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To: T L Comiskey who wrote (53214)	6/26/2002 10:48:06 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 65232

"on the PO wall"...my turn to LOL. Message 17654634 To:MKTBUZZ who started this subject From: Raymond Duray Wednesday, Jun 26, 2002 6:33 AM Respond to of 267051 THE AGE OF ACQUIESCENCE nytimes.com The Age of Acquiescence By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON — A friend of mine over the weekend was recalling her days as an idealistic child of the 60's. Students sitting around the dorm, amid the water bongs, water beds, strobe lights and Che posters, listening to Led Zeppelin and Dylan, dreaming about remaking the world in their own image, trading nightmares about spying Big Brother and soul-robbing corporations. "We thought America was being run by the corporate-military-industrial white male power structure," she said. "We were certain there was a right-wing conspiracy. We thought civil liberties and free speech were imperiled. We were suspicious of rich people. We had reason to believe there was corporate malfeasance and Wall Street was bad. We worried that the government was backing coups in Latin America. We figured the administration wanted to topple all the overwrought, self-appointed messiahs who didn't know how to run their own little societies. We assumed that powerful people were rigging elections. We feared there were people who wanted to blast roads through forests and rip up the tundra." She recalled all the old leftist tracts in the Nixon years about a secret government plan to suspend the Constitution and declare a national security emergency and round up people without charges, and that the oil companies and banks would plunge us into nuclear war. "And now," she concluded with a rueful smile, "all our worst paranoid nightmares are coming true. We wake up in our 50's and our enemies from the 60's have crept back into power. And we were the empowerers, because we've turned into the same selfish people we thought we were against. We forgot to be suspicious." The times they ain't a-changin'. The passionate activists from the Age of Aquarius have grown up to be the new Silent Majority. "Our young hunches are now becoming mature realities," said Bobby Rush, the Black Panther who became a Chicago Congressman. "Yet we are paralyzed in the headlights. We don't know exactly how to react to the right wing trampling our Constitution and dictating to the world who their leadership can be. The American people have been scared beyond all imagination because of Sept. 11. But now we are getting to the point where we can't use a library card without opening ourselves up to Big Brother." Ralph Nader said the phrase he coined in 1970, "corporate crime," is the new catch phrase in business magazines. Three and a half decades ago, the mantra among young people who railed against capitalist pigs and government lies was "the fix is in." "The fix is now institutionalized," Mr. Nader says. "When Congress won't double the S.E.C. budget in the middle of a corporate crime wave, it shows that the system is irreversibly decayed. As Brandeis said, we can have a democratic society or we can have a concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both." Of course some Democrats regard Ralph Nader as part of the problem and not part of the solution. People used to be shocked when a member of an administration said that what's good for General Motors is good for the United States. But with the Bush administration, the sinful synchronicity of business and government is just a day's work, and nobody is reeling from the spectacle. Some convictions of the love-bead era have been turned on their heads. The police are not regarded as "pigs" anymore. And, given their woeful performance, the F.B.I. and C.I.A. are not seen as scarily omniscient anymore. And it is not going to be so easy for women to get as much power and sexual freedom as men. Alpha women, like Martha Stewart — who got rich being an über-hausfrau, just the image women were running away from in the 60's — are crashing and burning out every day. Those who came of age in the 60's and lived through the plum decades of the 80's and 90's gave up a long time ago on John Lennon's wish that they could "imagine no possessions . . . no need for greed or hunger in a brotherhood of man." (Even Mr. Lennon, in the bosom of the Dakota, found his own fantasy hard to live by.) And now, faced with the evil of Osama bin Laden, they can no longer imagine there's "nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too." These utopian sentiments were buried in the rubble in Lower Manhattan. Rat

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (53214)	6/26/2002 1:47:03 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 65232

In all seriousness, it is really nice to see that a lot of what could heretofor be considered Mikey's paranoia has been validated over the years. I probably flattered mice elf by thinking they were watching me in the '60s, despite the fact that I was a semi-committed FSM supporter, in that I listened to dear old Dad, who said," I pay the bills; don't sit in". Unless they were tracking every name on every petition,, etc, I was clear, unless they were tracking my grandma, who was way into the peace movement in about '63.(That was possible; I don't really know the story, but her bro had to hide out for 3 daze in a a barn in Petaluma, for fear of being tarred and feathered as a Commie). We ALL knew the leaders were under observation, that there were infiltrators from various unintelligence agencies, probably agent provaceuters (sp?). Even during 'Nam, I probably escaped notice, and I figure the SSN was more of a joke, and hope some poor clerk got a laugh. I know my picture was taken several times, but by the Minutemen, a ultra right Orange Co. challenger to the Birch John Society. Howsomever, by the 80's, I am sure I was under some sort of observation. My sis and my future wife were in a group suspected of being terrorists. The feds had a stakeout for years across the street from their restaurant in SF. The Humboldt Co. Sheriff had a file on my most respectable and respected (surgeon father)parents, because of my sis. The day of their (sis and ex, not M&D) last arrest, I had a guy up my telephone pole, an all of a sudden new buzz on my phone, the VA's (federal) plainclothes guy following me around the hospital, etc. I know I got their attention on that one. I got called really quickly by the one gal not busted; I have always thought her to be a snitch, but, anyway, after we talked, Sarah (my ex) had her bail raised from 25 K to 100K. I still got her out, being highly motivated by the fact that she told me she would move in with me if I did so. Clearly a case of thinking with my dick, but, I digress, because, above all, she is the other half of my little girl. I was sitting behind some of the high up dudes when Sar made bail. Shocked the hell out of them, jajaja. I was watching a few weeks later when the bug came off the pole, too. The last bust really went above and beyond. 3 working poverty AFDC moms with 4 kids and my sis. Nobody with a lot of income. My sis was selling insulation. Sarah was taking printing at the local CC, working part time, 2 kids, food stamps, etc. " the other moms. The San Jose Merc said they were supplying the entire left underground in the US with lawyers, guns, and money, safe houses, papers, etc. Quite laughable. Even Dad got pissed at the pigs (since it ok to say that now)over this one. 415-66-6981* *(the middle ones are correct; I think a friend of the devil is a friend of mine. The rest aren't). I hope Fred doesn't see it