This thread is about the source of undirected human anger, which predates hippies by thousands, if not millions of years. If you want to start a rant about hippies please start a thread about it. For the record I agree that the sixties counter-cultural movement was only tangentially about American racism.
Perhaps you missed it above, but my contention is that much of the anger that exists in today’s society is a result of of both a lack of societal standards that disapproves of and suppresses it, and that it is an outgrowth of ‘anything goes’ notions of ‘personal freedom’ which the left has championed and which led many people to feel that they have the right to behave any old way they want, up to and including assholism. And of course, it’s a vicious cycle - the more that people see other people acting like jerks and getting away with it, the more inclined they will be to act like assholes themselves.
Secondarily, I was responding to Guinastasia. It’s curious that you don’t seem to have a problem with her remarks assailing the America of old but you find my rebuttal to be off topic.
And thirdly, the mere fact that undirected anger has always existed does not ipso-facto mean that it has always existed to the same degree, and/or to the same extent, in society.
Thanks.
That’s what you claim in every thread in which it is even slightly on-topic, and you have yet to provide one damn piece of evidence that it is the case.
I know you hate liberals and everything we’ve ever done and ever will do, but try to keep that hate grounded in facts.
Seriously, how old are you, Starving ?
The world was perfect until the dirty fucking hippies awakened humanity’s emotions! Down with hippies! Up with personal repression! Don’t feel emotions, people…they’re bad, mmmkay?
Oh for the love of-I wasn’t only speaking of America, Starving Artist! I was merely giving you an example. You want violence that’s un-American? Try Ireland in the 1910s and 1920s.
Again, why don’t you take a look at the books I mentioned?
I noticed you brushed aside my examples of mob violence as “well, not that many people were killed,” and yet-how many people do you know who were killed by gangs today?
Once and for all, let’s see some PROOF. Give us some cold, hard cites, that PROVE life-NOT just the US-but life in general-is worse off today-AND prove that it’s a result of the counter culture of the sixties* (remember, post hoc ergo propter hoc!).
In other words: put up-or shut up. (Now I AM getting mad!)
*[sub]Strange, isn’t it, considering the hippie movement was all about pacifism and non-violence?[/sub]
Actually, I think I’ve only claimed it a handful of times, which, considering my overall post count, isn’t really all that many.
You would be quite wrong about that. I like quite a lot of people who are liberals, and always have. Some of my best friends are liberals. 
Further, I like some elements of liberalism; I dislike some elements of liberalism; and I vehemently dislike other elements of liberalism and think they are destructive. Hate, however, is much too strong a word.
My entire post was grounded in facts. And not only that, it was constructed of facts. What you allege to want is data. Plenty of it exists in the form of television, newspapers, magazines and to a certain extent movies. I’m not going to waste my time hunting for data that anybody with a lick of sense already knows to be the case to begin with.
And on preview, jayjay, I don’t suppose you’d care to furnish a little data of your own…like for instance that I ever alleged the world was perfect before hippies ruined it. (Or for that matter, that I ever referred to them as ‘dirty’.) You, like friend elucidator, attempt to negate valid points by inventing and then trivializing false characterizations of them. You might better gain ground though if your attempts weren’t so painfully transparent.
Nah. You know as well as I do that cites are merely fodder for disagreement. I could post a thousand cites illustrating the validity of what I’m talking about and it wouldn’t change your mindset one iota. You would merely post a thousand ‘cites’ to the contrary, and what does that accomplish?
What I do is post comments as they appear from my perspective and let people either decide for themselves whether the points I raise are valid, or do the necessary research to find out for themselves if they want to do so. This approach works particularly well, IMO, because different people require different proof and in this way they can research things to whatever degree they need to in order to form an opinion.
Flame on! 
In other words, you got nothin’. :rolleyes:
(However, I would suggest you read the books I mentioned above. If only because they are highly interesting books-especially the first one)
I got what I brought, and that’s good enough for me. 
Thanks. I’ll take them under advisement, but unfortunately I have enough trouble finding time for all the things I already want to read to make any promises. I do take seriously your good faith recommendation though, and I’ll at least look into them enough to decide whether or not to buy them.
In other words, your post is your cite.
No. You made the claim, you back it up.
It couldn’t be because the economic disparity between rich and poor is so much greater now than it was 50 years ago? Bill Moyers is calling it the new Gilded Age. From the article: “The top .01% or 14,000 American families hold 22.2% of wealth — the bottom 90%, or over 133 million families, just 4% of the nation’s wealth.” No doubt this is making a lot of people very angry.
