16-08-2013, 03:39 PM
Tracy Riddle Wrote:Nice post, Jim. I think something had gone seriously wrong by late 1969, when at the Altamont festival, 300,000 hippies let themselves be terrorized by a few dozen Hell's Angels. Marty Balin got punched out by one of them. The rest of the band stands around like sheep while a few wolves roam around doing whatever they like. The entire "Gimme Shelter" film is so depressing. The Grateful Dead are like, "Oh bummer, Marty got punched out. That's not cool."
Mick Jagger is prancing around on stage while one Angel watches as though he wants to smash Mick's face in. I think bad acid had something to do with it, but there was a general malaise and passivity at work. How were they going to change the world if they couldn't stop a handful of Nazi thugs from pushing them around? I won't get into Meredith Hunter's death, because there's a lot of controversy about whether he was pointing the gun at the stage and was responsible for his own death. I don't know, but the Angels' behavior was pretty bad before that happened.
Seems like if the counter cultural movement was passive there never would have been a move away from the Einsenhower conformity. Just cause somebody is buzzed and laid back at a concert doesn't mean that they are like that every waking minute.
There was push back by the hippies. The anti war movement was push back. Chris Hedges routinely talks about how Kissinger admits in his autobiography that the Nixon admin was terrified of the anti war movement. Hedges often ends his speeches by saying that is the model of how you want the government to feel towards the people.
So yeah there was some passivity involved and some of it was probably due to the drugs.
But they weren't just being walked on like they were a carpet. Doesn't seem like the elites are frightened of the population at all today. If i had to pick out a time when people were abused and walked on Id say that that time is now more than back then.