And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly.
Those first comments by Alito had me shaking my head at what this man was really about. How could he possibly understand what anyone goes through now, when he makes a judgement call like that! In Alito's eyes we are supposed to automatons, parroting what the government hands us. Nothing about those people and their right to free speech and the right to dissent! Nothing about those people and their right to peaceful public organization! Nothing about how these same people were spied upon by the FBI and Nixon.
Plain and simple, nothing about the civil rights of the people of America. How ironic, the week before, the one day we celebrate for the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, that not one Senator took Alito to the mat on this issue!!
Great post Duckman! I also, love the music from those days!
Posted by bbtb at January 16, 2006 05:25 PMGreen Day has been getting me through lately.
Green Day, American Idiot, Holiday
Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame
The shame
The ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key
To a hymn called "Faith and Misery"
And bleed, the company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time
Another protestor has crossed the line
To find, the money's on the other side
Can I get another Amen? (Amen!)
There's a flag wrapped around a score of men
A gag, a plastic bag on a monument
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday
"The representative from California has the floor"
Zieg Heil to the president gasman
Bombs away is your punishment
Pulverize the Eiffel towers
Who criticize your government
Bang bang goes the broken glass and
Kill all the fags that don't agree
Trials by fire, setting fire
Is not a way that's meant for me
Just cause, just cause, because we're outlaws yeah!
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
This is our lives on holiday
Excellent post, Duckman! I used to perfrom many of those songs when I was still a working musician, and you've made want to pull that CD out and play it tonight.
Thanks for the memories!
Posted by pessimist at January 16, 2006 05:57 PMChicago?
I have a friend of 40+ years playing in Chicago. That would be Bill Champlin, double-Grammy winner and Chicago keyboard player.
I have had the honor of roadying for Bill's original band, the Sons of Champlin, since 1968. In that time I have missed only four performances. Because of Bill's schedule the Sons only get to play a dozen or so shows a year, but it is the last of the original SF rock bands from the '60s that plays regularly.
Check out the Sons' new CD, "Hip Li'l Dreams."
Posted by Repack Rider at January 16, 2006 06:37 PMYes, it freaked me out the day I realized that all of this is about people in their 50s and 60s who are still pissed off because a bunch of teenagers got a little out of hand once.
If I was still that stuck, I'd be a lesbian separatist because teenage guys were such idiots.
So, being in the GOP when you're over 50 is about never having grown up. Ironic, isn't it?
Posted by Avedon at January 16, 2006 06:56 PMAmerican Idiot is the best album in years, and the most relevant album in decades. Green Day nailed the reich wing and their bullshit. BTW, their live concert in support of this album is spectacular.
Feel free to call me Saint Jimmy. I'm your zip gun on parade, bitches.
Posted by God Of War at January 16, 2006 07:07 PMSo, being in the GOP when you're over 50 is about never having grown up. Ironic, isn't it?
It's how they are getting their revenge now, for us getting all the ladies then!
Sons of Champlin, saw them many times on the lower bill of shows at Winterland and many other places in the Bay area. I miss the great shows, 3 or more great headliners and always less than 10 bucks.
How my innocence has been lost in the last 30 years!
Sons of Champlin, saw them many times on the lower bill of shows at Winterland and many other places in the Bay area.
If you're still in the Bay Area, we have some shows coming up in March. Check out sonsofchamplin.com for the schedule.
If you come to a show, say hello to the roadie with the beard.
Posted by Repack Rider at January 16, 2006 07:17 PMI'm in the Phoenix area now, couldn't afford the cost of living in Cali. I miss CA, my friends and family immensely. I'll check out the site though.
Posted by bbtb at January 16, 2006 08:03 PMThanks Duckman. You put me back in the 60's. A time when the world seemed to be coming apart. Watching our police beat people in the streets of Chicago. Watching four students at Kent State being shot to death, and not believing what we were seeing with our own eyes. Protest marches, burning ROTC buildings on campuses, dumping blood on the steps of those Corporations funding the War, and the nightly visuals of people dying.
"Expressions of protest across the country took every conceivable form and were carried out under every conceivable banner, slogan and cry. There were strikes, boycotts, and shutdowns; there were marches, rallies, and campuswide convocations; there were flag-lowerings, black armbands, memorial services, vigils, and symbolic funerals; there were special seminars, teach-ins, workshops, and research projects. There were students talking to residents in their homes and where they worked, and there were invitations to the public to come to the campus to talk".
"For hundreds of thousands, even millions, of students, faculty, and staff at more than half of the nations colleges, 'business-as-usual became unthinkable.
http://www.vietnamwar.com/politicalprotests.htm
There were those, like Alito, who never understood anything about why people were protesting. It wasn't all about the War, it was about the Establishment. It was about people like Alito. He was the enemy, and 40 years later, he is still the enemy.
Posted by Judith at January 16, 2006 08:06 PMyou should have listened to Everybody knows this is nowhere
that's all i'm saying
How sweet you put it Judith! I have so much trouble holding back my anger I can't think straight. I get tangential, not wanting to face the reality of the discourse.
