The 70s were crazy in more ways than one.

“People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.)

https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

I read your article, and it seems like the primary thesis is that large institutions (primarily universities) act as a sheltering mechanism for leftist radicals who promote violent social change.

I’m not assuming you wrote the article, but I want to ask to try to gain insight. If this is true, why is it that business institutions, that have a lot to lose from social upheavals, require 4-year degrees for professional positions, from these leftist institutions?

Possibly as a hold over from a time when a degree carried more weight.

Because those institutions have changed a whole lot.

The Birth of a New American Aristocracy: https://outline.com/4BXcWS

I read THAT article, and found that it neither affirms, nor refutes the claim that universities shelter violent revolutionaries.

The thing it says about education is that it’s harder to get into a college now than before. That is a change, but it can occur with or without also acting as a retirement home for “the shock troops” that was mentioned in GPs article.

Business institutions are hiring kids who majored in business and don't look like hippies.

That's a fun article but also so ridiculously, obviously biased that it's difficult to take the details seriously. The author really does the subject a disservice because of that, although at least the are being open about their bias.Because it really is an interesting part of US history. And although I'm not that old and I already knew about most of it, minus some interesting details, like supporting the murder of Sharon Tate, I would imagine he is right when he points out that a lot of people do not remember or know of this history. Especially considering how dangerous people think our society is nowadays.

I had never heard anything about the Puerto Rican separatists though. That's some crazy. Thanks a bunch for the link! The supposed analysis at the end is absurd though and can be effectively skipped. The author does not understand anything about the institutions that hold power now, along with a whole lot else.

Which perfectly coincides with this:

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

Wow, what exactly happened then? Is there anymore I could read about it?

Arbitrary knees in exponentially-growing metrics lined up with the introduction of fiat currency due to carefully chosen Y-axis scales by someone who makes money when you invest in Bitcoin.

(Some of those graphs -- especially the first one -- probably have interesting stories behind them, which may or may not relate to fiat currency. But all we get from that page is a Hayek quote structured to suggest he too would love Bitcoin so...)

Well, Hayek did write a whole book in favor of private currencies... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money

Fair enough.

I highly recommend this video, it's long but well worth explaining what happened here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY&t=33s

US moved to fiat money and they started inflating us all to hell

Hadn't read this before, thank you. Mind blown. It's the missing articulation of why some of this stuff today is so serious.

The first half reads like it would be an amazing epic series, if it were written from the perspective of the complex anti-hero protagonists. I knew about Tupac's family link, and one of my high school teachers was among the white feminist women who were a part of the black liberation movement and told us stories about it, but to write about it as a history of before hiphop, before gangs, and before blacksploitation, after civil rights, this shit was real.

The second half about the mechanisms of right/left conflict is spot on, and describes undercurrents today very well.

That was a wild read. I want more articles in this style.

I've always been fascinated by the depiction of the 70's in media: an era of excess and debauchery. the linked article (thanks!) reinforces the notion "truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." Each rabbit hole feels more bewildering than the former.

In more industries than not, it's still a thing. There is a lot of companies (that I've worked with at least) where coke usage is still happening at relaxed events, especially when it's a "management-only" event.

Software development? Or other industries?

As a software consultant for many different industries, from materials, real estate, industrials, fashion and everything in-between. Usage seems the same across all of them.

It’s very much alive, the war on drugs is a racket.

A friend sold car stereos in the 80s, he would get tips in coke. He was paid a lot to cut a early projection tv in half so it could fit in his airplane and be taken back to South America.

Was? It's almost on the job description of a banking manager...

I don't think I understood the extent until I watched a Studio 54 documentary - iconic, super popular NYC nightclub where everyone did loads of cocaine out in the open all night.

The cocaine culture and the disco culture were very much intertwined. Maybe it was not as much in the open as at Studio 54, but it wasn't limited to just NYC.

Heh, you should check out London in 2021.

It was a thing.

It still is, too.

I get that same feeling now when people casually mention cannabis use.

The history of cannabis use is orders of magnitudes longer than the history of cocaine use.

> The history of cannabis use is orders of magnitudes longer than the history of cocaine use.

Not unless you narrowly restrict the latter to refined cocaine, while not restricting the former to (say) refined THC.

The history of cannabis use is not orders of magnitude longer than the history of coca leaf use.

Definitely not comparing to coca leaf use. To your point though, refined THC in the form of hashish has a much longer history than refined coca leaves. As has breeding for more THC.

Hashish does not actually have to be "refined" at all. There's zero chemical process involved. You're just taking the resin glands off the surface of the plant. Refining cocaine is starkly different from this, of course.

Not sure about magnitude. Well, maybe Cocaine yeah magnitude, but when it comes to Coca, I'm pretty sure tribes in South America have been using them for as long as people been using Cannabis. At the very least, the Incas were using Coca back in the day.