What Happened to the Sixties?

The movie "Easy Rider" in 1969 featured a couple of guys on motorcycles, heading out to experience America. They had enough money that they did not need to get a job, which was a popular fantasy at the time. But in the end, the Easy Riders are killed by gun-toting, pickup-truck-driving (and presumably ignorant) rednecks. Is this what happened to all the the ideas of the sixties?

During the sixties, some Americans became aware that with their increasing wealth and higher standard of living, that one day "work" may be a thing of the past. The idea was that machines would do the work, and people would have lots of leisure time, and be able to enjoy life in the future rather than spend their lives accumulating goods. The sixties were an idealistic time, where civil rights for black people had been achieved, and where the "war on poverty" was being waged. With the new generation of baby boomers reaching late teen years, new ideas were everywhere. Some of the ideas included sex, drugs and rock and roll. The future looked like peace and love.

Today, forty years later, instead of peace and love, we have some war and plenty of hate. The war on poverty turned into the war on drugs, with a holy war thrown in just for good measure. Leisure time is not valued all that much, and most people prefer just to accumulate material possessions. What became of the dream of leisure time? Now parents need to put their kids in day care so that they can work enough jobs to buy the stuff they "need".

I'm guessing that near the end of the seventies, when it came right down to the decision, most of the flower power generation opted for consumerism.

Another sixties idea was the "Back to the land" movement. This idea was that you did not have to get a job and work for money, you just moved to some land, and built your own house, grew your own food, and became self sufficient. It was an idea doomed to failure from the start. Not only did most people lack the skills, but they did not realize that farming was unpleasant hard work. Then you have babies and suddenly the concept falls flat.

The backlash to the naive "Back to the Land" movement was strong, and possibly persists to this day. As the flower power generation hit their thirties, suddenly jobs were back in style, "dressing for success" was popular, and anyone who was not a consumer with a paying job was to be pitied.

Eventually the trends will swing back again, though probably not to the extreme "back to the land" ideas. We could do with a healthy dose of frugality, eliminating wasteful consumption, learning to repair and recycle things. And we need to learn how to handle leisure time in a sustainable way. For example, people could use some of their leisure time to learn about the world around them instead of grabbing mindless sound bites off Fox News.

The reason the days of wasteful over-the top consumerism are numbered is simple. Consumerism now makes no more sense than the old Back to the Land ideas any more. In spite of the slogan "Drill, baby, drill", oil production has peaked, the climate is changing, jobs are evaporating, and people still with jobs are overworked. Overworked people are not thinking people. It's pretty obvious that extremist doomsday religions are gaining stronger footholds, and ignorant, dissatisfied people tend toward aggressive displays to make up for their lack of understanding of the world around them.

It's too bad we had to go down this road of mindless consumerism for thirty years. It's even more of a dead end than "Back to the Land".

A Perspective on Fuel Economy

Let's compare fuel economy in methods of transportation. In these measurements, the lower numbers are for less fuel.















First comparison in kJ per Km., as we are not always using gasoline as fuel.

• Walking 330 kJ per km (the fuel is food, in case you were wondering)
• Bicycling 120 kJ per km
• Toyota Prius 1600 kJ per km (Calculated from 5.1 L/100 km at 32,000 kJ per Litre)

Second comparison, switching to L/100 Km., but I included a Toyota Prius in both comparisons for a benchmark.

• Toyota Prius 5.1 L/100 Km (55 mpg US)
• Jet Aircraft 4.8 L/100 km (this is per passenger)
• Ocean Liner Ship 16.9 L/100 km (per passenger)
• Diesel Electric train 1.2 L/100 km (per passenger) (I got this from another site, as wikipedia was unclear about the units and passengers, also seemed unrealistic at 12 mpg for the whole train?)

Note that for two people to go across the country, the Prius would be more efficient than flying. But with only one person in the car and a full airplane, it is close to a tie. Again, if the aircraft is half empty, the Prius wins.

In this website Matti proves he can run his car for a year with less fuel than to fly two people from Toronto to Acapulco and back on a winter vacation. Part of the secret is that he has a VW Golf with only 12,000 km in one year. In this case it is appropriate to say YMMV.

My Second Best Idea Ever

This idea is probably the second best of my life, and I want to thank Muhammar Ghaddafi for the inspiration. Or more honestly, I am outright stealing his idea, there was no "inspiration" on my part because I was not able to think of even one way I could improve on his idea.