Posted by bbtb at January 16, 2006 08:42 PMIf Alito, at 50, is complaining about protestors in college, he's talking about the 70's! Methinks his rhetoric is for the righties since it makes no sense otherwise. I was a couple of years ahead of the hippies, but with them in spirit. If you missed it, it was like a glorious fireworks of hope. If you lived thru the 40s and 50s, the 60's was like being born again with the sun shining. No, I'm not tokin'.
I remember the explosion in the Saigon hotel in '65 because one of our guys was there and called home. That was when I became against the war. When LBJ spoke to a fund-raiser at Century City Hotel and the cops beat up the protestors, I felt like they had beaten me. It's difficult to explain now, but it was like a blow to me and everyone I knew. Suddenly it was us against them. And the music was everywhere. Live and real and it slapped you in the face. The Troubadour, The Golden Bear, the Ash Grove (original), the Warehouse, The Lighthouse, McCabes......they were all real and funky. Peter, Paul & Mary were at the Hollywood Bowl, but Kris and Hoyt and Ramblin'Jack were at the Ash Grove and the Troub. I can't imagine going to a concert with 100,000 people.....that's just a mob.
If you went to the Hollywood Bowl (tickets were affordable then) to see Simon & Garfunkel or PP&M, you could get a contact high just sitting in the audience.
And then they destroyed the Democratic Party and it never recovered. It may never recover. Al Gore, bless his heart, is making an attempt, about 6 years too late. Jeez it's nice to reminisce, things were so much better then. It's worse than that now.
Posted by fallinglady at January 16, 2006 08:48 PMBbtb, Duckman's article actually made me cry, because it all came back to me. He made me realize that nothing has changed and we are back where we were, still fighting the bastards. I get just as angry (read my post about the animals beating up on the homeless).
Posted by Judith at January 16, 2006 08:54 PMAh, But we were so much older then
We're younger than that now!
Fallinglady, and some of the best music and lyrics ever written were produced then. I still love protest songs and folk music. To this day, I still listen to Pete Seeger, Joan Biaz, and Bob Dylan.
"you could get a contact high just sitting in the audience."
As a pot smoker in those days, contact highs were easy to get just about anywhere you went. :)
"If Alito, at 50, is complaining about protestors in college, he's talking about the 70's! Methinks his rhetoric is for the righties since it makes no sense otherwise."
I had the same thought.
Posted by Judith at January 16, 2006 09:07 PMPessimist, good line.
Posted by Judith at January 16, 2006 09:09 PMI'm just catching up on the day of posts. I was in oral surgery this morning and it went into the afternoon. All is well, after a nap, not as bad as I thought.
I just posted on the same thread. What a fucking shame. Insane, senseless acts of violence. But leave it to us liberals to feel empathy for the poor soul. Not a Neo-Con in the bunch posting outrage!!
Posted by bbtb at January 16, 2006 09:09 PMAnd then they destroyed the Democratic Party and it never recovered.
The Chicago convention of 1968 was where the split became permanent. The new deal coalition died that week and along with it died the "good deed" ethos of the FDR era and the best chance America had to weather the rough seas of the 1970's and beyond. It's so ironic that the "good deed' mentality fostered in the WPA and other 1930's projects which had fed a hungry nation and led to having a strong, nourished generation able to defeat Nazism would later be on autopilet and under the guise of "protecting freedom' in Vietnam lead to an unwinnable war that would fragment what had once been solid.
Many of us are too young to have been a part of the political 60's such as myself, but when I hear people like Alito, I think of that scene from the movie "Field of Dreams" where the hero's wife tells the conservative woman "you never had a 60's, you had two 50's then went straight to the 70's."
And this is the point of where we are now. We have the outsiders of the 60's awakening and their younger fellow travelers like Ann Coulter trying to impose a new ethos on America. It's well funded as many in the elete have come to believe that their plutocrat-theocrat coalition has a chance to hold power permanently. They've built upon a foundation of lies about the competence and honesty of their leaders that is continually being expose by events like Katrina and the perscription drug plan. And people are noticing, just look at the polls.
And then they destroyed the Democratic Party and it never recovered. It may never recover... Jeez it's nice to reminisce, things were so much better then. It's worse than that now.
Time doesn't go backwards but the future is not preordained. There will come a time and soon, when America is once again split 2/3rds progressive and 1/3rd regressive. The chance to build a new "good deeds" coalition that will be needed to takle issues like devoloping non carbon burning fuels to combat global warming and to re-orent globalization away from being a race to the bottom but rather a tide that will raise all boats. I'm not going to say that Gore has all the answers, though he has spoken and written on them before, but he is a good leader and there are other good leaders like Edwards and Wesley Clark who can help lead the way. America is going into a time of crises, we will need wise, good leaders but a better tommorrow is possible for America and the world.
Posted by rlp at January 16, 2006 09:32 PM"Not a Neo-Con in the bunch posting outrage!!"
