Nothing wrong with repeating the messaging again and again and again -

"...you know, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

It's good to remember, and to get reminded, especially if it feels as though you're surrounded by nothing but wrong-wing-all-the-time talk, cable, TV, and other outlets. Sometimes self-reinforcement helps to keep the spine stiff. Especially when we can't count on our reps or our media to tell the truth and put outfits like the NRA into proper perspective.

But you're correct - it's annoying. I'd love to pretend they don't exist and don't indulge in talking about it. But as Mad-Eye Moody always warned Harry Potter, along with "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!" - "You've GOT to KNOW!"

Welcome to DU, IrishAyes!

Glad you're here! It was reassuring to get the voice of someone as prominent and mainstream as David Letterman - bringing that story about poor Seamus back out into the public awareness. mitt would certainly have preferred that the story be lost in obscurity. Dave the dog-lover wasn't having any of that! I once imagined a bumper sticker that would read "My dog won't let me vote for romney."

To me it wasn't just the surface incident in and of itself. For me it was - this is the regard he shows to other living things, purportedly even those he says are like family members. It just bothered me at a very deep level - that the dog was outside strapped to the roof, and the luggage and supplies - the STUFF - the inanimate non-living THINGS - was safely stowed inside the car. WTF?????? That just doesn't make sense to me, and the cavalier nature of his reaction to it and response to it when questioned, told me all I needed to know about his inner motivations and gut instincts, what kind of man he is, and thus what kind of president he might be. By thy default position art thou known.

Makes perfect sense.

Every increasingly older decade is being redefined as "the new __", example: "60 is the new 50 (or even 40-45)" or "40 is the new 30." And every one of those older decades has been the leading edge of the increasing age that we boomers are reaching. The sheer numbers of us moving upward through the demographic divides have determined that social clout.

All in all, it's pretty damn fascinating to watch, particularly as one IN that boomer wave. It's humbling, and even a little unsettling, to think - "sheesh - we are LIVING this. This is US."

Where do I sign????

mahony should be in jail! For perjury, obstruction of justice, and being an accessory to multiple crimes. At the very least! He has NO business helping to "decide" who the next pope will be. NONE!

Thoroughly agree, ohheckyeah!

And thank you DonRedwood - look what you started!!!

I will be revisiting and enjoying this thread many times, I suspect.

Kicked, Rec'd, and Bookmarked!

I'm gonna be 60 this year and the same is true - I'm more progressive now than ever before.

DEFINITELY more outraged at the so-called "Right" than ever, too.

And I wonder about those old angry white dudes who are always shown at teabagger rallies or town hall meetings, yelling and ranting about this or that - mainly something extremely NON-hippie. I find myself wondering if they were once more mellow and got mentally hijacked through the years, or were always that ill-behaved, cold-hearted, mean-spirited, and sometimes just plain scary.

My boyfriend back then made the jump to lightspeed a few years ago. We'd long since lost touch. But I used to be fascinated by stuff he'd say. He was very political back then. I didn't know most of the stuff he knew about, and I always wanted to hear more. VERY political. Read a lot - mainly the alternative press which I had yet to discover. Made a serious ongoing study of it. He knew a lot, and he always used to know or have an understanding of whatever it was - three or four layers deep. I LOVED listening to him talk and rant about it. Spoke a lot about the war, the fiends and fiendishness behind it, Nixon, and the system. GOD he hated Nixon. Most of us did but he did with fire in his belly. Used to say that's how he prolonged not having an orgasm too soon. He'd try to think about Nixon.

At his service, one of his friends from later in life told me he spoke to her about me quite a few times, and evidently had found my blogs online when I used to write political opinion stuff every week. She said he liked what I wrote - and BTW - a lot of it was stuff I learned or began to research via DU, btw. Made me feel like I'd arrived as a political analyst. I think he'd have been be proud of me!

GOOD one, TWT! It IS a state of mind. That really nails it.

Welcome to DU, RILib!

Glad you're here!

Sometimes I feel as though this whole site is an exultation of aging hippies! Or however you pluralize it.

Did both.

Took lots of looks from both. In turn. The Mod years came from the Mods and Rockers in London during the beginning of the British Invasion that the Beatles started in America in early 1964 - when they first appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and were introduced to most of America for the first time.And that whole mini-skirt and go-go boots and Mary Quant (who designed this leather cap that John Lennon always wore) and Yardley of London makeup and Jean Shrimpton and the era of Twiggy happened then, too. Remember Patti Boyd on the cover of the "Birds of Britain" book? "Birds" was another word for girl.