So this is "my" idea. I am going to set up a soiree for beautiful models, over 1.6 meters tall, under 130 pounds, and all stunningly attractive (screening to be done by me). Once they arrive, I will address them for about 2 hours, lecturing them on my religion (covered in an earlier blog) and impressing them with how pro-women I am. To this end I will especially stress the fact that a female is currently the theological grand visir/imam of my own religion, (newly named the Intergalactic Worship Group, or IWG). Her name is Brooke Shields.

After the speech, I will have a Q&A, after which I will hand out copies of the IWG bible, and a book of my quotes ("The Collected Quotations of Chairman Lost").

A sample of my quotes:

"Google bush lies you will get 13,200,000 hits." January 2009

"Rooftop ski carriers shaped to a point at the front and squared at the back. Turn it backwards, you'll get better gas mileage" February 2009

"Cowboys don't have mortgages or credit cards maxed out" March 2009

"If my motorcycle was that inefficient, I would need 2000 lb of coal to get to my mother's house on the 401" April 2009

"The Republican side of the personality comes out. It's party time, get drunk, break all the rules, get in a bar fight, pick up some prostitutes and get the clap, gamble away all the money, and get sick and hung over" May 2009

"I assume that chickens must prefer to check for food on the other side of the road, then panic at the sight of an approaching motorcycle and run for home" June 2009

"The stupidity seems to be contagious" July 2009

"The driving force of industry and commerce always has been and always will be laziness." August 2009

"I don't worry if people think I am not a patriotic American, because I am Canadian" September 2009

"Who is the Secretary General of the United Nations and is he the AntiChrist? Ans. Ban Ki-Moon, and no." October 2009

"Why did no-one ever question the Federal Highway Act before it was passed?" November 2009

Oh yes, I finally did think of an improvement on Ghaddafi's idea. Drop the no-miniskirt requirement.

Propaganda: When is Too Much Mud Enough?

Every time the Republicans are criticised for "hoping Obama fails", they rightly point out that liberals were also hoping Bush failed. And when they call Obama a Nazi and a tyrant, they can refer to many instances where liberals compared Bush to Hitler. So is it really just a case of turnabout being fair play?

This is something I noticed about typical reactions. When Democrats lose, they threaten to move to Canada. When Republicans lose, they were far more likely to (a) call for armed insurrection (b) secede their state from the union.

Statistically, Obama has been receiving 4 times as many death threats as Bush, according to the Secret Service. I would think it would be fair if he got about the same number.

Democrats said some nasty things in their election rallies. But in Republican election rallies, people were calling Obama a terrorist and calling out "kill him". True it was only a few people, but nobody in the audience nearby did anything about it.

Was it fair of the liberals to call Bush a moron? It was definitely not nice, and a gross exaggeration of Bush's halting speeches and narrow world view. Is it fair of conservatives to call Obama a tyrant or a socialist? That may be an exaggeration of Obama's huge spending bills and health care reform, and putting mustard on his hamburger. But other than the mustard, Obama is just doing what he was democratically voted in for. On the other hand, everybody also knew Bush was not too bright before the election. In both cases, it is just democracy at work, so the losers have to get over it.

In two ways, the liberals got shortchanged by the elections. Although they had the majority of the popular vote in both 2000 and 2008, the victory in 2000 went to the conservatives on a technicality, and kept them in power for 8 years. And whether the left wins or loses, the President always seems to lean more to the right when in office. The left loses ground whether they win or lose the elections.

In my opinion there was a lot of nasty rhetoric about Bush coming from the left. But the nasty rhetoric from the right against Obama is even more extreme, and has crossed at least one line, and probably a lot more. I never saw protesters with signs AND loaded guns waiting for Bush when he was president. Nobody in congress yelled out calling Bush a liar during one of his speeches.

One thing for sure, the amount of political negativity in the USA has reached damagingly high levels, even for a country that has fought a civil war and seen the Civil Rights riots of the sixties. It is still hard to believe that the differences are so fundamental that they cannot be reconciled. But there are some very well paid commentators who are spreading propaganda of hate and fear, making things as bad as they possibly can be.