Bbtb, by god you're right. Very telling and confirming isn't it.
Posted by Judith at January 16, 2006 09:45 PMAmerica is going into a time of crises, we will need wise, good leaders but a better tommorrow is possible for America and the world.
Those leaders better get here soon - the sun is starting to rise on that new day!
Judith
I can't take credit for that line. It's adapted from a Bob Dylan tune the Byrds did.
Posted by pessimist at January 17, 2006 01:28 AMRad Dude!
I can dig it! Yep, me think that you've nailed what the feelings of a good number of us, "children of the flower generation", have today.
No doubt, I wish that my daughters and grandkids could sense some of the vibes one got down one’s spine when a new anti war protest erupted because “that” war was also a bloody fiasco without rhyme or reason. Learning of riots because no one seemed to want to listen to some hard truths, but since keeping quiet didn’t sit too well with what the flower-crowd felt was important to tell, to hell with the labels of damn liberals or damn long haired hippies; coming to terms with the fact that one was having some serious anti-establishment notions because the stagnant establishment seemed unwilling to heed the call of the every day people; and those songs… Yep, the myriad of stirring songs and the countless number of plucky singers who didn’t seem to care a hoot about any other thing than to have the opportunity to say their say and, with it, also the say of many of us while the spine vibes forced us to keep on fighting for the only thing that made any sense—justice on earth for one and all—and the call to make love not war was the ongoing mantra.
Thanks for the memories Duckman. See ya on the flipside!
Paz
Feel free to call me Saint Jimmy. I'm your zip gun on parade, bitches.
Tell me Jimmy I won't feel a thing,
So give me Novacaine
Feel free to call me Saint Jimmy. I'm your zip gun on parade, bitches.
Tell me Jimmy I won't feel a thing,
So give me Novacaine
Posted by phidipides at January 17, 2006 05:17 AM
*****
I wonder how whatsername has been...
Posted by God Of War at January 17, 2006 05:51 AMPessimist, I know, but still a good line. :)
Posted by Judith at January 17, 2006 07:04 AMI mean, isn't that what Jesus would say, make love, not war?
Damn gop sphincter's!
Posted by Duckman GR at January 17, 2006 09:04 AMThose leaders better get here soon - the sun is starting to rise on that new day!
The sun cannot rise until its appointed time. The idiot king and his pretenders still occupy the white house. The dark night will not end until there is a true president.
Posted by rlp at January 17, 2006 10:55 AMItalics="Well, it's long past time we settled this mess. Are we decent, good Americans, or lust filled savages slavering at the prospect of riches and power, our national DNA propagated at swordpoint, or by the strength of our example?"
Duckman, you've asked the fundamental question that has been engaging western philosophers for the last 2,300 years or so. The answer seems to be that we are both.
Our current tribulations are the third time in just me lifetime that we have fought the same battles using the same ideas and the same lyrics (i.e. Vietnam in the late 60s and early 70s, Nicaragua and El Salvador in the mid 80s and now Iraq at the turn of this new century). In one sense it is really depressing that, as George Santayana suggested, we are condemned to repeat our mistakes because we have not learned from the past. But as we look back over the longer span of human history we can see that humans do, oh so gradually, learn from our mistakes. And that is the core struggle we humans must fight or surrender to the Dylan Thomas'(?) 'dying of the light.'
In the natural world their are no moral, ethical, intellectual questions. There is only survival and whatever furthers survival. And what passes on an individual's genes in nature is 'right.'
But humans somehow evolved to ask the questions nature doesn't. In the natural world, for example, it is all 'right' for the winner to kill another of its own species. But man invented this idea of morality (i.e. Thou shalt not kill) which is always in tension with the natural world. So we are left eternally fighting the battle between civilization and nature.
There will always be human beings who believe that winning, that survival, makes an action right. But those of us who stand upon the shoulders, who stand upon the achievements, of all those who came before us can see that in several thousands of years man's acceptance of the limitations placed on action by civilization have produced more good for more humans than billions of years of natural evolution. And so we are compelled to advance civilzation against Kipling's 'cursed Egyptian night' even when we must fight the same battles over and over until the lessons are learned.
Or so it seems to me.
Careful about that 'billions of years' thing, Paul! Everyone 'knows' that the entire universe was created over a seven day span in 4004 BC!
You make some excellent points about how mankind slowly learns lessons, but I have to diverge from your premise. The learning that seems to be taking place has to do with technological advances more than social ones.
With every war there is a leap forward in the advancement of technology with an eye toward gaining a new advantage to make killing the enemy easier and less costly, or to counter the advanced technology of an enemy in order to make being killed less likely, thus making any defeat at the hands of said enemy more costly for them.
Someday, maybe more people will be pondering your "civilization versus nature' dichotomy and come up with the same observation you have about civilization. I believe that the areas of the world that suffered so heavily during WWII are already on that path. All the rest of us have to do is catch up.
Posted by pessimist at January 17, 2006 12:43 PM