AHC:50s,60s and 70s all ruled by hippes.

woweed

Inspired by a thread from Emperor Norton that's link eludes me at the moment. Said thread was about how the 60s as we think of them historically could have lasted through the 70s. My challenge is even harder: make the 1950s, 60s and 70s all times of revolution, hippies and liberalism. However, the aforesaid things must start in the Early 50s which is to say it must start between 1/1/1950 and 12/31/1953 and must end in the late 70s which is to say between 1/1/1977 and 12/31/1979. There must be all Liberal presidents throughout this and if they are Conservative, they must be moderate conservatives along the lines of Rockefeller or Eisenhower. With having to cause 30 years of revolution, you certainly have your work cut out for you.
My own personal POD would be Adlai Stevenson winning the 1952 presidential election.
 
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Realpolitik

Banned
woweed said:
Inspired by a thread from Emperor Norton that's link eludes me at the moment. Said thread was about how the 60s as we think of them historically could have lasted through the 70s. My challenge is even harder: make the 1950s, 60s and 70s all times of revolution, hippies and liberalism. However, the aforesaid things must start in the Early 50s which is to say it must start between 1/1/1950 and 12/31/1953 and must end in the late 70s which is to say between 1/1/1977 and 12/31/1979. There must be all Liberal presidents throughout this and if they are Conservative, they must be moderate conservatives along the lines of Rockefeller or Eisenhower. With having to cause 30 years of revolution, you certainly have your work cut out for you.
My own personal POD would be Adlai Stevenson winning the 1952 presidential election.
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To do this, I think you must butterfly anti-Communism in the US, which will be hard given post WWII geopolitics.
 

Mark E.

Actually, the Beatniks of the fifties were the forerunners of the hippies. Given the environment of the time, they were more reclusive and non-involved. In OTL, it was early 1954 when Edward R. Murrow attacked Senator Joe McCarthy’s purges against communists, generally in entertainment. Can McCarthy be called to task early, say 1952? Hippies in the fifties would need a standard bearer and I can name a good one: Albert Einstein. The Korean War would end in 1953. Einstein was definitely anti-war; consider his letter to FDR. He was offered the presidency of Israel but refused. And his dress? Look at his hair. He refused to wear socks. And women? He was once implicated to violate the Mann Act. I’m not sure this is an exact quote, but Einstein did say something like “I can not describe the terrible weapons with which World War III might be fought. But I can tell you what they will be for World War IV: sticks and stones.”

Television would blanket the US in 1953. Soon, recording technology would preserve popular music for posterity in its original form, for the first time. I don’t think I would change the presidency; Earl Warren needs to hand down Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The founders of the Beat Generation (not named Beatniks until Sputnik in 1957) were mostly born before 1935, so they were raised old school. They would not be as radical as the hippies of the sixties, but they could bring social activism. What if Stevenson becomes president after the 1956 election?
 
Maeglin

Maeglin

OTL 1950s Western Conservatism was a desire for stability after the trauma of the Depression and War years (the 1960s were then a reaction against the 1950s).

So you need to butterfly away the Great Depression and WWII. The latter largely hinges on the former, so if you can find a way of stopping October 1929, you get a less traumatic 1930s and 1940s, which means by the time the 1950s rolls around, you're dealing with a generation or more of people whose economic needs have been largely met, so social issues rise to the fore.
 

woweed

Maeglin said:
OTL 1950s Western Conservatism was a desire for stability after the trauma of the Depression and War years (the 1960s were then a reaction against the 1950s).

So you need to butterfly away the Great Depression and WWII. The latter largely hinges on the former, so if you can find a way of stopping October 1929, you get a less traumatic 1930s and 1940s, which means by the time the 1950s rolls around, you're dealing with a generation or more of people whose economic needs have been largely met, so social issues rise to the fore.
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That works, but i'm pretty sure the butterfly effect would mean that by 1954 history would be completely unrecognizable to us.
 

Mark E.

The OTL counter-culture, or hippie movement was a direct reaction to the Vietnam War. Their ranks swelled as the protests mounted. Once their causes were over, they dispersed and only a token cadre went to the communes. You are not going to make hippies out of Korean War veterans. You can, though move culture and politics to the left.

The biggest reactionary, rightward movements of the period were the McCarthy purges against communists. Get rid of McCarthy around 1951 and issues change. How? Suppose he does something to offend the Mob. After all, the Mafia flourished after prohibition, through the shortages of the depression and rationing of the WWII era. Starting in the fifties, and full scale in the sixties, their domains would become more difficult to control with supermarkets and suburban expansion. I can not pinpoint why, but the Mob would have the stealth and resources to pull off a hit that foul play might not even be investigated. So the Red Scare is less scary.