You might try to blame liberalism for that, too, if you can, but people are going to want cites. I doubt you could do it. I’m not trying to make this a partisan issue, but I think blaming gangsta rap is utterly failing to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the rise in anger and concommitant violence in 21st century America.
I’ll get the OH BOLLOCKS!ing started, shall I ?
The total prison population in the US is 2.3 million, more than one adult in 100.
Compare to Communist China, that liberal hellhole of permissiveness, promiscuity, personal liberties and general hippiedom, which comes second with a grand total of 1.5 million, for 4 times the total population. (cite)
Here’s another amusing stat : the US has 5% of the world’s population, but 24% of the world’s carceral population (cite)
Definitely not tough enough on crime, the US. Why, with that anything goes mentality, those young rappers are left walking the streets after an abortion drive-by for drugs !
Here’s an advice, **Starving **: quit watching Fox, and walk the streets yourself. It’s not so bad, liberal Hell. People are nice, I swear. You ask me, the big, major, numero uno problem faced by modern society isn’t anger : it’s apathy. I mean, Jesus, 90% of the people owning 4% of the wealth ?! Revolutions have sparked over far less. You should be thankful the masses are venting instead of hanging people on lamp posts.
I’d be surprised if that were the case. I doubt if most people are even aware of it, and many of those who do undoubtedly know that the figures as you describe them don’t tell the whole story. That 22.2% of wealth isn’t just sitting in a vault, you know. It’s invested in companies that hire the 90% who hold 4% of the nation’s wealth. The reason a relatively small number of people hold a disproportionately large share of the nation’s wealth is that they are the ones who taking risks and investing money and actively working to grow their businesses and create jobs and thereby make money; the “bottom” 90% 
are working for salaries and wages and have chosen a way of life that promises greater security and lower pay (and generally less hard work and innate ability) and therefore generally find themselves too busy earning a living to make any real money.
The economy is not a pie from which everyone is to share equally, and nobody is necessarily getting screwed because someone else has a larger slice of pie than they do. Everyone in this country has the ability to choose which way of life they want to live. If they opt for the safety and security of employment and a 40-hour workweek, they are not getting screwed because the guy that paid for the building they work in and the equipment they use and who has to compete for buyers for his product with other companies wanting those same buyers, and who has to deal with government regulations and paperwork and taxes and retirement funds and trying to analyze what new technologies and/or advances he’s going to have to keep up with and invest in in order to stay in business makes more money than they do. (Pant, pant)
And besides, things are not nearly as bad as they were during the Great Depression and people in those days certainly behaved better than people do now.
Further, even people in the low income range live lives that are much more pleasant and comfortable than ever before in the nation’s history. Automobiles are better and last longer, medicine knows more and can treat more than every before, heat and air conditioning are readily available, entertainment options are inexpensive and virtually limitless. This means that most people, regardless of income, are still able to live pretty comfortable and pleasant lives.
So no, I don’t think income disparity is a very likely explanation for the anger that exists in American society today.
Did I blame gangsta rap for the anger that exists today?
No. I cited it to Guinastasia as something that is harmful and destructive and responsible for far more deaths, crime and misery than Al Capone ever was. Liberalism is responsible not only for laying the permissive societal groundwork which gave rise to it in the first place, but it has championed and defended gangsta rap and belittled and made fun of those who oppose it. Therefore, liberal ideology is clearly responsible in large part for the crime, deaths and misery and negative impact upon society that have resulted from it.
Kobal2, I don’t watch Fox and I don’t listen to Limbaugh. My observations are the result of decades spent ‘on the street’ watching with disdain as liberalism has created a crass, vulgar, classless society that I’m ashamed to be a part of. Yes, there are certain issues which liberalism has managed to stake a claim to that are laudable, such as civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights, but even then things are made more difficult than they need to be (and therefore take longer as a result) thanks to the liberal propensity for beligerence and name-calling and devisiveness.
As to the rest of your post regarding how the nation’s wealth is distributed and why, please see my response to Rubystreak just above.
ETA: As I’m only going to get three or four hours of sleep tonight, I must now adjourn or get even less. I trust that my absense will not be interpreted as capitulation. 
We’re piling stress upon stress, polluting the world and hearing about it in the blink of an eye, being monitored with street cameras, surrounded by artificial everythings almost all the time…need any more reasons???
:smack:
Oh, yeah…about the prison thing. Got any figures on the relative rates of incarceration for the era predating the late sixties?
