both sides are simply unable to accept that the Vietnamese won, and instead try to make domestic Americans the deciding factor of the war's outcome.

And they certainly played a role in the slow-moving breakdown of the drug prohibition consensus.

As nonviolent drug incarceration rates have skyrocketed , with ever-harsher laws seeming to always be popular. congratulations on sort of almost legalizing marijuana in two states, that's... something, sure. Wake me when I can buy coke to make old-timey coca cola without getting a nightstick up my ass, okay?

As for the labor unions, their main interactions with hippies seemed to consist of beating them up.

Yeah? That sucks. Know what else sucks? Wage stagnation and constant erosion of rights that have ground 80% of Americans into poverty, or near-poverty, no matter how hard they work.

I really don't understand your need to denigrate an entire generation. Seems, uh, classless.

It becomes tiresome to see people who accomplished so little that they are by habit compelled to steal credit from others for themselves, demanding that people praise them for having existed in the 60's. Congratulations hippies, you were right about stuff, do you want a fucking dog biscuit? 'Cause just 'being right' doesn't accomplish either jack nor shit.