Worthless hippies...

[Konrad]

Those hippies at Google....

They can honor Martin Luther King Jr. day, Earth Day, Louis Braille, etc., but...

Today is June 6.

D-Day.

And they honor:  Tetris, the video game.

A hundred bucks says there isn't a single one of them that served.

(I am so glad I am not from the 60's.)

If at no other time, at least remember them today.

Yes, I'm a little miffed and ranting right now.

[Greg Luckett]

Konrad,

Don't let the world's AHs get to you.  There are very few of us veterans compared to the total population of "citizens", most never served and do not care, unless their butts are in danger.  As a veteren, I am grateful whenever someone does care.  After the "coming home" in 72 from Vietnam, I am just glad they are not sneering  or spitting currently.

[Steve Day]

At church on Memorial Day weekend, the pastor asked all who were veterans to stand to be recognized. I was shocked at how few of us stood, probably around 10-15%. Konrad is correct about so few people serving.

Just about every "news" program I listened to on the TV or the radio this morning had something on D-Day, which is encouraging.

All too many of the people today have not served in the military. Additionally, most of the people graduating from high school and college have no concept of what happened during World War II and the importance of those events.

Frankly, it makes my heart hurt.

Steve

[Hirilonde]

I'm not sure I understand how hippies and D Day are related, but I see no good coming out of thinking things are as black and white as some of what has been said here.

[Greg Luckett]

[quote author=Hirilond

[Ken_Potts]

  Dave,

  The hippies are the children of the generation that survived D-Day.  I think maybe that's the relationship.  They grew up hearinng about what a bad thing war is and then somehow misdirected their anger in the 60s and 70s.

  Greg - I'm sorry for being a non-veteran.

[Greg Luckett]

I thought I had posted another msg about D-day and the veterans I have known and what was learned from them, but it has disappeared.  I very seriously doubt the hippies were in response to what was learned from WW2 vets, since the vast majority of my generation was not "hippies".  They were probably a response to the Cold War, Vietnam, and the military industrial complex that Eisenhour warned about, not to mention drugs.  We should always be cautious of using labels for people to group them into hate-able groups.  The news media and the power lords love labeling folks like that.

Don't be sorry for not being a veteran, but instead remember that veterans, like policemen and firemen, deal with living a very different life from those who never do.  It can make understanding between folks more difficult, not impossible.

[Greg Luckett]

[quote author=Hirilond

[Hirilonde]

Yes Ken, I know, I am one.  But not all of us misdirected our anger towards the veterans.  And not all veterans misdirect their anger towards those who work for peace.  Life isn't as black and white as some might like to think it is.

[Greg Luckett]

[quote author=Hirilond

[Bud_Wilson]

Gentlemen please calm down and here O Bud then you can give me hell for a day or two. I am use to it I here someones $hit every day. No one said all hippies were bad or all vets were good. I am a vet with 5 years service I have also wore bell bottom pants and puff sleve shirts with sandels long hair and maybe beeds. I have also seen what war is like first hand as an enlisted man. Which make no decisions about where they are going or who they will attact or attact them. All you can do is try to keep you and you mens ass alive and go home. Hopfully in one peace and not in a box. It is a bitter pill to go through such and return home to be spit on or urian in a rubber thrown at you and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth for a long time. It takes a better man than I to have no hards feelings. Please remember the vets served you the people of the USA.  Peace Bud.

P.S. Konrad put down that damn stick and quit sturring that slop jar.  Now I am off the soap box. Bud.

[Frank Hagan]

I think the guys who started Google are the sons-of-hippies, maybe, but definitely out of the age group for the hippies.  My BIL was a hippie, and he's 60.  He was in San Francisco during the "summer of love" and marched in Washington DC in the famous march for peace.  Oh yeah, his dad also worked on the Lockheed skunkworks project, helping design some very famous military planes.  He didn't serve, but he honors his dad who contributed so much (and had also served in WWII). 