Is there an antidote to the juvenile tantrums, something that will help America be great again? I see the need to make more effort to eliminate deliberate lying on television, and in the rest of the media. Yes, I know, it's all about freedom of speech. But could we at least make lying publicly something to be ashamed of instead of a means to gain more support?

Jesus had a great idea too "Do unto other as you would have them do unto you". Even Godless atheists can buy into that saying. And you Christians don't be too smug, because I happen to know some of you do not live by that even though you call yourselves followers of Jesus.

Propaganda: Use of Humour

Using humour in propaganda is a fine art, and you will often find that it falls flat with people who are not convinced. As a liberal I often find Conservative humour not only unfunny but actually kind of stomach turning. Very much how I feel when listening to a bully in the playground picking on someone. I'm pretty sure that conservatives must feel the same way when they listen to the daily show with Jon Stewart, or the Colbert Report.

Last Night, on Saturday Night Live, the opening skit was one of the funniest conservative-leaning bits I have heard in a while. It had Barack Obama at a joint press conference with the Chinese leader Hu Jintao. Hu is speaking Chinese, simultaneously translated by a young woman with a slightly whiny voice, who generally maintains her flat nasal interpreter's tone, but occasionally breaks into some yelling. It opens with Obama lecturing China about some human rights stuff etc, then Hu takes over with the first of many funny bits where he talks like a New Jersey lone shark collecting a debt. (except through an interpreter of course)

Interpreter: "I completely understand why you feel entitled to come here and lecture China on our shortcomings. After all my country does owe the United States a great deal of money. Oh wait... hold on a moment...now that I think about it, it is your country that owes us a lot of money!"

It is a real classic, one that rivals the "More cowbell" by Will Ferrell and Sarah Palin impersonations by Tina Fey. If the skit has not been taken down yet it's here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXEShSIFks


The skit pokes fun at the US for owing China so much money. It is not overtly political, but several of propaganda points are made for the conservative side.

Now here is some extreme conservative humour, in a tone that I find almost unbearable, so you are forgiven if you don't click on the link. The issue is a seventeen year old girl in line for a Sarah Palin event wearing the T-shirt "Wall Street got a 700 billion dollar bailout and all I got was this lousy T-shirt". A reporter from MSNBC interviews the girl ands asks if she is aware that Sarah Palin supported the Wall Street bailout publicly (which everyone agrees is true, but embarrassing for the Republicans.) Glenn Beck uses some of his conservative humour to turn this back against the liberals.

Glenn Beck's Show (Conservative humourist/opinion commentator)

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911190016

Propaganda: The Connection between Socialism and Racism

Many people find it strange that Obama is criticised for Socialism, because according to the normal world definition of Socialism, he is not a socialist.

Now, some liberals are suggesting that socialist is not so much referring to economic theories, that it is a racist code word for black.

It is time to investigate the truth of these conflicting claims about Socialism.

The technical meaning of socialist in the rest of the world is "government ownership of industry", and by extension, "a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended." As a political ideology, Communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism. So Communist and Socialist can be used interchangeably in some contexts. But the word "Communist" had an even more emotional meaning between 1945 and 1990, when the communist "Soviet Union" was America's most feared military enemy.

Socialism, even as a theory, was not popular with whites in the Southern US. It was a direct threat to their traditional economic system where black people did all the dirty, heavy work for the whites, and received little or no compensation for it.

The white segregationists of the south accused communists of inspiring the Negroes to rebel against the white masters in the 1950's to 1970's. Because of the alleged support that that the African Americans got from it, Socialism came to mean "racial integration and removal of class distinctions between black and white". In Apartheid South Africa, Communism was regularly cited as being the inspiration behind the black revolt, and this helped gain a fair amount of support for the Apartheid government from the conservatives in the USA.

Throughout the Civil Rights struggle, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People), which promoted equality, was accused by white southerners as being inspired by and supported by the Communists.

This book "The Ugly Truth About the NAACP" written in 1955, can be found online here at the University of Southern Mississippi Digital Library.

A Quote from Page 3:

"... the subversive designs behind the current crusade of the misnamed NAACP and its fellow travelling fronts to force upon the South the Communist-inspired doctrine of racial integration and amalgamation."

Of course, back in the sixties, Communism was far scarier than socialism. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, invoking "Communism" sounds outmoded. This means a necessary reversion to the word Socialism to describe racial equality and wealth sharing.

