11-26-2017, 12:36 AM
(11-25-2017, 04:33 PM)The Wonkette Wrote: There was a dark side to the Awakening even without Charles Manson. There was Altamont, the Newark, DC, and Chicago Convention riots, Kent State,the Kennedy and MLK assassinations, Vietnam, drug overdoses, the Jonestown Massacre, lots of ugly things, and many of that preceded Charles Manson.
Awakening eras begin with great optimism -- even if the opening event is the assassination of JFK. The urban riots were undeniably ominous. The disorder at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 certainly aided in the rise of Richard M. Nixon. The Vietnam Waer was of course a mess, and one result of that military mess (leadership having no idea of how to present a war as a noble cause) was the Kent State massacre. Drugs, drugs, and more drugs? That was part of Manson.
"Peace, love, and dope" was far better as a dream than "murder, hate, and dope", as practiced in the Manson 'family'.
So was the mindless hedonism that became the norm in the middle-to-late 1970s.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.