The reason we have more people in prison than other countries percentagewise is because we have more people who are either scornful of or feel entitled to break the law and who are less fearful of the consequences).
So again we come back to liberal permissiveness and softness on crime. The fact that we have lots of people in prison doesn’t mean we are hard on crime at all…especially when we have rapists and murderers being turned loose on society after only a few years in order to make room for new criminals who are the product of our permissive and drug-ridden society.
And now I’m out. Goodnight, all.
Ah yes, of course, that makes sense. The jails are full, fuller than any jail in the world, because America is too permissive.
Your wish is my command : Incarceration Rates. USA. Charts. Timelines. 1920 to recent years. Prisons, jails, all inmates. Totals, percentages, and rates per 100,000 population. National and state numbers.
The sharp increase in ratio of people behind bars begins in the 80s, and never stops increasing. However, the *actual *number of violent crimes and property crimes committed, while on steady rise since before the 60s…has been sharply declining since 1993 (cite), until a plateau was reached in the early 00’s.
Coincidentally, the 80s were all about Reagan & Bush, weren’t they ? They were tough on crime, those two, right ? And wasn’t 1993 the year that liberal, permissive and morally bankrupt Clinton got elected ? But what happened in 2001, dammit I’m sure it was fairly important…nope, drawing a blank.
re. your brilliant economic theory/explanation (which I’m fairly certain I already read during my history classes, only it was in a Victorian-era pamphlets. And “gin” was used instead of “drugs”), well gee, now that you mention it, it all seems so acceptable and logical.
Newsflash : the poor don’t care if you can explain to them why they’re poor and why they deserve to be so. In fact, they’re even more angry when you do - possibly because most of them don’t. It’s surprising what damage an innocuous “let them eat cake” can do.
The poor don’t care if it’s fair or not, if they’re really being screwed or not. The poor don’t care about market forces. The poor are angry because they’re poor. And they turn to crime because they’re poor. And they turn to drugs because gasp they’re poor. And being poor sucks. In America, even more so.
It’s really as simple as that. It really always was as simple as that, for as long as human civilizations have been recorded. You don’t have to pore over GDP stats and income disparity percentages to realize when your life is in the process of sucking hairy, donkey balls, and someone else’s doesn’t.
They sure did, Grampaw.They sure did.
First: I don’t call myself a liberal, so please don’t call me that!
If I can only speak to the media side of this debate… In the 50’s mass media seemed mostly to glorify a kind of June Cleaver world where all dialog was a constant stream of Poor Richard’s Almanack-style Aesop fables that always led to a realization of the unquestionable truth of some conservative gestalt. Things that didn’t fit this view could were only viewed in one particular negative light, if they were viewed at all. More often the media kept any unpleasant counter-examples behind a kind of Burkean ‘if they don’t see it it will be as if they don’t know it exists’ curtain.
That kind of society is more about appearances than substance. Got abused and now you’re acting out sexually? No, actually you’re a slut and you need to get out of view and stay there forever so we can all pretend there is no such thing. Got abused and you deal with it by dressing up, smiling maniacally and pretending nothing is wrong… ever? Congratulations, you fit right in, continue to keep up appearances and someday you too can take a lot of pills, be glued to your TV and judge everyone instantly by their outward appearance.
It’s a kitsch society. It was never real, it is someone’s work of art. It is comforting to a lot of people because it is so simple and seemingly clean.
All that has happened is that the illusion has been broken. Conservative types (please don’t be offended, I’m not a partisan!!! goddammit) see a social moral breakdown based IMHO on a change in appearances and a greater universality in the coverage of things. The reaction is anti-permissiveness- if only we crack down on these reprobates we can get 'em to dress nice and smile maniacally, then I won’t have a nervous breakdown whew! We need some strongman to get in everybody’s business and sort out the wheat from the chaff, and just lock up all this inferior goddamn chaff! Yeah, some kind of fascist superman who will apply a kitschy, easy-to-understand aesthetic on the whole goddamn country by any means necessary, since y’know, Jesus is on our side and all, the ends justify the means, right?
I know, I’m ranting a little here. The point is, I don’t think it has ever been more obvious that the conservative dream world is a kind of fascist, whip-everyone-into-shape worldview where some ultimate authority (who of course agrees with me completely) grinds under their heel everyone who gets out of line.