When Stalin dies in 1953, suppose he is succeeded by somebody other than Khrushchev, somebody who considers the Cold War as "too much Stalinism" and that threat is less of a factor. With communism less of a fear, veterans of the Korean War feel they are getting less credit for their sacrifices. They already call their own cause "America's forgotten war."

We generally regard the generation who fought WWII or Korea collectively as the "greatest" or "silent" generation. Suppose we drive a bit of a generation gap between the two, as veterans of Korea feel more the way the Vietnam vets felt in the sixties. More would join or support the Beat Generation and perhaps make it more vocal.

So, with primary changes between 1950 and 1953, I think we can create a leftward shift that may not be like the hippie counter-culture we know, but might very well resemble it from the viewpoint of somebody born before 1920.
 

woweed

Mark E. said:
The OTL counter-culture, or hippie movement was a direct reaction to the Vietnam War. Their ranks swelled as the protests mounted. Once their causes were over, they dispersed and only a token cadre went to the communes. You are not going to make hippies out of Korean War veterans. You can, though move culture and politics to the left.

The biggest reactionary, rightward movements of the period were the McCarthy purges against communists. Get rid of McCarthy around 1951 and issues change. How? Suppose he does something to offend the Mob. After all, the Mafia flourished after prohibition, through the shortages of the depression and rationing of the WWII era. Starting in the fifties, and full scale in the sixties, their domains would become more difficult to control with supermarkets and suburban expansion. I can not pinpoint why, but the Mob would have the stealth and resources to pull off a hit that foul play might not even be investigated. So the Red Scare is less scary.

When Stalin dies in 1953, suppose he is succeeded by somebody other than Khrushchev, somebody who considers the Cold War as "too much Stalinism" and that threat is less of a factor. With communism less of a fear, veterans of the Korean War feel they are getting less credit for their sacrifices. They already call their own cause "America's forgotten war."

We generally regard the generation who fought WWII or Korea collectively as the "greatest" or "silent" generation. Suppose we drive a bit of a generation gap between the two, as veterans of Korea feel more the way the Vietnam vets felt in the sixties. More would join or support the Beat Generation and perhaps make it more vocal.

So, with primary changes between 1950 and 1953, I think we can create a leftward shift that may not be like the hippie counter-culture we know, but might very well resemble it from the viewpoint of somebody born before 1920.
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Now that is a good idea. Hell, any variation of the phrase
Mark E. said:
Get rid of McCarthy
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is a good thing in my opinion:cool:
 
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Richmond_Pope

The Pill appears on the market in 1950 instead of 1960. Once you remove the link between sex and marriage, young folk start questioning a whole lot of other societal mandates. The role of women. Why there has to be a peacetime draft (after the Korean War.) Does a man actually have to wear a suit and tie everywhere?

The US is an extremely wealthy country at this point. You nudge college students into wanted to enjoy that wealth for a little while longer - instead of rushing off into the 9-to-5 world - and everything is up for grabs.
 

Brundlefly

I agree with Mark E., you basically had the Beats as the proto-hippies, though they were not mainstream in the 1950s.

Liberal presidents wouldn't be necessary in the first place, as a huge protest movement actually requires something to rebel against. That could be something like a Vietnam war already in the 1950s (e.g. the Korea war turning nasty with MacArthur having it his way in using nuclear weapons), or an extremely reactionary Presidency (Strom Thurmond winning in 1948).

The tricky bit is to keep the hippies a counter-cultural force in the 1970s. In a way, they actually ruled culturally in OTL, with prog being the new authority that punks rebelled against. Youth movements have a tendency to get old very quickly, so there needs to be a new element coming in. Maybe an early type of "zippie", hippies ditching the "back to nature"-ethos in favour of hi-tech and computers already in the late 1960s.
 

woweed

Brundlefly said:
The tricky bit is to keep the hippies a counter-cultural force in the 1970s. In a way, they actually ruled culturally in OTL, with prog being the new authority that punks rebelled against. Youth movements have a tendency to get old very quickly, so there needs to be a new element coming in. Maybe an early type of "zippie", hippies ditching the "back to nature"-ethos in favour of hi-tech and computers already in the late 1960s.
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Sounds good to me. The back to nature stuff was always my least favorite part of hippies.
 

Mark E.

Brundlefly said:
Youth movements have a tendency to get old very quickly, so there needs to be a new element coming in. Maybe an early type of "zippie", hippies ditching the "back to nature"-ethos in favour of hi-tech and computers already in the late 1960s.
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Youth movements have short duration and that is why the hippies came and went so fast. They finished high school, enjoyed their Summer of Love and by the time they got their college degrees, the causes were over and they settled into the work force. An earlier version of the counter-culture, moved by a Beat Generation that was anti-war in the fifties, would bring more gradual change and when joined by the Baby Boom, would seem less radical and less divided between generations. As less of a youth movement, it could last into the seventies as suggested in the OP.