1967 WAS a transitional year. Go-go boots didn't last, although minis sure did. The Beatles had discovered drugs by then and their music had changed. And they'd stopped touring and stayed home more, or traveled only where they chose. George Harrison went to India and brought the Maharishi and Transcendental Meditation into the pop culture. And suddenly Indian garb and fabrics and designs and patterns were everywhere. Maybe that helped influence the more hippie-esque style of clothing, too. For me, it was simple - I didn't have the figure to carry off Twiggy-wear, and the longer flowing robes that came with the hippie era were a good reason not to wear that damn girdle anymore!!!!!

Hey, I never made it to San Francisco either, and I live in L.A.!

But I'm reading back through this thread and just savoring every little bite!

I was pretty much on the far end of it, but I loved the free-thinking and the whole idea of a counter-culture - especially as I was starting to wake up and to become more and more uncomfortable with what our leaders and the older generation were doing. I found myself wanting to stand with the protesters and marchers in the streets rather than the politicians and "respectable" elders (mainly men) with their wide-lapels and double-breasted suits and "long" sideburns so they'd look younger, even though their policies weren't.

I was in all-girl Catholic school clear through til my high school graduation. You can just imagine the repression! MAN did some of my classmates come out of there mixed up. Me, too, I must say. But I think I'd found which way I was instinctively leaning. I had to wear a panty girdle too. DEAR GOD - I can personally understand torture! I was somewhat plump, so my mother insisted on my wearing one. At school we wore uniforms so eight hours of the day (and sometimes more), that was my mode of dress. I think because I was heavier that made me gravitate toward somewhat flamboyant personal adornment as far as things like shawls and capes and scarves that would cover some of my figure failures. I looked for, and found, all sorts of creative ways to hide. Dressing that way enabled me to hide the bad parts of me, and they were something of a statement piece anyway - so they weren't just seen as fat cover-ups. I still collect them to this day.

And that was just one way. I hid under my hair, too. Hated my face and my big nose and the fact that I needed small tiles of glass to be able to see through, so I grew my bangs down as far as I could get away with, and let everything else grow too. Sometimes I'd let everything grow and part my hair in the middle, but it'd still hang down in my face. There were aspects of the "hippie chick" style that seemed to speak for me in ways I didn't feel confident to say for myself. It encouraged me to - well, maybe rebel, but mainly to look differently from my always-well-dressed mom who cared deeply about people's physical looks. She'd never adopt that style, and I found it extremely comfortable. And I could be creative and fancy, too. I could overdress if I wanted to.

I was enthralled by that photo of Janis Joplin, nude, her long wavy wild hair cascading down over her shoulders and down her back, her bare front covered with long beaded necklaces. Those necklaces! Every so often you'd spot a nipple. But those many necklaces. I was ENTHRALLED! And sometimes she'd have feathers (or was it a feather boa) hanging down through her hair. INTOXICATING! And she adorned herself that way because she was asserting her individuality and her creativity, her own personhood of her own design, defining and expressing her own uniqueness, and I was just intoxicated by what that said to me.

And if you feel moved to look and present yourself differently, then maybe what it does is free you, or give you permission, to explore other ways in which you might be different from those sharing your space. It helped to underscore how else I was different from my parents and friends and some of my school mates and other peers. In catechism class, I felt free to meditate on these alternative feelings I was having while listening to the visiting priest or one of the nuns expound on life for the rest of us. How they'd lecture and scold about morality and marriage and parenthood and sex and one's already-assigned sexual roles and behaviors, when they personally knew and could relate to NONE of those things. It made me feel free to begin to embrace a political leaning different from my parents. My dad was a Republican. Wasn't so in love with the Vietnam War, but voted for them because he was a business man and hated paying taxes. I found I kept gravitating over to the Democratic Party ideas instead. Not just to rebel but because that was already in me and I was just starting to recognize it.

The whole "hippie chick" thing helped me, I guess, to free me to figure out a little bit of who I was. Not just whose daughter I was or whose grade in school I was or anything like that. And I kept gravitating away from what that "establishment" was and stood for and dictated from.

Funny - you know the old cliche - "clothes make the man"? You know how actors sometimes talk about the costumes they wear in their roles, and how putting on those clothes actually helps them feel more like the characters they're playing? While I was still working, I interviewed so many actors who'd inevitably talk about that. How putting that suit or that gown on suddenly made you walk differently or your posture became different or you suddenly felt like adopting some affectation or way of speaking etc etc. Dressing like a "hippie chick" was one way in for me, into that whole greater mindset of those just a few years older than I was. To reach it, somehow, and connect with it, and eventually meld with it. It started with beads and shawls and long heavy hair, and went straight to my head. And my heart. And my me.