Posted by
dovehawk on Sunday, January 20, 2008 5:22:11 PM
It was 1968 on Venice Beach, California. I was a UCLA theater arts major, Class of '68. The wave of love-ins, peace, flower power, and hippies was at its "high" crest. With all the "be what you want to be, do what you want to do", I ran across undercurrents of the "revolutionary underground". "The what???," I asked my Russian date and his apartment roommates. I really wasn't understanding how or why there would exist such a thing as this revolutionary underground for THESE guys. I guess I could better understand, say, the Black Panther Party. In any case, there seemed to arise all these small "armies" with names. You know, things like Patty Hearst's army -- the Symbianese Liberation Army. There were weird little brainwashed groups like Charlie Manson and the gang. It must have been drugs that opened up doors to people's souls. Those with some shady souls, or not-so-solid souls, began to act not-so-nice to others. It was a shadowy counterpoint to the sheer joy of holding up two fingers in the PEACE sign to anyone you might see and feeling that shared love for your fellow man, even if he was some stranger you passed driving in or out of the very first Renaissance Faire. Sentiment was open and sincere. IT WAS GREAT! Is it human nature that there has to be this opposing dark side? Too bad. I never liked playing with those kids who would suddenly toss a Monopoly board over in a sore loser tantrum. This revolutionary underground seemed something like that, a group of spoilers -- losers, sore losers, in their hearts and souls -- cultural vandals. Even as a very little girl, vandals engendered a big anger in my little self.
So, as I said, it's 1968. I'm standing with my first husband-to-be and some other UCLA friends on Santa Monica Beach adjacent to Venice, on a nice sunny day. We were at a free concert, but I don't remember who the band was. POP (Pacific Ocean Park) was still there I think, but I'm not sure if it still was in business. The last time I rode out over the waves on the rides there was about 1962. The nightclub "Cheetah" was popular nearby, where I had seen Smokey Robinson & The Miracles one evening. (Smokey has some extraordinary eyes!) It was a nice place and a nice day. I had a good vantage point from which to analyze the impromptu events staged by the spoilers -- three smarmy grubs who had obviously pre-planned a coordinated bottle-throwing mini-protest. From my point of view, it seemed to be just for the "halibut". Jacka__ #1, really close to my right, yelled something and let fly his bottle. A well-planted jacka__ #2 over to the left, forward a bit, let his bottle fly next. Mr. Number Three Braintrust back over toward the right and even more forward in the crowd let loose his projectile and, easy as 1-2-3, the mob melee began. Everybody was in an uproar; soon the police arrived en masse and began clearing people from the beach. People didn't enjoy being rowdy-ed by the police "for nothing". Even "poor me" was hassled by a "cop". I was standing next to the Santa Monica boardwalk fence where my friends lived. The cop told me to move, and I squeezed closer to the fence, at which point he yelled strongly for me to get INSIDE the fence. Well! I was outraged! I hadn't done anything. I was as angry as the police, actually, at the spoilers. Everyone was upset everywhere in the crowd, all because of the THREE "protesters" (losers) acting in a pre-planned triad of yelling and bottle-throwing. These people were probably part of the so-called revolutionary underground. The what??? These people were often ANTI-WAR. They were often WAR PROTESTERS!! They were WHAT??? War protesters??? Well, gee, they were awfully violent for war PROTESTERS. As the years have marched to the point of today's war protesters, I sense the same anger and violence in their actions and speech. More frequently now it's the loud, aggressive and abusive speech that comes from their emotional core. They're all fired up and ready to explode. They confront you in the street, with placards strapped over their shoulders, like the playing cards in Alice in Wonderland, just as agitated as those playing cards -- proselytizing and enforcing their loud braying on you. (Donkeys bray, don't they?)
It's crappy to throw bottles and rocks and mess up a nice concert on the beach in the sun. It's mean to destroy things. It's selfish and cruel. To take it one step further, it's sacrilege to be so arrogant to think you may destroy and kill what God has created and placed here on His world. So, we have let this undercurrent create a swell in the culture of the world. Mean, evil spoilers who are willing to turn the world upside down like a Monopoly Board because they are outraged and angry about something. A world order of gangs of every kind -- neighborhood gangs, street gangs, drug gangs, punk gangs, bully gangs, nation-state gangs, terrorist gangs, ADOLESCENT-MINDED GANGS, UNCIVILIZED GANGS, U.N. GANGS, Castro's GANG, GANGS WITH LOTS OF BANG-BANGS. It seems war protesters (peace ACTIVISTS) continue to be one of these gangs -- aggressive, emotional, and evidencing a momentum of discord. It doesn't matter if it's only passive-aggressive... that's still aggressive. Take Cindy Sheehan... PLEASE!!!! She uses her butt as a weapon, like a big, dead weight sack of potatoes that other people are forced to hoist to remove her, at the peril of their backs. Does she care about their backs?? No. She's aggressive and inconsiderate, a disgrace to her own son. Imagine Mary and Joseph acting that way. Cindy Sheehan...what an adolescent-minded spoiler running to anyone on the other side of the aisle in a infantile tantrum, lower lip extended like the best of two-year-olds. I wouldn't really call her behavior grieving, anything but grieving. I think I grieve more for her son.
So take the Revolutionary Underground, take Cindy Sheehan, take all of the builders of the New Tower of Babel... PLEASE!!! Is there any HEART included with all of that MIND of babble? Or is all that babble merely a pressure cooker for venting the lower octave, subsidiary "feelings" born of modern times that have nothing to do with HEART -- selfish little feelings, little bottle and rock-throwing feelings, but not emotions, like kindness, compassion, honor, integrity, strength, confidence, purity, FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE.
The revolutionary underground is apparently alive and festering and has been since my days at UCLA and, no doubt, before that. It has usurped the easily led minds of the masses. [After all, according to the bell curve, half of the masses are only average to profoundly retarded. The other half is mostly average, with only a few persons of intellect at the far right end of the bell curve.] There's only so much logic an average person can understand, and usually it's their own subjective logic. Objective logic is part and parcel of a more capable mind. God is the best example of such a mind. He has heart, too. He is a Creator and He loves His created world. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son...." to die for the sins of the arrogant Revolutionary Underground and all those other ego GANGS with their big BANG-BANGS!!!