Old White Folk Story

[scarletwoman]

50. LOVE your post!

I am not, however, opposed to the Rolling Stones going on tour.

That totally cracked me up!

I'm a white woman, I was born in 1949 - I think that maybe qualifies me as old. Although I'm certainly not as old as my 87-year old dad, a WWII veteran who has been a dedicated union man liberal all his life and who started discussing politics with me while I was still in grade school. We still discuss politics constantly, and share our dismay and disgust in the long degeneration of our country over the decades.

My dad was a champion of Civil Rights for as long as I can remember. He worked two jobs throughout most of childhood, and at one his jobs he became friends with a really wonderful guy - Russ LaVelle - who was a black man with kids around the same age as my younger sister and me. So we used to have Russ's family over for dinners and drinks and even some holidays back in the early 50s. It wasn't until many, many years later that it occurred to me that we never went to their home - but thinking about how it must have been for them in the 50s, I can understand why that would be so.

The LaVelle family moved to California a couple years later, but Russ and my dad continued to correspond and send family snapshots to each other for years afterward. Theirs was a genuine friendship.

So, came the 60s it was a given that I would be out marching for Civil Rights. And then marching against the Vietnam war, and then becoming increasingly radicalized as my political consciousness - nurtured throughout my childhood by all the discussions with my dad - became more and more expanded and aware of the corruption of the power structure of the Ruling Class.

While I've grown past the fantasies of immanent "revolution" that those like me shared in the 60s, I've never lost my radical viewpoint about the power structure.

And THAT, I think is the rub. I honestly think that some of seeming "ageism" that has lately cropped up, is really nothing more than another species of the hippie punching that's proven to be popular among certain younger DUers. There are old DUers like me - "old" in both the sense of our ages, and "old" in how long we've been on DU - who simply do not comply with certain modes of framing issues as presented by certain self-proclaimed "liberals".

One thing all these years on DU has taught me, I will never call myself a "liberal" again. It's become a thoroughly bastardized term - and considering all those who claim that label, it ultimately means nothing. I am an old radical.

OLD. RADICAL. I simply am not dazzled by bullshit.