But while it’s going by, this scattershot social history can be great fun. We’d forgotten that Doctor Dope was a different guy from Doctor Feelgood, and we’d never heard of Ludwig, the dog who hung out in Berkeley during the free-speech movement. Oh, wow (“an exclamation that verbalizes an inner realization to oneself”).
“The Hippie Dictionary” also offers tantalizing glimpses into the mind of its author, an ex-counterculture photojournalist named John Bassett McCleary. As you’d expect of someone who writes that “the Dream is still alive,” he’s a great what-if-er. “If it hadn’t been for… 1984,” we read under Orwell, “the year 1984 would likely have resembled the tyranny portrayed in the book. 1984 postponed the complete control of our thoughts by the military-industrial complex. We now have possibly another 10 or 15 years to stop it again.” McCleary’s most remarkable speculation is that “the events of September 11, 2001, would not have taken place if our society had listened to the message of the hippies.” Well, it might also have helped if somebody had gotten the guys with the box cutters to tune in, turn on and drop out–but we get the point. Too much thought control, that must be what got the evildoers p’d off. It sure doesn’t seem to be McCleary’s problem.
