"You're a crybaby"

[Julie]

Yeah, that is really horrible.  Though I do know very good parents who bring their kids to marches and rallies - these days, though, all the cops have to do is say that they really like the nice law-abiding protesters but anarchists are ruining it for everybody, and then here comes the tear gas.  That said, though, these people would probably recognize if things were going to get ugly from way off, and get their kids out of harms' way before it happened.

Yeah, but this was guaranteed to become violent. I think bringing kids to participate in things is good, but sacrificing your kids for your own belief is insane. But I hate the police just as much. Don't get the idea that I'm on their side.

[Fido]

Anybody else read "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" by Joan Didion? It's basically all about how the Summer of Love in 1967 or whatever went seriously off the rails in.... uh, 1967. The story ends with a very disturbing cautionary vignette illustrating the potentially horrifying irresponsibility of hippie parenthood. It became instantly controversial and branded Didion as some kind of Republican villain in some circles, but unless she was making the whole thing up, she had a pretty good point. I'd have to say that whatever her politics are/were, she's a pretty damn good writer in my book.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Didion's pretty interesting.  As I understand it, she was one of those old-school, classical conservatives who were turned off by the 60s, but became sort of leftist by the 80s without actually changing her belief system all that much.  Of course, one could argue that she went from being an elitist, marginal pre-Goldwater Republican to an elitist, marginal post-Nixon Democrat, but I still like her writing.