Most "hippies" were the sons and daughters of the WWII generation.  The fact that our parents never talked much about what they did, and our utter stupidity, led us to "reject" that which we did not know.  I am eternally grateful that I started reading history books about WWII when my dad was still around, and I was able to learn a bit about what they did.

They saved the world, came home, and rebuilt a nation.  And they never talked much about it, until you asked.

My father landed in Normandy on Omaha Beach in August of that year, so he missed the horrible carnage of D-Day.  He went on to see more combat as a member of the Army's Timber Wolf division than any other front line outfit (there were some support positions that had more total time in theater).  He fought across France (still in ruins) and into Holland where he was buried alive by German tanks.  He waited what seemed like hours as the tanks rumbled over him, knowing that if one ran over the clumps of clay that formed a column 4 feet above him he would be crushed to death.  When he dug out after the noise stopped he heard an odd scratching sound.  One of his fellow survivors was trying to dig out with his mess spoon because his shovel had been blown up by the shell blast.  He dug him out.  That night, only 8 men from his company or group of 150 made it; and only 2 were not bleeding (him and the medic). 

He was a staff Sargent in charge of a squad, and he lost most of his men 3 times.  I have a little roster book he had, with the men's names and serial numbers.  Most just have a line through them, but on others there are notes. 

One time, they all dived off a raised road in Holland as German tanks came.  The Germans captured all the men on the right side of the road; my dad had jumped left.  The Timber Wolf guys fought at night, and tried to find shelter during the day, "owning the night".  He crossed the bridge at Remagen, helped liberate one of the concentration camps, and then waited on the outskirts of Berlin for the Russians.  His company wasn't chosen to meet the Russians, so they held back while better looking men, whose ribs were still hidden behind some body fat, were moved into position.  I asked him if that bothered him, and he said all they wanted was to stop fighting and go home.

They all refused medals, then regretted it when they learned the medals would have given them "points" toward going home.  He slept on top of a piano on the crossing back to New York; the cruise ship that was modified to be a transport was so crowded he couldn't stand to be below.  In New York, they gave them a meal in a mess hall, and most of the men got sick; the real milk and butter was too rich for their systems, and they drank and ate too fast.

He had a furlough and then it was off to the Pacific, and he told my mother he would die there.  He couldn't see making it through two wars.  The atomic age intervened, and life started anew for a man who would never forget, but never much talked about it either.  Until you asked.

He did lie to me, though.  He had told me the heroes were the ones that died over there, but that wasn't true.  There were a lot of heroes who came back to their sweethearts, got a job, and started families.  I'm glad I realized my dad was wrong, and that he was one of those heroes, before he passed away. 

The WWII vets are dying at a rate of 1,000 per day now.  16 million came back from WWII, but now there's only about 2.5 million. It would have been good for Google to remember them.  Its better for us to remember them.

[Ken_Potts]

  Dave and Greg - I didn't mean to send ill-will toward either of you.  All I was trying to say is that nothing happens in a vacuum.  I was trying in a tongue-in-cheek way to draw a connection between hippies and D-Day.  I really think the only connection that can be drawn is that the hippies were the kids of the folks who lived through WW2 (Okay, those would have been the older parents).  I think Konrad's mention of hippies was more of a generic reference to left-leaning people who don't have a lot of experience with the real world (in saying this I don't intend any insult to the teenagers of the late 60s...)

  As a lifelong civilian I have demonstrated against a war (but never against a soldier) and I've been in a firefight (yes, only one).  Just like everyone else who has ever lived I have a unique set of experiences and maybe that's the only thing we all have in common.  I hate the fact that innocent people died on the beaches of Normandy and I hate the fact that good people were vilified upon returning home from very difficult times in Vietnam and I also hate the fact that there are people going through life or death battles on our own streets in the US every day.

