Did the counterculture seek from the start the destruction of America?
Anthony Damato writes:
Did you read that Bill Clinton said America won’t be a European based majority nation by 2040 and that this is a good thing in an interdependent world?
The hippie generation, in which he was immersed, were not just interested in equality for blacks after all. They sought from the beginning the destruction of European based civilization, from at least 1964 on. It is illustrated perfectly by verses from the “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” Hair.
For example, this verse:
We starve—look
At one another
Short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation
Of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes
Then of course, a customary tribute to Timothy Leary:
Our space songs on a spider web sitar
Life is around you and in you
Answer for Timothy Leary, dearie
But the whopper of hope, the Ode to Joy of the nihilists is their utopian anthem, also from Hair:
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
In this, its masterwork, the counterculture invoked the death of America without once considering themselves to be agents of that death. Yet they failed to consider what their utopian hope held for the people of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, once the awful reality of war to keep evil in check, was replaced by hope in human understanding.
They are tools actually, of LSD, and Marxist propaganda, which made them the most potent Fifth Column ever to be inserted into the body politic of any state. Their real agenda, far removed and wildly more triumphant that they could have ever hoped, is the reality of a tribal America. Now, as a monkey-see-monkey-do consequence, self inflicted de-Europeanized Islamic Europe. Not that Europe didn’t make its bed with the Islamic world before the browning of America, they did. But the symbiosis of Euro-American cultural and commercial interplay encouraged anti-whiteness as cool and the worship of the Other as beneficent, hence the engineered demise of white rule and white people by whites, as they are led to be absorbed towards what can only be thought of as a genocide, validated of course, by Obama.
June 20
Ron K. writes:
Someone just teased me on another blog for exhibiting a dismissive attitude toward rock along with an encyclopedic knowledge of it. Well, Mr Damato has me beat by a mile.
He can quote long passages of the lyrics of Hair, which leads me to suspect he was once in the cast!
The fact is, almost nobody paid attention to the words. Hair got into the air and people’s heads thanks to the five or six catchy tunes Galt MacDermot slipped into his otherwise African-inspired rhythmic score. The show spawned almost as many radio hits as Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Chorus Line, and Annie combined. It was not the “Fifth Column” that did it, but the Fifth Dimension.
I bet if you challenged anyone to quote the songs, the most you’d get is that opening verse from “Aquarius,” and the “bliddy-bloop-bloop-bleep” from “Good Morning Starshine.” Oh, and little Susan Cowsill piping out, ” … and spaghetti!”
So the music is all there is to the show, and it comes straight from the bourgeoisie. This is on Wikipedia:
MacDermot’s lifestyle was in marked contrast to his co-creators: “I had short hair, a wife, and, at that point, four children, and I lived on Staten Island.” “I never even heard of a hippie when I met Rado and Ragni.”
Two sad facts about Hair: It was the last Broadway show to make a significant dent in the hit parade. And, MacDermot being from Montreal, it was probably the height of Canada’s contribution to musical theater. (Or “theatre.”) I’ll be happy to be corrected on either of those points.
LA replies:
I agree. I was surprised by Anthony’s treatment of it, but I felt he gave an angle that was worth posting.
Ron K. replies:
I said MacDermot was Canada’s greatest contribution to Broadway, but I’d forgotten about Mark Steyn!
(Though, as an amateur musicologist myself, I have to say I’ve been consistently impressed with Steyn’s familiarity with the minutiae of the genre.)
LA replies:
Well, musicals and theater were Steyn’s main subject during the earlier part of his career in England.
James N. writes:
Well, Messrs. Ragni and Rado had a much more focused song than Age of Aquarius in their American Tribal Love-Rock musical. This is a major full-cast number from “Hair” celebrating interracial sex, with extra emphasis on the femininity of the “white boys”:
Black boys are delicious
Chocolate flavored love
Licorice lips like candy
Keep my cocoa handy
I have such a sweet tooth
When it comes to love
Once I tried a diet
Of quiet, rest, no sweets
But I went nearly crazy
And I went clearly crazy
Because I really craved for
My chocolate flavored treats
Black boys are nutritious
Black boys fill me up
Black boys are so damn yummy
They satisfy my tummy
I have such a sweet tooth
When it comes to love
Black black black black
black black black black
Black boys
White boys are so pretty
Skin as smooth as milk
White boys are so pretty
Hair like Chinese silk
White boys give me goose bumps
White boys give me chills
When they touch my shoulder
That’s the touch that kills
Well, my momma calls “em lilies
I call “em Piccadillies
My daddy warns me stay away
I say come on out and play
White boys are so groovy
White boys are so tough
Every time that they’re near me
I just can’t get enough
White boys are so pretty
White boys are so sweet
White boys drive me crazy
Drive me indiscreet
White boys are so sexy
Legs so long and lean
Love those sprayed-on trousers
Love the love machine
My brother calls “em rubble
That’s my kind of trouble
My daddy warns me “no no no”
But I say “White boys go go go”
White boys are so lovely
Beautiful as girls
I love to run my fingers
And toes through all their curls
Give me a tall
A lean
A sexy
A sweet
A pretty
A juicy
White boy
Black boys!
White boys!
Black boys!
White boys!
Mixed media!
Jeff in England writes:
Only a smallish segment of the hardcore New left (Weatherman etc.) in the late Sixties sought the destruction of America.
Earlier on in the Sixties, the original founders of SDS were trying to further democracy and reform America, not destroy it. Most of the mass of SDS were NOT into destroying America.
The Hippies rarely if ever talked about destroying America, despite your quotes from HAIR.
The Yippies (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin etc.) proclaimed their love of America.
Tim Leary focused on changing consciousness, not destroying America.
Any “destruction” of America talk by any segment of the Counterculture (including the New left) was only put forth for a very short time.
Ken Hechtman writes:
“Hair” was never a product of the counter-culture. “Hair” was Broadway making fun of the counter-culture. It was only later that hippies who didn’t get the joke adopted it as their own.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 18, 2009 01:48 PM | Send