I immersed myself in the literature of the counterculture, reading the drug-fueled rants of Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg. . . . The one thing of lasting value that I did in college was to study Russian.

“The whole point of the Sixties psyop was to attack my parents’ generation and their values, to tell them they had failed, that all their hard work and sacrifices were for nothing, and that their children hated them. That was the message”@NoorBinLadin https://t.co/Q0v4k7nYJ6

— MAN’S WORLD Magazine (@mansworldmag_) July 11, 2023

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RICHARD POE: The fear lived on. All that fear they generated in the Sixties didn’t just evaporate. It poisoned the American spirit for decades. And this was intentional. The biggest fear they managed to instill in our parents was the fear of losing their children to the counterculture, to the mad culture of sex and drugs.

The media played on this fear. All through the Sixties and into the Seventies, the TV was showing us white middle-class kids on drugs. White middle-class kids having sex. White middle-class kids hating their parents, dropping out of school, running away from home, and living on the street.

The counterculture was like a stalking predator, stalking the suburbs, looking for kids to snatch.

In August 1969, the Manson murders broke in the news. Here was a hippie cult breaking into suburban homes and slaughtering people with knives. It confirmed Middle America’s worst fears that, beneath its seductive veneer, the counterculture was a raging beast thirsting for blood.

A few months later, in April 1970, antiwar activist Jerry Rubin said, “Kill your parents.” It was all over the news. The exact quote was, “Unless you’re prepared to kill your parents, you’re not ready to change this country. Our parents are our first oppressors.”

I remember the anger and fear in my mother’s eyes when she heard that.

As I sank ever deeper into a morass of mysticism, I immersed myself in the literature of the counterculture, reading the drug-fueled rants of Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, and others of that sort.

The one thing of lasting value that I did in college was to study Russian. My grandparents had lived with us briefly in the early Sixties, when my grandmother was ill, and the beautiful sound of the Russian language is one of my earliest memories. As I grew older, I resolved that I would learn it.

So I studied Russian in college, and, in 1978, between my junior and senior years, I did a summer session in the USSR, at Leningrad State University.