'If we made it jolly we might stop the war. The thing is, when you're happy and you're smiling you don't want to kill somebody, do you? It's when you're very serious you start to think about violence and death and killing. I mean have you ever seen a person killing somebody with a smile on his face, and being happy? No! Killers are unhappy people, and they're violent because they're so unhappy and so damn serious' - god Yoko was/is such a moron, I can't understand how a sharp guy like Lennon could listen to someone spout airheaded garbage like that and not want to crawl into a hole from embarrassment.
Didn't much care for the interviewer, but the point about the ineffectiveness of Lennon & Yoko's attempt at symbolic protest seemed fair. Staying in bed for 2 weeks with a peace sign behind you, wtf was that supposed to achieve? Pure liberalism, thinking that spreading ideas or raising awareness among individuals is sufficient in itself. I know the CIA had a file on Lennon and everything, but they needn't have bothered on the strength of this...
From where I was sitting Lennon was undone. 'Give peace a chance' has to be about the most demoralising, draining and hopeless antiwar song/slogan ever.
If you were wearing 'they live' glasses the lyrics sheet would probably read 'comply, consume.'
People lounging in bed on a weekday were considered uncouth.Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
I mean to be fair to him, he was a pop star - he could have been a lot worse (look at the ones we've got now, not that I know who any of them are) - no one gives Herman's hermits this much grief. Seriously though, apparent liberalism aside, not wanting to take part in war can be pretty revolutionary in itself, ('what if there was a war and nobody came'?) - the closest we've got now is Liam gallagher saying a nice thing about Corbyn (and noel saying a horrible one) (I jest, we have political artists/activists - just struggle to think of any mainstream ones).
Anyway, seems like a good excuse to repost this video of ben Shapiro being owned by Lennon from beyond the grave:
.. when there may have been some hope that doing something was not just a personal moral stance but actually might make a difference to the ‘arc of history’. That the trajectory out of WW2 was sustainable. It was an aberration.
Re: Seems very 1969
Posted by Sinister Burt on July 6, 2022, 1:50 pm, in reply to "Seems very 1969"
Worldwide there were quite a few upheavals in the late 60s - the arc of history would have been quite different without the 60s and the 70s imo - albeit it was mostly social/cultural things in the uk (important stuff though, like the relative loosening of class structures (albeit replaced with so called 'meritocracy'), feminism, minority and gay rights being taken more seriously, unions continuing to increase their power etc) - the marches of 68 did have a lasting effect in various ways imo - as zhou enlai said when asked what the effects of the french revolution would be, 'it's too early to tell' (he wasn't talking about the original revolution as is often thought, but the paris 68 'revolution' (doesn't sound as gnomic and wise then (or as much like orientalism)) (there was also the cultural revolution going on in china at that time (didn't sound too much fun for eg teachers)) - maybe it was the sunspots (don't!).
I'd say the bigger factor in that hopefulness (in the west) not panning out was the fightback against the post war consensus, and the 'crisis of democracy' that was pushed in reaction to it, leading to neoliberalism (from it's glorious birth on september 11, 1973). They chucked us some welfare when they thought communism/socialism was a threat, but have been trying to reverse it all since the threat diminished - they've always got tame mixed economy/social democracy to fall back on as a safety valve when the oiks get too uppity, but they'd rather push forward to the neo-feudalism these days it seems. However, i think that it should still give us some hope that the bastards have to keep their propaganda and mind-mashing efforts up continuously to maintain their system - they're running to stand still (how's that for some hopium?
on July 3, 2022, 5:46 pm