The only issue I have with hippies is that they turned into neolib Boomers (for the most part).
Right. The question I'm interested in is why. It seems to have happened over only around 10 years. I feel like their convictions must have been founded on pretty shaky ground. Their ideology must not have been built on anything solid or incorruptible. I'm inclined to think that they were probably more self-absorbed than the mythology would indicate, and this eventually grew into the "me" decade. I think many of them had issues with unions (it comes up often in books from and about the period) which had its start in the anti-war movement (hippies vs. hardhatts), but ended up becoming a key feature of conservative politics. I have personally heard old hippies cast aspersions on unions (no, not my parents; my parents were not hippies, and they were the first people I heard say anything positive about unions); so I'm convinced there's something here.
Student activism played a huge role in ending the war and protest movements helped shift public policy in civil rights, women's rights, education.. that's a fact.
One question motivating my concerns is that student activism in the aughts was nothing like it was in the 60s; it was much smaller and weaker. I once believed it was because of some fault in our generation, who couldn't face the struggles of the day the way our mighty forefathers and foremothers did, and who simply chose instead to navigate life in a carefree manner. I don't think that anymore.
There is an important difference: there was no draft in the aughts. This will reduce the involvement of people significantly. It makes sense that people would rather pound Natty Ice and listen to Soulja Boy. At least, it makes as much sense as listening to Soulja Boy can make (Insert disclaimer about how I like rap music, just not Soulja Boy). Conversely, in the 60s, it wasn't simply because of some sense of outrage at what the government was doing to people in some far off land; there was a real concern that the war would affect their lives, because it actually could.
In the aughts, the occasional fear might be expressed that they were going to bring the draft back. This never happened. I assume, if it was ever on the table, that it was determined that this would make things too difficult to manage, perhaps strengthening the anti-war movement to a risky extent.
Aside: I watched the movie version of M*A*S*H once (I've only seen an episode or two of the television series), expecting to see this great antiwar comedy, and I found myself extremely underwhelmed. First, I think I don't like Robert Altman as a filmmaker, and find his movies boring and hard to follow, full of a bunch of mumbling characters coming in and out of focus. Second, the movie's politics are not that great, to be charitable with it. I think the ultimate source of the disconnect for me is that the movie doesn't make very many grand statements or indictments of war. There's some gore at the beginning which Slavoj Zizek (whom I like) thinks is making some kind of great statements as to the horrors of the conflict, but the movie adaptation of Catch-22 does this much better. In this film, it didn't register at all. It would be more accurate to say that the movie is against the draft, not the war. I don't think we're supposed to care if Frank Burns or Margaret gets killed by the North Korean forces. We are meant to feel bad for these doctors who don't want to be there and didn't sign up for any of this, and cheer on all their escapades, most of which I didn't find very charming. We don't get a Korean perspective or even any characters except for this one Korean boy that Hawkeye trains to be his personal bartender. (Many things about this movie don't hold up, and this movie has aged worse than a lot of films from decades prior; the best way to get this movie to work for me is if you remade it in the spirit of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, with Hawkeye and co being like Mac, Charlie, Dennis, etc.)
(Short version of the aside: The
movie version of M*A*S*H sucks; Mike Nichols' Catch-22 is much better)
I love the music of the era, and I think the hippies did some great things, but there should be more attention paid to their flaws and failings.
This is perhaps more about the counterculture (although it may work on a more metaphorical level), but I wanted to put in a clip from Beyond the Black Rainbow, but it's not safe for work so it shouldn't go here. I suppose you're better off watching the whole movie, anyway. So, I'll include this, because it's beautifully written, and encapsulates the same basic idea:
Hunter S. Thompson said:
That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
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