Generalize 3rd hand a bit more and..
You can pretend that "Muricans today generally are" as alive? focused, interested? and involved - as in late '60's through much of the '70s. Really Ben, I don't think you can wing this one, the 'mood' of an era which you might have noticed ending -from afar- at about 6 years of age.
'Hippy' was transmogrified from the prior Kerouac, 'Beat' stereotypes, became the grab-bag label one could fill with any uncomfortable, uncouth qualities one planned next to dis (as one puffed-up one's own Bag du jour).
Hell, I recall as a 17 yo kid with my first scooter.. (a snazzy Museum of Modern Art-grade Lambretta 125 LD) bumping into a guy who was admiring it parked outside a local beanery - in the Tenderloin dist. of SF. Said he was an artist (! WTF did I know about being 'an artist' ??) I guess for sentimentality from Roma days and a nostalgic ride? - he hopped on back and showed me some of what later became Cathedrals of the Beats et al:
The Black Cat cafe, Ferlinghetti's bookstore, folks hanging about. He split on encountering some friends. I wandered, had a few naive conversations - learned an iota about whole groups I'd never encountered. (Turned out he really Was an artist - one Ken Potter, whose work I saw years later. Obviously a bunch of other folk thought he was, too).
Point? That was a minor Presence + first-degree hearsay and.. I don't know shit (save what I've heard and read) about: what I Saw, about the milieu or especially - who these people really Were. Then and later. Not from my experience, even after some later trips back. It was a mere taste albeit an eye-opening one. From outside, and not only via age.
I don't think you know any more about 'Hippies' or their natural antagonists - either. And especially not about - their 'average degree of hypocrisy'? VS 'the norm'. Not because you have it some% wrong but because - it's all just remote hearsay.
And you don't know shit about the 'peace' movement and its range of participants.. from the casual to the fanatical. Either. Logic isn't enough here.
Not like you to take the EZ Murican homogenization tack, so readily.
Ashton