What about "back to nature?" It was necessary. Air and water pollution were serious problems in the sixties and somebody had to bring them to the forefront. If there is an aspect of the counter-culture that could be toned down, it might be recreational drugs.

Computers? In the sixties and seventies, they were mainframe devices, the domains of large companies, governments and universities. There was no youth involvement in the sixties. The first pocket calculators did not come out until Christmas, 1972. High tech and computers in the sixties were "establishment," as far from the Haight as one could get.
 

woweed

Brundlefly said:
Liberal presidents wouldn't be necessary in the first place, as a huge protest movement actually requires something to rebel against. That could be something like a Vietnam war already in the 1950s (e.g. the Korea war turning nasty with MacArthur having it his way in using nuclear weapons), or an extremely reactionary Presidency (Strom Thurmond winning in 1948).
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Yes, but the main reason i'm looking for Liberal Presidents is because i'm looking for 3 decades worth of the Hippies not as a revolutionary movement, but as the new normal. I want 30 years made by Hippies for Hippies.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Mark E. said:
Computers? In the sixties and seventies, they were mainframe devices, the domains of large companies, governments and universities. There was no youth involvement in the sixties. The first pocket calculators did not come out until Christmas, 1972. High tech and computers in the sixties were "establishment," as far from the Haight as one could get.
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I had used Terminals to access DEC PDP-8 and CDC Nova minicomputers, via timeshare during the tail end of the Hippie era in School.

Hippies... they weren't in the computer classes. 'That's for Squares, man'

That was for the Math and Electronics Nerds. Hippies hung out at the Record shop, not Radio Shack.
 

woweed

marathag said:
I had used Terminals to access DEC PDP-8 and CDC Nova minicomputers, via timeshare during the tail end of the Hippie era in School.

Hippies... they weren't in the computer classes. 'That's for Squares, man'

That was for the Math and Electronics Nerds. Hippies hung out at the Record shop, not Radio Shack.
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I think we could unite these 2 factions, though I may be biased as a man who is both a Hippie and a computer Geek.
 

Mark E.

woweed said:
I think we could unite these 2 factions, though I may be biased as a man who is both a Hippie and a computer Geek.
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Actually, you had "true" hippies and hippie followers. The true "hard core" hippies could be described as "turn on, tune in and drop out." They were into drugs, free sex, etc. They might be described as Libertarians with no economic agenda, so they were categorized as Left Wing. Hippie followers were more modest, picking up the dress, hair styles, music, etc. They all stood together in protest of Vietnam and the media grouped them together in the news.

For hippies to be techie geeks, you are talking about the "intellectual left." This would be the SDS of the sixties. Mike Stivic of "All in the Family" was a member of the intellectual left. Their goals were for a government that best served the people, as they defined their values. They considered the hard core hippies to be people who wanted to withdraw from society (like the Beatniks) as non-allies to their causes.

I recall hippies on campus in the early seventies. They were unshaven and had long hair. One graduate assistant in the physics department had hair halfway to his waist. Though identified as hippies, these were serious students. In those years, there was no computing at Radio Shack. Computing meant writing programs in Fortran, Cobol or some similar code (they didn't even have Basic then).

By 1974, all the causes supported by the hippies were resolved, and they faded away. Once Ford became president, campus atmosphere was distinctly non-political. By 1975, the anti-war mood of 1969 or 1970 was gone, not even within memory of any undergraduate.

We talked about ways to begin a proto-hippie movement earlier. Now, to extend it into the seventies might be more of a challenge. Perhaps environmental issues are not well addressed as in OTL. Pollution might be the issue that keeps the protests going until the mid-seventies. In this scenario, perhaps techie people get involved in terms of chemistry and the impact of pollutants on people, plants, animals. Lake Erie is dead. The Cuyahoga River caught fire.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
In 1974, Radio Shack had no computers.

But they carried many of the parts you would need to build this

mark8_re_cover_small.jpg


I hung out there a lot, being interested in building Heathkits and such.

Actually built a calculator from a kit
Heathkit_2.JPG


I didn't have the money for that computer kit, or for the more widely known Altair

pe_altair_small.jpg


You could buy a used car for what one of those computer kits would take to be completed.

Few Hippies, except when they were looking for a replacement stylus for a turntable or some vacuum tubes for the radio/stereo , showed up at the Shack. They just weren't tech, despite wanting to be self reliant
 
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