Where Have All the Hippies Gone?
Michael C. Morris
November 28, 2007
On a recent trip to Southern California during the wildfires, while standing on the beach looking at the beauty of the coastline and Catalina Island in the distance, a true reminder of the state of the world washed up over my foot to shock me back to the reality that all of the sacrifice by the “flower children” of the 60’s is just black and white newsreels stored on a shelf. What washed over my foot amidst a background that could have only been painted by God? A tampon, a knee brace and other medical waste.
In the state that prides itself as the land of hippies, hippies that created social change and awareness that we needed to get out of Vietnam, hippies that 40 years ago told the world we are destroying the environment and thereby killing ourselves, all of us, rich and poor, hippies that protested in force in the capitals, courthouses and college campuses that was paid for with the blood of children at Kent State, where did all these people go when America need’s them most? Has “make love not war” been replaced with “if I can make a profit”. Have all the hippies become “the man”?
At a time when I believe that America has become a bankrupt nation, with a government that is at best broken but repairable and at worst corrupted and fully paid for by special interests, with children mesmerized for life with social diversions like X-Box from ever seeing the truth that flows over their feet, where justice is affordable to anyone who can afford it, where double speak and deception is not a lie but a legally safe strategy for conducting one’s life and last but not least, that children’s lives are expendable if profit is to be made, will hippies shed their walkers, don their man bro’s and fight once more?
I wonder if any parent sits next to their child who is dying from cancer, maybe from chemicals poured into the ground or sea, and says to themselves that it’s okay because profit was made, or does the parent carrying a coffin of their son or daughter killed in Iraq say that it was worth it because I can still drive my SUV.
America has become so numb to reality, so afraid of what our own government might take away from us that we cower like cowards in corners whispering it not my job to care or I cannot change anything. Well, you are wrong!
Sixty Eight percent (68%) of America says that this government is broken and that the bums in congress should be thrown out, yet your solution, I will vote the opposite party. Did we not just do that and did it help? Is there really ANY REAL difference between a democrat and a republican? Without radical change to revamp a corrupted government will the dreams of our founding fathers be restored, or will we just exist until a world wide fatal amoeba infects the food supply, or some scientist releases by accident the horseman of the apocalypse, or will our President just piss off the entire world so that all of those nuclear weapons get used? Do you truly believe that all of this will work out and that someone else will do YOUR job as an American Citizen?
The hippies of the 60’s showed the world, the US government and each other that change is possible. They did not cower in fear that their trinkets would be jeopardized, just as our founding fathers risked all to form this nation. Hippies embraced what made America great, THE RIGHT to express what is wrong with our society WITHOUT government tyranny threatening their existence or life, for when a society lives in fear of its government, that society no longer exists no matter how much denial of the conditions exist. It would be the equivalent of denying that I was horrified that a tampon was washing over my foot. It is time that America turns its reality TV shows on the real reality of what the sea to shining sea has become and how to fix it! I have a prototype of the show script if anyone is interested!
In the state that prides itself as the land of hippies, hippies that created social change and awareness that we needed to get out of Vietnam, hippies that 40 years ago told the world we are destroying the environment and thereby killing ourselves, all of us, rich and poor, hippies that protested in force in the capitals, courthouses and college campuses that was paid for with the blood of children at Kent State, where did all these people go when America need’s them most? Has “make love not war” been replaced with “if I can make a profit”. Have all the hippies become “the man”?
At a time when I believe that America has become a bankrupt nation, with a government that is at best broken but repairable and at worst corrupted and fully paid for by special interests, with children mesmerized for life with social diversions like X-Box from ever seeing the truth that flows over their feet, where justice is affordable to anyone who can afford it, where double speak and deception is not a lie but a legally safe strategy for conducting one’s life and last but not least, that children’s lives are expendable if profit is to be made, will hippies shed their walkers, don their man bro’s and fight once more?
I wonder if any parent sits next to their child who is dying from cancer, maybe from chemicals poured into the ground or sea, and says to themselves that it’s okay because profit was made, or does the parent carrying a coffin of their son or daughter killed in Iraq say that it was worth it because I can still drive my SUV.
America has become so numb to reality, so afraid of what our own government might take away from us that we cower like cowards in corners whispering it not my job to care or I cannot change anything. Well, you are wrong!
Sixty Eight percent (68%) of America says that this government is broken and that the bums in congress should be thrown out, yet your solution, I will vote the opposite party. Did we not just do that and did it help? Is there really ANY REAL difference between a democrat and a republican? Without radical change to revamp a corrupted government will the dreams of our founding fathers be restored, or will we just exist until a world wide fatal amoeba infects the food supply, or some scientist releases by accident the horseman of the apocalypse, or will our President just piss off the entire world so that all of those nuclear weapons get used? Do you truly believe that all of this will work out and that someone else will do YOUR job as an American Citizen?
The hippies of the 60’s showed the world, the US government and each other that change is possible. They did not cower in fear that their trinkets would be jeopardized, just as our founding fathers risked all to form this nation. Hippies embraced what made America great, THE RIGHT to express what is wrong with our society WITHOUT government tyranny threatening their existence or life, for when a society lives in fear of its government, that society no longer exists no matter how much denial of the conditions exist. It would be the equivalent of denying that I was horrified that a tampon was washing over my foot. It is time that America turns its reality TV shows on the real reality of what the sea to shining sea has become and how to fix it! I have a prototype of the show script if anyone is interested!
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