Go ask Alice! Well, how much does she really know? If you think this gal plays with Easter Bunnies, you got the wrong broad . . . In today’s world the fond nostalgia of innocence in the 60’s is relegated to those who lived during the “beat goes on” generation. Most self-righteous detractors of that era want to carp that the youth were hippies and were nothing more than narcissists, consumed with self indulgence. Better that they would have been yuppies and tax payers . . . follow the rules and salute the flag.
How many times have you heard this crowd of defamers, mock and condemn what they neither understand nor cherish? The irony that many of the most vocal critics are the very children of the radical generation, depicts the sorry condition of contemporary society.
When Gracie Slick belts out:
One pill makes you larger, and
One pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all.
Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.
The temptation to conclude that her White Rabbit simply extols that stimulants and altered states are the only refuge, fails to grasp the basic insight of her generation. And when she sings:
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall,
Tell’m a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.
Call Alice, when she was just small.
That only getting high provides the map to avoid the crash from chasing inaccurate schedules misses the point. And when she ends with:
One man on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you will just have some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving all alone.
Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know.
When logic, and proportion,
Have fallen smartly dead
And White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off her head,
Remember, what the dormouse said.
Keep your head, keep your head.
We should be open to this message, for it is the same that was penned by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. If that name is just as strange as this narration, how will you be able to ask Alice?
For the underdeveloped, you may recognize his pseudonym – Lewis Carroll. Chasing the rabbit is the lifelong practice of all those little Alice’s that habitually swim in a pool of tears. Running from one place to another, never knowing where you are and who to follow, and never quite able to grow up. Always eager to track the Cheshire Cat and party at the Mad Tea Gala, just hoping to win at the game of croquet. Queen of Hearts, they all wish to be, while most are resigned to be only tarts. The hearts that are stolen beat within all the Alice’s who are rightly accused of being confused and living in a dream.
Growth into Adulthood has been absent from the mainstream population. The vast majority avoid new situations and are unable to adapt, which is absolutely necessary for success and maturity. The Wonderland where they live was created for them as they cry their way on to the next encounter. Alice’s size changes brought about a change in perspective, and she sees the world from a very different view. But the herd only sees the kind of reality that has been provided to them. That perspective is the altered state, and the rabbits just keep following the lettuce their feeders lay out for them down the path of stimulants, always under the threat of being beheaded.
The Gryphon’s of this world don’t fly on Jefferson Airplanes. They mock the hares with melancholy songs as they serve up turtle soup to Alice and all her friends. Today, ‘PC’ Alice’s are never appalled with the lack of evidence or the ridiculousness of the proceedings against all the Knaves of Hearts. They are just the opposite of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. She refused to be intimidated by the bad logic of the court and the bluster of the King and Queen of Hearts. Now they fall all over themselves to be the Mad Hatter, with the drowsy courage of a Dormouse. Oh, those March Hares that drink their tea under the delusion that babies turns into pigs, as the Queen delights in ordering executions.
So we are supposed to believe that the 60’s generation ran amuck! Isn’t it the conformist that has their kids on ritalin? Aren’t the conventional the ones who take prozac? How about the orthodox that medicates themselves with every pharmacological prescription known to man? Yes, the mainstream are in need of drugs, because they are the dopes . . . However, the narcotics that they take all deaden and desensitize their humanity. They need the kind of medicine that will restore their awareness that their vaulted establishment is just as deranged and even more corrupt than its predecessor. Even ‘Joe Six Pack’ knows he is a drunk. But the retainers in the King of Hearts court are so dense, or are just plain nasty, brutal, and loud – that they are the real addicts.
The meaning of the dissent that began some four decades ago, sought to awaken a nation gone mad. The cry for personal freedom, tempered with social justice, was the byword for a generation disgusted with the hypocrisy and fraud of a system designed by elites, with the intent of enslavement. One need not follow Alan Ginsberg’s lifestyle to empathize with the “Howl” for authenticity. When the Wonderland becomes the nightmare, the flight from lunacy is the only sane route. Where is the essential dissent today? The opiate that was injected by way of government school education for today’s youth, has produced a livestock of zombies. The clones that rally and accept popular culture are a clan of “collectivists” cultists.
There are no Easter Bunnies in this tale. Peter Cottontail isn’t giving Alice choc’late . . . this season. In the “olden days” they used to inject the urine of a woman into a rabbit. If the rabbit died, the woman was definitely pregnant. If the rabbit lived, she was not. Now, all the rabbits are dead and every Alice is gravid with a newborn for the STATE, and the kids will never eat at her Restaurant. That beat of Liberty has gone out . . . What a Wonderland for those rabbits still able to jump!
SARTRE – April 20, 2003
“Where is the essential dissent today?”
It’s whispered rather than paraded down the street, because everyone knows that the tactics used in the 1960’s are futile in today’s political environment.
They spent forty years propagandizing the public since then, and because of this, the public has come to accept a society much less tolerant of individual expression, and individual freedom, and they’ve been taught to embrace a lot of tyranny, and see it as an improvement.
The dissent is present, pervasive, and growing, but this time around it’s not about marching down the street with a banner (only the gov’t-controlled “official dissent” does that), but instead it involves a real fight, and this requires a much bolder move on the part of the individual than just crying or chanting about our problems.
The dissent is buying ammo, and laying low for now. When you see it, you’ll regret that you ever asked for it, if you’re expecting it to be limited to a bunch of hippies staging a sit-in.
“…So we are supposed to believe that the 60’s generation ran amuck! Isn’t it the conformist that has their kids on ritalin?…”
I know for a fact that young mothers nowadays (and young fathers let them) will do every damned thing (and I mean every damned thing!) their doctors tell them to do (another reason C-sections have gone way up), including convincing mothers NOT to breastfeed their babies, NOT to wait to vaccinate (we waited until nearly high school age), and the media telling them NOT to homeschool…in other words, make sure your child conforms to the world (which goes against the very advice Jesus said!)
thanks for this post which again confirms non-conformity.
I put this aside and forgot about it.
Good article SARTRE. Wish id read it in ’03
is BATR your site?