Socialism also has the fearful Nazi tie-in as the word Nazi evolved from "National Socialism", a fact that almost every conservative southerner could probably tell you, even though apparently 75% of Oklahoma high school students don't know who George Washington was. It is also a fact that the Nazis were socialists in name only, but this second fact is not well known in the USA.

Picture of protest signs saying "Race mixing is Communism" from the days of integration protests in the sixties. You might have to click on the image to see the word "Communist" on the protests signs.

Are We Really Going Hard Left?

Lou Dobbs was invited to the Daily Show, where he was interviewed by Jon Stewart. Jon tried to find out the answer to this question. Why does Lou Dobbs and the rest of the right wing think that Obama is a tyrant? Finally Lou settled on "Because Obama has made a hard left with this country".

Jon was wondering what makes that tyranny, if most people voted for Obama?

Here is my analysis. Politicians' campaign promises rarely match their performance. It's easier to make a promise than to carry it out. A second reason is that there is a lot of pressure from lobbyists.

If a politician promises to do a certain thing, gets elected, and does what was promised, we can call that a perfect democracy. But more often a politician promises something rosy, gets into office, and can't (or won't) deliver. Sometimes it is blamed on the preceding government that passed on some hidden problems. Sometimes it is because conditions changed since the campaign, and now the government has to improvise.

The only socialist turn Obama took that was not promised and voted for, was the stimulus package. He was elected based on some other promises he made, such as closing Guantanamo, and ending the Iraq war. He also promised health care reform, but he did not promise to wildly increase government spending. However, just before the election date, the entire world's free market economy essentially collapsed. This took place during the waning hours of the Bush presidency.

So Obama had an unusual situation to cope with. Almost at election day, a major crisis arose. And it seems that this crisis gave the election to Obama, as the Democrats were favoured as the best party to deal with economic downturns. I don't really know if the Democrats are better with the downturns, but historically, Roosevelt was a Democrat and he was credited with handling the 30's depression. And everyone observed that as soon as the economy started to go under, the polls showed an insurmountable lead building for Obama. It could all be coincidence, I suppose.

You could make a case that people voted for Obama on the assumption that he would spend more than the conservatives to bolster the economy. It was quite in character for Democrats to spend more than Republicans. And even the Republicans had decided that a lot of spending was needed, and got started with big bailouts even before Obama took over.

Now about making that "hard left turn". Obama has not really made a hard left turn. Sure, he is steering more to the left than Bush. Did anyone ever doubt that? But he did a lot of things that we could call conservative or even Republican. He has not really stopped the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, for example. He appointed many conservatives to high positions, angering a lot of lefties and liberal who voted for him, and his promise of "change".

Obama actually promised during the campaign a lot harder "turn to the left" than he delivered as President.

Just compare Obama to what happened with President Bush, when he was elected. Although the majority of the country had voted Democrat, Bush became president anyway, and immediately started doing things differently to what was promised. For example, he campaigned as an environmental candidate, but immediately rescinded the Kyoto agreement, almost as soon as he took office. I would consider that to be a hard right turn, considering the vote showed the country wanted either centre or even a little to the left. It was certainly a harder turn to the right than what he promised in the campaign.

Most of the actions of the Bush administration were to the right of the campaign promises. Similarly most of Obama's decisions, either match his promises, or fall to the right of what was promised. The only exception being the spending stimulus, which was not actually promised due to the last minute nature of the crisis. But on the other hand, Democrats would be expected spend more than the Republicans.

Although Americans keep on voting for leftish promises, the politicians keep erring to the right. This includes both Bush and Obama. Once in office, the lobby groups, the military industrial complex, all conspire to push things further to the right than the election promises called for. This pushes the country further right than the majority of voters wanted.

So why then is all the furore over Obama's "hard turn to the left"? I would guess that it is a hysteria fuelled partly by suffering in the ongoing economic crisis. People are still losing jobs and their houses, and they still don't have the health care they need. Plus there is a heavy propaganda effort by the Republicans to blame the Democrats for the economic hardships. After all, the best political strategy to regain control of the government is to blame the Democrats for the sick economy, whether it makes sense or not.

In my opinion, Lou Dobbs is wrong, there was no "hard left turn". The people spoke, and decided to go left, but the administration has not yet delivered and is now veering slightly to the right of what was promised. This rightward skew seems to be the typical result of elections whether won by Democrats or Republicans.