Dustin' it off

Excellent comment to MaxSpeaks' Max in a posting on TPM, My Left Fanny ... big brush up over dissin' '60's activisim. I might pay for it but I had my say here.

On January 16, 2007 - 2:35am TonyForesta said:
The leftright speak is irrelevent. In free societies the pendulem swings back and forth in mechanical ways.
The hippies did change the world, and America, and anyone pretending to deny that fact, or hating that period or those who fought those battles is either pathologically partisan or simply not informed.
These were real battles, (civil rights, womens rights, labor rights, youth rights, ending the Viet Nam war et al.), fought in real streets, with the shedding of real blood, and the loss of real lives, and the changing of real laws and policies, - quite unlike the somnabulance and catastrophic apathy of the current and most recent generationa who are obdurately insulated and removed, detached from, and ignorant of any real issue or concern or crisis confronting all human beings in this wild and violent moment, that it is much easier to simply TALK, and WATCH the world disintegrate around us, and pretend things will somehow get better, or that there is nothing anyone can do, and other such nihilistic defeatist gibberish and pathetic apathy. The hippies and the 60's generation stood up!!
They took it to the street, they shut down campuses, they organized movements that bled into, and were beautifully expressed in music, art, theater, and literature, and they had the courage, and the will, and the conviction, and the tenacity to face the brutality of the state, and the clubs and bullets of the police state, and the viscious sliming of the socalled intelligencia in the socalled media, - and they fought, and they struggled, and they won these battles.
The tragedy, and the failure of the old left is that pendulumn swang back again, and the young grew old, and America prospered, ended Viet Nam, avoided war or major combat operations, and basically got fat and rich and somnabulant.
Just as Rome and all the great empires eventually decayed and rotted from within and the sons daughters of hero's and champions wore the tattered masks of hero's and preached the gospels of forgotten religions, - the same decay and rot infects our society, of realworld reality series, infotainment, videogame dangerously detached youth.
The world is on fire and crumbling around us, and today's generation is focued on the empty shallow numbnoneness of surreality as reality, and realworld FAKERY, APATHY, SOMNABULANCE, and NARCICISM.
Our government pervets, betrays, and dismembers the core principle that formally defined America, - and the current generation is focused on the OC, MTV, MY SPACE, or MY FACE, and tragically apathetic. Worse, this generation has no real courage. Courage, honor, honesty, integrity, are lost and forgotten notions to this generation who is rabidly focused on getting some, and looking cool doing it.
Slime the hippies all you want, but the sad and tragic reality is the somnabulants and apathetic realworld posers of this moment are pathetic spectators, and woefully lacking the courage to step up and fight for what is right.
And to preempt any wingnutsia sliming of theleft for not supporting our troops, - the relatively miniscule primarily minority and lower class volunteers that are sent to ill gotten misadventures and senseless wars for the profits of the superrich, and fascist cabals in the Bush government - are the best of us, and the only Americans taking any real stand.
Shame on all Americans. We are as a society week, apathetic, somnabulant, narcissitic, supremist, and ignorant, and our young people, (outside the military) are somnabulant posers, and losers pretending things will somehow improve, but lacking the courage to face reality, and right the wrongs of a government run amock, perverting and betraying all that America stands for and once defended, and hurling all of us into a future of neverendingwar.
Peace is courageous.War is the work of weeklings.
The newleft if it exists will fight these battles on the net, in the political arena and in the streets, or nothing will change, and America will be doomed.