  Veteran or civilian, we're all Americans (and humans) and we all have our individual trials.  As a lifelong civilian (the Air Force wasn't interested and informed me that none of the other services would be either) I took a little umbrage at being called a "citizen" (in quotes, as if I'm not a real citizen).  In today's world a soldier will not get far without a factory - Period, And I've spent almost my entire adult life in factories.  I don't feel good when I hear a vet belittling my contribution to society simply because I only design and build the machinery that builds the weapons he carries into combat and the vehicles he rides to safety.  We're all in it together and I have full respect for the men and women who step up to defend our country.  I just wish I got a little respect in return.  Yes, that's way over the top dramatic on my part, sorry, just don't call me a "citizen" (in quotes) when I'm exactly as much of a citizen as you are.

  Greg - I am absolutely positive that you're a wonderful person.  I've seen your many posts over the years and I'm more sure that you're a good guy than some people who I know in person and like.  The "citizen" comment just got my hackles up even though I know full well you weren't talking about me.  I hope you don't take my rant the wrong way.  You are correct that soldiers and policemen and firemen have different life experiences than others.  But I don't think a job description should entitle anyone to special status.  Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances - We're all equal here.  Try spending 40 years in a textile mill or a coal mine or a brothel.  Everybody's got some bad stuff to deal with.

[Greg Luckett]

...Try spending 40 years in a textile mill or a coal mine or a brothel.  Everybody's got some bad stuff to deal with.

Hmmm, 40 years in a brothel?  Now that has got to be a good story ( my fantasies).

Incidently, I am a late 60s teenager.  My father and mother are in their 80s. Dad was 17 when he was involved with the liberation of Manilla, and then 18 when we occupied Japan.  My Uncle Fred, died from leukemia from exposure to radiation from nuclear bombs in Japan and later testing here.  He was a private in the Army Engineers, from D-day to VE day he was a leutenant.  Attrition has that effect.  My Uncle Ken, a Pacific theater Navy vet, died in his thirties due to liver failure from working with chemicals.  Many of my peers in the Navy are either dead now or dying from things we were exposed to during the Vietnam war.  Pay was low and benifits sucked.  My civilian friends that I grew up with were working in the factories, being paid very well, living well, raising families, and home every night.  Almost zero family seperation.  In 10 years in the Navy, I was gone most of 7 years.  This is why I left the service to raise my children.

[Guest LeeH]

My dad flew one of these Kingfishers in WWII. It was catapulted off the deck of a cruiser - zero to sixty in 30 or 40 feet. Then it was picked up out of the sea after scouting missions. This was near the Aleutians and other places in the N Pacific.

Several of his kids went on to, and still, embody what you might call hippie values. I don't know if we could be considered particularly "worthless," and that would be a very hard adjective to attach to the Google billionaires, too. I believe, in their case, they're jus taking a vastly more international view of things. I don't agree with it or believe it to be very beneficial to America as we know it, but it's easy to understand when you consider they're doing business in every country in the world.

[Greg Luckett]

And I am thankfull to the civilians who keep the engine of democracy alive so we can afford to equip our military men....

I wonder how many of them are gone now too?  So many jobs have been shifted to China, India, and other places.

[Konrad]

I believe, in their case, they're jus taking a vastly more international view of things. I don't agree with it or believe it to be very beneficial to America as we know it, but it's easy to understand when you consider they're doing business in every country in the world.

I'm pretty sure that D-Day was an international event.  Benefitting other countries far more than the U.S.

At any rate, don't let my little rant cause a rift here in this online community.

To me, it was a poor choice to recognize Tetris when they had a great opportunity that day to say Thank You.

[Bruce Kershaw]

Frank said...

They saved the world, came home, and rebuilt a nation.  And they never talked much about it, until you asked.

I think that sums up the character of a generation

[Greg Luckett]

Hippies = Geeks?  Ok, I guess I will buy that, but do geeks have a "lets make the world better" philosopy? :-\

[Frank Hagan]

I don't know ... I live in a Navy town, and I've got to tell you, I see plenty of young people that make me very hopeful for our future.  I think they are better than we were at that age.  I'm at the end of the baby boom at 53, and my generation was a definite step down from my father's ... but I think the young people today have "the stuff".