A Shrill And Pointless Decade

Sean M. waxes wroth against hippies and the Sixties. Maybe I was just more indoctrinated into my parents' prejudices than most children, but I've always found hippies repellent and contemptible. Their art was, I could easily assess, substandard, as was their hygiene. Apparently for a while growing a long fuzzy beard, donning little Bolshevik glasses and clashing tie-dye/ paisley garments and wallowing in mud and passive complacency like some sort of stoned boar-hog gave one a veneer of authenticity and moral authority.

As I grew older I became aware of the temptations of dime-store antinomianism, reality-altering pharmaceuticals, and free love. But with understanding does not always come sympathy. Now my father and I look back regretfully from either side of the Sixties and wonder just what in the world happened then. It has been some consolation as I've learned more about history (e.g. from Paul Johnson's Modern Times) to realize that this wasn't just a spontaneous American convulsion, but the culmination of an intellectual rot stretching back into the nineteenth century, one that--like a dormant strain of influenza that comes to life under favorable conditions--sprang to life in the pleasant prosperity and security of America's pampered postwar youth.

Up here in Northern California, of course, hippiedom still commands respect. Yet I'm amazed at how much of the rest of the country still regards these anarchic posers as whimsical, yet deep. They are neither. What's more, I suspect that altogether too many of this generation have moved on into positions of authority now that they have written themselves into the history books with a favorable cast.

Well, kids, don't believe everything you read. For the record, I've seen them. Up close. It isn't pretty. Or pleasant-smelling.