Argh...The Sixties?

In the sixties there was peace, love and understanding.

Bull.

We had spoiled rich kids spending their parent's money getting stoned, laid, listening to very loud music and avoiding responsibility.

Some kids went to, and either died in Viet Nam or came back messed up for life.

There were protests in the street and some people got their heads cracked open or killed.

Sure, some good things came out of the sixties. Social awareness was raised in some quarters and some legislation was enacted that made some people's lives easier.

But we also got Richard Nixon and "Law and Order"...and I don't mean the TV show. I mean we got more cops and a governmental attitude that protestors...protesting about anything...were the enemy and should be treated as such.

So what's happening now with the "Occupy" movement seems eerily familiar. We have people who claim to be disenfranchised marching on Big Business because they see the excesses that exist on Wall Street. Gabillionaires are yachting and cruising in million dollar cars while the other 99% are homeless and hungry.

But the tide seems to be turning. Just like in the sixties.

In the sixties the energy coalesced around Viet Nam. That was more about the direct risk that young people faced from the draft than it was about some high falutin' sense of morality.

And then the Hippie crowd was infiltrated by the bums. People looking for a free ride. Folks who didn't give a damn about movements of any kind but only wanted to participate in the free sex, drugs and rock and roll extravanganza that was going on.

"Spare Change?" "Can I crash at your place?" "Got any dope?"

Those were as much the catch phrases of the sixties as "Hell No, We Won't Go" and "Give Peace a Chance."

So now the pure, elegant, populist message of the "Occupy" Movement is being corrupted by the usual hangers-on. Agitators who love a good ruckus. Anarchists who only want to disrupt. Losers who need something...anything...to be a part of because their lives are so shallow and meaningless.

"Occupy Wall Street" is a wonderful thing. It is a ground swell of energy focusing our collective attention on the grwoing inequality in our society. The lack of fairness that is evident in our daily lives, in and out of government, has created a level of frustration that is boiling over.

But here comes the violence. Oakland and Seattle represent this generation's Berkeley and Chicago.

And those of us old enough to remember can tell you that the violence of the sixties, Chicago in particular, gave us Richard Nixon in 1968 and then his landslide in 1972.

No one was paying attention, anymore, to the social issues that the protestors had raised. The citizenry was concerned with domestic safety and a return to the order of the tidy, picturesque fifties.

What the "Occupy" movement may give us is the same result.

The government is already geared up for violence as a result of 9-11.

There is already a highly trained, and well equipped, infrasturucture ready to take on any and all comers, whether they look like Osama bin Laden or Richie Cunningham.

History does repeat itself and those with a lack of a sense of it are doomed to be the ones doing the repeating.

Those of us who came of age during the sixties owe it to our childern (and grandchildren) to educate them to the dangers that lie ahead of them.

We should tell them to take their cues from Gandhi and King and not from Rubin and Cleaver (and I don't mean "The Beaver"...)

Violence will change the focus and distract from the message.

All it will get us is another Richard Nixon.