It isn’t so strange that this would be a subconscious ideal in the American psyche. Seriously think about 1944- the entire country is galvanized by the threat of an identifiable, apocalyptic enemy, and everyone from kids to grandparents is pitching in, rationing, salvaging, working for the war effort, etc. by golly. It’s actually rather fascist if you think about it. And it gets acknowledged as America’s finest hour… but look, if you’re going to freak about my bringing up fascism, let me say first that in this case, and for us especially, it really wasn’t a bad thing.
But then it’s momentum continued into the 50’s, only there wasn’t a galvanizing enemy to keep everyone in line.
Then, (I’m starting to get to my point) you get Vietnam with its graphic war coverage. The right (see, I stopped calling them fascists) with its kitschy world-view was culminating in the complete opposite of its ideal: lots of pictures of guys with their arms/faces/etc blown off in some jungle somewhere. Gee, if that’s the conclusion to getting on board with the June Cleaver culture, the whole thing kinda looks fictional, no? I’m not an expert on hippies, but I always thought the biggest cultural current was anti-WWIII. You know, world war in the 20’s, world war in the 40’s, by the 60’s the ‘war clock’ was just about done ticking in people’s perception, right? The way to prevent the next catastrophic (and utterly un-kitsch) war was to reject the trends that had existed before. How do you do that? Dunno, it hadn’t been tried before, and you get all kinds of wacky shit.
Skip ahead to today and let me make my real point about the media. What’s new in media is a sort of rejection of Logos persuasion (logical argument) in favor of a much bigger emphasis on Ethos (appeals to your superior moral standing) and especially Pathos (appeals to your emotional reaction to all those goddamn liberals). I can’t recall 20 years ago a 24-hour cycle of media figures ranting on and on in the vein of Ethos and Pathos against these poor demonized liberals. It is presented as ‘political’, but you never really hear a clear presentation of exactly what political beliefs ‘liberals’ all have in common, other than, believe you me, it’s everything that’s wrong and unholy.
My point: people’s anger is deliberately stoked by this. To galvanize them against the best ‘enemy’ now available, which is apparently liberals, since apparently they’re to blame for the downfall of kitsch, which was born of war-time fascism, our finest hour, and we’ve come sooooo far from that by now, haven’t we? And isn’t it ‘obvious’ that the trend is ‘downward’?Everybody get on board and we’ll “get” 'em, and thereby return to the glorious (benignly fascist) golden age of the past.
I’m maintain that I’m not partisan because I see it both ways. All these punk kids are offensive to those with the June Cleaver dreams, even before all the aggressive anti-left pathos, and it pisses them off. People who just want to be free to be themselves and follow their muse are the target of a lot of ethos and pathos-style attacks (which won’t stop until they obey and don the proper costume), which pisses them off. In effect, whichever ‘side’ you take in our culture today, somebody is always in your grill, and so there is always something to piss off just about everyone.
But in the end, is it really Mega Corp’s business if Joe Hippie wants to smoke a joint and listen to Pink Floyd, if only to get away for awhile, and especially since Joe Hippie can’t afford sushi? Conversely, for one example, it really is everybody’s business if Mega Corp cuts down all the forests to make paper to put in their files when all our paper needs could easily be met with renewable hemp. Centralized power really does require limits, sorry.
I could be wrong of course. It could be as simple as the fact that 50 years ago you could raise a family with a job you could get after High School. Nowadays if all you’ve done is High School, you’re screwed.
Bingo. This goes directly to the heart of the matter, but it actually supports the other side of the argument, not yours.
A hundred years ago, if some teenager went wonky and killed some fellow students in Kansas or Colorado or Utah, few people who lived more than a few hundred miles away would even hear about it. Today, the U.S. (and, indeed, sizable hunks of the rest of the world) are glued to CNN watching the drama unfold.
In this age of violence and anger to which you refer, I have spent my entire adult life (I’m 50 years old) and never seen a barfight (despite spending time in bars). I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen a punch thrown in real life, although I see it on TV every time the damn thing is turned on. I’ve never seen someone shot, knifed, poleaxed, clubbed, keelhauled, stoned, raped, beaten, sapped, beheaded, hung, electrocuted, or maimed except on TV and in the movies.
How many people could have made that claim 100 years ago? 1,000 years?
And how was that ratio in Japan in the 1700s? Spain in the 1600s? Scotland in the 1500s? England in the 1200s?
It’s unlikely you’ll get a precise answer - Starving Artist has yet to provide a cite-ANY cite, evidence, proof, etc, for his claims. I suggest we give them the respect they deserve: none.
Unless he’s willing to back up his claims, or show where he got these ideas from, I refuse to address them.
:rolleyes: