Good Riddance

[Deep Knight]

They said Charles Manson had died in Prison on the TV this morning, may he rot in hell. It turns out that I have a bunch of Manson-linked (sometimes tenuously) stories. And, in celebration, I will share some here. Not that this exactly has anything to do with prosperity programs or Dove, although more than once people associated with the NESARA scam have been described as "Manson Family rejects," so here here we go.

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and when the news of Manson's arrest for the Tate killings etc. was announced, people started asking if he had been associated with a group that had lived in the mountains above town the summer before (1969). Called the STP Family, they were mostly male, filthy, grubby, and dressed in things adorned with the STP logo. I always thought this logo was cool because a couple of years before I had gone through a racing/slot car phase, and apparently so did these guys.



Anyway, various wild rumors had led the Boulder Sheriff to get in touch with the Tate case prosecutors in LA, and I believe our boys in blue sent out a detective with records, but of course nothing came of it. Still, there were a lot of frightened people living in the mountains after that, especially since some of "the family" came back in 1970 and 1971 (when one was killed, more about that later). Hippies weren't comically dressed kids anymore, they were stone cold cult killers. Which, no doubt, changed history and the "culture wars" in ways we are still feeling today. Anyway, enough of the philosophy, here are a couple of strange stories you might like.

[Deep Knight]

The STP Family: Sagittarius, Tranquility (?), and Yes, Persistence
June 9, 2014 by Daniel Nichols



When I was young, in the 70s, I spent a good deal of time on the road, sticking out my thumb, heading for adventure. The summer of 1972 was pivotal for me personally, a reckoning that came when my naive countercultural wave crashed on the rocks of human nature. That is a long story, and I wrote about it a bit a few years ago, of the draft hanging over me that summer (my lottery number was 5), of many adventures and characters encountered, of contracting salmonella at Earth People’s Park in Vermont, of hitching to the first Rainbow Family of Living Light festival in Colorado, where I had a relapse, of my disillusionment with the counterculture of the time.

But I have never written about, and seldom thought about, the STP Family.

The STP Family was a rough tribe of street hippies that seemed to be everywhere the counterculture was collectively burning out in the early 70s. Originating in NYC, they moved en masse to the mountains near Boulder, but traveled widely. They could be found panhandling in Boston and Berkeley, by the side of the road, thumbs out, just about anywhere, in the camps reserved for drinkers at various festivals.

The story I heard was that “STP” stood for “Serenity, Tranquility, Peace”, and that the STP Family was formed by a group of Greenwich Village hippies who vowed to stay high on STP, a psychedelic drug of the era that kept one in a hallucinatory state for 72 hours, as opposed to LSD’s 12.

Why anyone thought that such a regimen would bring serenity or tranquility or peace is beyond me. Though they were very young.

Another version was that it stood for “Sagittarius, Taurus, Pisces”, the astrological signs of the three founders.

And there are other accounts.



Whatever the case, the Family evolved into a very hard living, drug addled subsect of the counterculture. Most people just thought of them as burnouts, and some called them “street monsters”.

They were panhandlers and dealers and thieves, ripoff artists and drunks. They took any drug they could score and were noteworthy for the glazed look in their eyes.

You could spot them by their clothes. Their “habit” consisted of denim patched with leather and scraps of cloth, with an “STP” emblem, the logo of the oil treatment company, somewhere in the mix. Often their clothing was decorated with the skulls of small animals.

They were dirty and smelly and they were violent ( unlike most hippies outside of Detroit, they liked guns). They were violent not least because also unlike most hippies, who limited alcohol use to the occasional bottle of wine, they drank heavily.

Very heavily; mostly rotgut wine, but liquor of any kind they could get their hands on as well. One concoction, of grape Kool Aid and Everclear grain alcohol, was called Purple Jesus.

In Colorado they lived in the mountains in tents, lean-tos and cabins. They claimed to be mountain men, and bragged of killing bears. Probably bullshit, but they did have necklaces of what they said were bear claws, and leather laces from which hung alleged bear teeth.

More bizarrely, there are eyewitnesses that said the Family ate their dead in a spiritual ceremony. Granted, these witnesses had imbibed large doses of hallucinogens and God knows what, but you never know.

They were the original primitives, the Neanderthal tribe of the counterculture.

I never knew anything about their individual backgrounds. The vibe was rough, like the Hell’s Angels without bikes and resources, and one assumed that these were working class folks. Like I said, they brought Detroit to mind. But maybe that was part of the facade; the Village origins, and some rumored history with anarchist offshoots of the Yippies may indicate that these were grad school dropouts, the sons of lawyers.

They had colorful nicknames, like Spooky, Deputy Dawg, Grody, Patty Rotten Crotch, Wabbit, Daisy May, Asshole Dave (of the affiliated Asshole Family).

I knew Spooky a little; I met him in Boston, where I was peddling underground newspapers on Harvard Square to make money for travel. He was stoned out, for sure, but oddly gentle, for an STP guy. He always carried a grey kitten and his eyes looked to some place far away.

If the Family had one virtue it was loyalty to one another. They called themselves a “family” and like a family they stuck up for one another, as many a hapless fool discovered when he insulted one of them.

A lot of them met violent deaths. Deputy Dawg, for example, was murdered by a Colorado cop, who got away with it but made a confession on his deathbed. Dawg was all of 19 when he died.

I recount all of this because the other night, goofing on the internet, I searched for the STP Family.

And found, to my surprise, that not only were they not all dead, but they have an online presence and occasional reunions. There are pages of photos posted by their kids, of when dad and mom were the dregs of the counterculture, like the albums we have of my mom and dad as young spiffily dressed newlyweds, straight off the farm.

It is a testimony to human resilience that not only are a lot of that ragtag band still alive, they have children and grandchildren, some of whom wax nostalgic about their folks, like, well, most people.

That those so far gone did not die but lived to see children and grandchildren, to navigate the earthly sphere with some semblance of normalcy after such a druggy, dazed sojourn, is a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit and of the human body. It is like me, reconnecting with old druggy friends, to find that not only did the ones who did not OD make it through, but many of them appear to have done better than a lot of my religious friends from the era. It is purely anecdotal, but the stoners have a much lower divorce rate, with the girlfriends they married, than my zealous Christian friends had with their spouses.

Life is full of mystery and complexity. Any conclusions are tentative.

I had no love for the STP Family in my traveling days. I was wary of them, as was anyone with any sense. Indeed, they were only the most colorful examples of the sorts of characters I encountered in my travels that summer, who collectively soured me on my counterculture dreams.

But I am unspeakably grateful that so many of them appear to have survived and prospered.

Yay humanity.

[Deep Knight]

OK, the murdered STP guy (Deputy Dawg, who I met a couple of times when he was panhandling), was back in the news lately, when last someone tried to bomb a police facility in retaliation. They had eyewitnesses and surveillance camera footage that led them right to the perpetrator, a greying dwarf. You could make this stuff up, but it wouldn't be as good.

A Nederland marshal murdered his friend in 1971. Two weeks ago, he allegedly planted a bomb to avenge the death.
By Kirk Mitchell, The Denver Post
October 24, 2016

An old STP sticker, the memory of a cap-gun-toting hippie, a rogue marshal and a 45-year-old grudge all came together earlier this month in a bizarre event that shook the small mountain town of Nederland.

Forty-five years after former Nederland Marshal Renner Forbes killed Guy “Deputy Dawg” Gaughnor, who he considered a nuisance, and then dumped his body near a gold mine shaft, the victim’s friend is accused of seeking vengeance by trying to blow up the Nederland police station, sources familiar with the investigation say.

They say that on Oct. 11, David Ansberry, 64, left a backpack containing an improvised explosive device in a village shopping center where the small police station sits beneath a massage and acupuncture parlor.

They say he allegedly tried — using a prepaid cellphone — but failed 11 times to set off the bomb in an event that would have killed bystanders who likely knew nothing about the 1971 execution of his 19-year-old buddy, Gaughnor.

By then, Forbes had been in his grave for 15 years.

Ansberry, of San Rafael, Calif., now faces a federal charge of attempted malicious destruction of a business following his arrest in Chicago days after the bombing attempt. A source said that state and federal investigators are “100 percent” certain that Ansberry planted the bomb to avenge Deputy Dawg’s death. The official spoke in confidence because they were not authorized to release the information.

An STP oil sticker with a note scrawled on it and stuck to the front window of The Laundry Room, a laundromat about 20 feet to the right of the police station, was a telling clue, the source said.
...
...Ansberry, who stands 3-feet-6 and was known by fellow STPs as “Midget Jesse,” panhandling in town. He wore torn clothing and was filthy.

“I didn’t give him any spare change and he was angry and belligerent,” he said.

John Callahan, 70, who now operates the “Carousel of Happiness” in the same shopping center as the police station, said people in Nederland were afraid of the STPs in the early 1970s.

“They called themselves the STP Family. That was very close to the Manson Family,” Callahan said, referring to a communal hippie group led by Charles Manson, who was found guilty of killing seven people including actress Sharon Tate in the summer of 1969. “Many of the STP Family members carried machetes on their belts. The machetes looked heavier than they were. They were emaciated.”

Vigilantes made threats and then carried them out, raiding an STP camp and ripping their tents apart, Denver Post reporters wrote in the early 1970s.

In early 1971, the Nederland City Council hired Forbes, an Air Force pilot who flew an F-86 during the Korean War, as the town marshal. He had a face and temperament like a bulldog, Long said. After a military career in which airmen were well-groomed and disciplined, the disorder caused by drunken miners and lawless hippies tested Forbes’ patience, Long said.

“He was the kind of guy who could clean up the town,” ...

... one STP member who was particularly troublesome — Guy Gaughnor. He was a 19-year-old who wore a kid’s gun belt holstered with a cap gun. Epp said he took his nickname from a 1960s cartoon character, “Deputy Dawg.”

Long said he arrested Gaughnor several times for stealing and disruptive behavior. But whenever Forbes, who was the only one in the marshal’s office, had to deal with Gaughnor, he’d have to take him down to Boulder to process him, Epps said. It was a chaotic time and Forbes was run ragged.

On the night of July 17, 1971, Gaughnor was causing a ruckus at the Pioneer Inn.

“He was abusive, antagonistic and hostile. Police work is done at the bad-breath and body-odor distance from criminals,” Undersheriff Long said of Gaughnor’s attitude. “Forbes had a military mind-set. He was direct and sometimes confrontational. One man can only take so much.”

Forbes put Gaughnor in his gold 1969 Plymouth and drove away. It was the last time anyone in Nederland ever saw Gaughnor alive.

About a month later, hunters discovered Gaughnor’s skull near abandoned gold mines just off Oh My God Road, which is 25 miles from Nederland in northeastern Clear Creek County. Long was assigned to investigate the case. The head had only pieces of skin and long strands of hairs. Animals had likely scavenged the body and carried pieces deep in the woods, Long said.

“Even though we only had his head, I had no problem identifying him,” Long said. “He had a distinctive look. He had a missing tooth and one tooth overlapped another one.”

When Long interviewed Forbes twice in the following weeks, Forbes admitted that he had driven Gaughnor to his tepee, but that was the last he saw him. Despite abundant circumstantial evidence, there were no eyewitnesses to the murder and no physical evidence.
...
... in 1997 ... Forbes, who had severe medical issues including major coronary disease, denied killing Gaughnor during an interview in the nursing home. Sheriff’s investigators drove him to Ruby Gulch, where Forbes claimed he had left Gaughnor 26 years earlier. When Forbes got out of the car, he immediately vomited, Long said.

Forbes soon confessed to shooting Gaughnor and was charged with second-degree murder. Forbes spent a week in jail, which officials resisted because of Forbes’ extremely poor health, Epp said.

“He escaped justice for 26 years, and I thought he should see the inside of a jail despite the complaints of the jailers,” he said.

The charge was reduced to manslaughter and he was sentenced to probation, Epp said. Forbes died three years later.

Another 20 years go by. At 6:17 p.m. on Oct. 3, a little person walked into Dan Harrow’s laundromat just as he was closing the store for the day. Harrow answered the man’s questions patiently about laundry hours and cost of machines even though he was eager to get home and see Monday Night Football.

Harrow said his daughter is also a little person and it’s rare to see little people in Nederland. He noticed that the man was staring at his surveillance cameras.

“He didn’t give me any red flags,” Harrow said. “In hindsight, it’s easy to see what was going on.”

Eight days later, Harrow arrived for work around 8 a.m. and saw an STP oil sticker on his shiny front window. Harrow washes the window every day and his store is immaculate. He immediately peeled it off. On the back of the sticker was a note.

The sticker appeared to be decades old, Harrow said. On the back of the note was writing that blamed a marshal for a murder in the early 1970s. The note also said: “Rest In Peace Deputy Dawg July 17, 1971,” a source said.

That same morning, a Nederland police officer picked up a backpack from the parking lot in front of the station and carried it inside. When he opened the bag, he saw the IED and took the backpack outside. The shopping center was evacuated. Local, county, state and federal law enforcement swarmed the shopping center and began a nationwide manhunt.

After the incident, Harrow recalled the odd sticker he had found that morning and gave it to investigators. The sticker had been left in a corner of the window, out of the range of his surveillance camera.

FBI agents traced the cellphone used as the trigger mechanism to a Black Hawk cellular phone company and then to a King Soopers store. They reviewed video tapes of the King Soopers and identified a small person as the buyer of the cellphone, court records say.

When federal agents arrested Ansberry in Chicago, he had the same STP stickers in his possession that were found on Harrow’s window, a source says. Ansberry also admitted that Deputy Dawg had been a close friend in the early 1970s, the source said.

In the early-morning hours of Oct. 17, FBI agents gave Harrow another visit. They showed him a picture of a man and asked him if he recognized the person. When Harrow realized it was a small person, he looked closer and recognized the man who had visited him within the past 10 days.

By 2:30 a.m., he was reviewing his surveillance tapes with the FBI agents and found the video of Ansberry as he stared directly at the camera and spoke with Harrow. FBI agents measured how high the sticker was on the window. It was 44 inches off the ground.

“Low enough for a little person to reach,” Harrow said.

[Deep Knight]

I once heard a quote (from a musician in the 80's?) that said something like, "At the end of the 60's America had a choice between Charles Manson and Woodstock. Manson won." At first this made me angry, then it got me thinking. I was going to use it in the first post, but couldn't (and haven't been able to) find it online. However, I did find this interesting picture:



This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged 1/20/2015, America, Charles Manson, congress, democrat, Democrats, GOP, liberal media, Obama, President Obama, Republicans, the media, The United States, The White House, Washington D.C.

Got a chip on your shoulder much? On the site, the next recommended post was "Democrats Tell Me Privately They Hate Obama Too [VIDEO]"

[Jeffrey]

There’s a bit of Manson apologetics going on in the less reputable segments of the internet.

[Deep Knight]

There’s a bit of Manson apologetics going on in the less reputable segments of the internet.

[notorial dissent]

There’s a bit of Manson apologetics going on in the less reputable segments of the internet.

Isn't that kind of like an oxymoron or something????

[Deep Knight]

OK, here is my "meeting someone associated with the Manson family, maybe" story.

In the summer of 1975 my girlfriend and I went "on the road" to the west coast, spending a lot of time in the Redwoods of California, but also Oregon. Coming up into the Rogue River Valley of the later state, we decided to take a Forest Service road shown on the map into the woods far enough to set up camp. However, right at the junction was a hitchhiker with a tire. He had hitchhiked up from a camp at the river to get it fixed, and was on his way back, so we told him we give him a lift, especially as he said where they were camping was next to the river and a waterfall.

He didn't tell us about the condition of the road as we dropped down to the river a dozen or so very long miles later, but he was right about the beauty. He did warn us about two characters who were dredging for gold and camping nearby. Since they had arrived, things had been disappearing.

We camped next to the river and went swimming. This guy came swimming over and hit on my (naked) girlfriend, calling himself "Dan." I interceded, and soon this older, bearded guy named "Loner" joined us, his "gold dredging" partner. I saw them working the next morning, one would go down with a wet suit, compressed air hose to a mouthpiece, steel probe, and a vacuum-like dredge hose. The outlet with the water and gravel pried up between rocks went through a sluice, and a few tiny nuggets and some dust got collected. A hard way to make a buck.

These guys came by our camp after dark, asking if we had anything to drink. I had a jug of wine I wasn't all that interested in drinking, so gave it to them, and we talked. I was actually quite interested in talking to Loner, who had just got out of jail on a "vag" charge. He gave me bits of advice, like "Don't trust anyone who's never been in stir." Anyway, he revealed that the guy, Dan, had once "been part of the Manson Family." Dan protested, said he had just hung around, and besides he had turned state's evidence on them and just left that @#$!, his girlfriend who had been part of "the family."

To be honest, I thought this was 100% bullshit. I knew little about them besides what had been in the news, and none of his details meant anything. I figured he was some idiot who thought knowing some really notorious people would give him status or something. Years later, I read a book on the killings by Ed Sanders (which confirmed some of his details) and wrote to him, telling this story along with another. He told me that the guy they called "Donkey Dan" (Danny DeCarlo) had indeed been living with a member of the family near Ashland OR (very near where we were) at the time, and they had a stormy relationship that was on and off. This still doesn't mean it was him, he could have gotten his rap from the real guy and pulled it on Loner and others he met. But this doesn't matter to the point of this story, people wanting connections to celebrity, even if those famous people are mass murderers.

As for me, I've only told this story to a handful of people over the years. I didn't even tell my girlfriend, who had retired for the evening before the conversation got to this point. I mean, I thought it was BS and besides, what was the benefit of her learning I had chosen to stay in our campsite even after hearing that? I've never told her to this day.

The whole Manson thing is very disturbing, but then again, me as a person or us and a culture seem to be drawn by it. We have a saying around my house when it comes to TV shows like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, if it has "sex, violence, and sick f**ks" it will be a big hit. More to the point, I will watch it. We might look down on Roman citizens for enjoying live killings in the arena, but we get entertainment out of the same visuals watching the movie Gladiator. Sure, we can tell ourselves it's all CGI and special effects, but we enjoy seeing the charioteers sliced in half none-the-less (at least I did, it had a certain "comic relief" aspect to it).

BTW, Ed Sanders was a writer, a musician, and all around strange guy who the internet tells me is still alive (if you've searched for your name and found this, Ed, how weird). I was in a band in the late 70's and early 80's and would use lyrics and such from famous and/or unusual songs in breaks and jams. One was bits and pieces of "The Divine Toe" by Ed when he was with The Fugs. From the album "It crawled into my hand, honest." Here are the lyrics:

Whenever I see
The moon on the shore.
Or read Copper Vision
by Marianne Moore
Or see a piano leg touching the floor
Or kiss a frog with a Lincoln Log
I get horny
Horny, horny, horny, horny, horny
I get horny
Horny, horny, horny, horny, horny

As I see you standing in a sable robe
And your breasts that launched a thousand round-pounds
You twirl through the light
Your mons-veneris
Shines like Chichén Itzá in a jungle dawn
I get horny
Horny, horny, horny, horny, horny
I get horny
Horny, horny, horny, horny, horny

I have read Marianne Moore but never run across anything named "Copper Vision" and I can't find it with a Google search neither. Anyone?

[Deep Knight]

Now for the high-class uptown Manson Family as a topic of conversation at a dinner party story. In the spring of 1976, I went with my girlfriend to an apartment in an older-but-still-swank multi-story building. She was taking care of some plants and a cat, but since I was not part of the arrangement I felt "funny" about going in and waited in the hall. Besides, there was apparently a dinner party across the hall, and I wanted to eavesdrop on their conversation through an open transom. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sneak around or go out of my way to listen to people, but when I have the opportunity and it sounds amusing, why not?

A couple of years before, the prosecutor in the Manson Family trial had written a best-selling book, Helter Skelter, and a TV movie had been made from it. This had aired recently (I'm not sure when, didn't have a TV at that time), and all 6 people talking loudly behind the door had seen it. I figured they had about 20 years on me (I was in my early 20s), and they were shocked and outraged by those hippies, their drug use, music, and cult killings. The distaste was palpable. But then the conversation turned to Manson Family sex practices.

First of all, when it did, both the level of interest and volume went up noticeably. I had been having trouble understanding all that was said by a couple of the women, but no longer! It's not like the subject had become any more tasteful to them, but it shore held a lot more interest. As the conversation went on (over a couple of minutes), the topics got more "outside the mainstream," ending with a perversion not in the movie, but in the book - which one woman had read. In breathless tones described over the gasps of the others. Basically oral sex with infant boys. I don’t even know if this is biologically possible, Ed Sanders thinks one girl told the interviewers that just to shock them. The people at the party wanted to express their shock and disgust repeatedly, and with great enthusiasm. One might almost think they were secretly titillated by the idea.

It was just about then that my girlfriend exited the other apartment and we left. I told her the story as we went down in the elevator and drove away, and she sort of shrugged it off as "people are fascinated by sick stuff." I made the observation that had this topic been broached under any other circumstances, the person doing it would never be invited to a dinner party again. But in the setting of a cult murder it was OK. I told this story and made this same comment to Ed Sanders in the letter I mentioned before, and he agreed that "that's why people like sex & violence & sick behaviors, because it give them an excuse to talk about the dark side of human behavior. And of course it includes sex.”

And now, for an additional psychodrama, Deep Knight removes the Manson Family from such a conversation. Feel free to get a group together and perform this out loud on your own for more impact.

Woman 1: By the way, have you heard about girls performing oral sex on their infant babies? I’ve been looking it up on the internet, and it’s fascinating! Errup! Um, excuse me for a moment…
Woman 2: Thank heavens Eunice has gone to the bathroom! Why in the world would she talk about something disgusting like that?
Man 1: She’s not my wife! Englebert, what do you have to say about it?
Man 2: I think it’s her medication, I need to talk to that doctor about her doses. Yesterday she started talking about things called “Chemtrails,” “Jade Helm,” and “millions of illegal alien voters.”
Woman 3: I think you should take her home, give her a shot of Thorazine, or Chlorpromazine its cheaper generic equivalent, and have her committed. And, of course, you’ll have the good taste never to come to our home again or contact us in any way.
Woman 2: That goes double for us, begone!
(A toilet is heard flushing, a woman’s footsteps, a scuffle, and a door slamming. Then, dialog resumes).
Woman 3: I guess you never really know people, even if they are the pastors of your church. Oh well, more coffee? Then, how about watching that snuff film Elmer got last week on DVD. They say it’s real, and filmed in the slums of Rio, where human life is worth what you pay for it.

[The Observer]

There’s a bit of Manson apologetics going on in the less reputable segments of the internet.

Isn't that kind of like an oxymoron or something????

Yes, especially given that Charlie was the darling of the left wing at one time. It's an inconvenient fact that tends to get overlooked nowadays but understandable, given the current sexual harassment tidal wave piling up on the liberal icons faster than one could possibly imagine. After all, who really wants to be identified with coming out for an organizer of mass murder?

"First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the pig Tate's stomach! Wild!" - Bernardine Dohrn, a founder of the Weathermen and a current activist in reaction to the murders.

Her husband, Bill Ayers, finally came out in 2008 to deny the quote, pronouncing it to be just a Big Lie from the opposition. Of course this was some 38 years later, which seems to indicate that it took a long time for Ayers to figure this out. Excuse me if it all seems just a bit contrived, but one would think that at some point, despite being on the run for bombings and other acts of terrorism, Ayers, let alone Dohrn, could have denied this ever being said much sooner - before being a fan of Manson went out of style.

“I fell in love with Charlie Manson the first time I saw his cherub face and sparkling eyes on TV." "His words and courage inspired us.” - Jerry Rubin, antiwar activist.

Jerry even went so far as to visit Manson while he was awaiting trial. Rubin's admiration and support of Charlie was fortunately memorialized in the TV movie "Helter Skelter in 2004. Jerry never seemed to come out and disavow his fandom of Manson, although he was able to come to terms with his antagonism with capitalism, resulting in him becoming a multimillionaire. But he was able to remain true to the barest of his counterculture principles, by getting run over and killed on Wilshire Blvd by jaywalking.

The magazine Rolling Stone proclaimed Manson to be:



This may have been a bit of exaggeration. But Rolling Stone went on to defend Charles as just acting on his principles regarding our decadent society that justified Manson's criticisms of it. Apparently the "most dangerous man alive" was just misunderstood and we could all benefit a bit if there just more dangerous people out there acting out on their leftist, though murderous, beliefs.

Or maybe what we needed was more of Charlie's strange music. But it wasn't certainly a lack of trying on the left's part in getting Manson the recording contract to which he felt entitled:

"I just think a lot of the things he says are true, that he is a child of the state, made by us, and he took their children in when nobody else would, is what he did. Of course he's cracked, all right." - John Lennon, in response to a question regarding his reaction to the Beatle album, Helter Skelter, being linked to the Tate-La Bianca murders.

Lennon seemed a tad hesitant to repudiate everything that Manson stood for, despite John's recognition that Charlie had some issues. He seemed to not understand that Charlie's taking in the "state's" children was only for the purpose of serving his own ends, and that anything else that Manson claimed to do was merely self-serving evidence for his defense. But others in the music field, such as Neil Young and Henry Rollins, pitched his music to the studios and produced an album of Charlie singing about garbage dumps and the like:

Oh garbage dump oh garbage dump
Why are you called a garbage dump
Oh garbage dump oh garbage dump
Why are you called a garbage dump

You could feed the world with my garbage dump
You could feed the world with my garbage dump
You could feed the world with my garbage dump
That sums it up in one big lump

When you're livin' on the road
And you think sometimes you're starvin'
Get on off that trip my friend
Just get in them cans and start carvin'

Oh garbage dump my garbage dump
Why are you called my garbage dump
Oh garbage dump my garbage dump
Why are you called my garbage dump

Talk:
There's a market basket an' a A&P
I don't care if de box boys are starin' at me
I don't even care who wins de war

Sing:
I'll be in dem cans behind my favorite store

Garbage dump oh garbage dump
Why are you called a garbage dump
Garbage dump oh garbage dump
That sums it up, in one big lump

Talk:
I claim all these garbage dumps
In the name of

Sing:
(The garbage pickers of America)
(The garbage pickers of America)
(The garbage pickers of America)

Talk:
Oh but it smells
Oh pew... Yeow

Yes, believe it or not, this is what the Left promoted, or tried to promote, but the reactionary America they were trying to save wasn't having any part of it. Charlie got sentenced to death for being a principled believer in his creed (though I would agree that his music was deserving of capital punishment),and we thought it would be good riddance, just 45 years earlier. But again, liberals stood up against the death penalty and persuaded a Supreme Court that even Charlie was worth keeping alive.

And now, after all of this, people on the left are trying to convince us that Charles Milles Maddox was really the creation and offspring of right-wing whackos, racists and Nazis, all of whom Charlie embraced prior to the murders. Manson was a hater of blacks, this was well known, but for some reason the Left just ignored this as some unpleasant side-business as to what Manson was really all about in their attempts to jump on the Manson train.

Hypocrisy, I call it.

[Deep Knight]

Some liberal icons on Charles Manson's death:

Hillary Clinton - I was a Goldwater Girl until I heard about Charlie, but ever since I've been a dedicated Marxist-Leninist.

Bernie Sanders - My being a Jew prevented me from joining the family, but I feel I was always one of them in spirit.

Barack Obama - Now that he's dead, the truth can finally be told. Charles Manson was my real father, that being born in Kenya thing was just misdirection.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - I was a young lawyer when I decided to continue to pursue that course rather than run off and join a thrill-kill cult in California. I have always regretted that decision, especially since I always looked sharp in hippie garb.

Elizabeth Warren - I always looked better in hippie garb than Ruth, Charlie would have chosen me!

Joan Baez - I played the accordion and sang advertising jingles until Charlie took me under his wing.

Jerry Brown - Linda Ronstadt and I were going to run off and follow Charlie, but discovered we were five years too late. Oh, what might have been!

Tim Kaine - Even though I was only 10 at the time, I wanted to follow Charlie too. It was his center-left politics that drew me, and others in Mrs. Tholepin's 4th grade class, to his message of mass murder and race war.

Update:

George Soros - He's really not all that different than me, other than he got caught.

[Deep Knight]

When I first came to Quatloos, 15 years ago if memory serves, the NESARA/Dove stuff was dominated by Big Daddy, whose thesis was "Dove & A&A & Bellringer are all dangerous leftists." Oh yeah, when any of them begged for money and got it, it went straight to Al Qaeda. Like you could pry any money from Dove while she had breath left in her body.

Anyway, this troll's MO here and on several other forums was to argue endlessly. For example, he once said we should read the Socialist Worker Party's website, it contained the NESARA program, exactly. The argument went kind of like this:

Everyone Else - OK, here's the link to the SWP website, show us where there's anything like debt forgiveness, prosperity programs, or ascension to 5D.
Big Daddy - It's there.
EE - Exactly where.
BD - Lots of places. Prosperity programs and deliveries are the main point.
EE - I searched for "Prosperity Programs" and "deliveries" and they're not there.
BD - Yes they are.
EE - What page?
BD - Lots of pages.
EE - No, they are not. Here is the link to the search.
BD - It's called other names to hide it. But it's the same.
EE - What other names?
BD - Lots of names.

After a few dozen more serious exchanges like this we got the message and did things like ban politics. But, then again, this seems to be a common theme "in the less reputable segments of the internet."


Alex Jones Claims Charles Manson Was A Liberal

Following the death of the serial killer, Alex Jones’ Infowars program asserted on Monday that the serial killer’s “spirit” was still alive in social justice groups like Black Lives Matter and the antifascist group Antifa.

In a tweet on Monday, Alex Jones encouraged viewers to tune in to a program titled, “The Spirit Of Charles Manson Is Alive In BLM and Antifa.”

“Charles Manson’s death provides an opportunity to reflect on current societal movements that share a similar spirit with Manson and his cult,” a description of the program explained. “Just like Manson, many groups are still trying to start a race war in America.”

“I think he tells us a lot about our current society,” guest host David Knight opined in a promo for the show. “I think we have his spirit living on in many cultural artifacts and movements.”

“Can we avoid a race war today?” he continued. “Because that’s what Charles Manson wanted to do. And we see that now with many elements in society. He’s really not that much different than George Soros, other than he got caught.

[obadiah]

Is Charlie replacing Hitler as the bad name you call the other side?

[Deep Knight]

Is Charlie replacing Hitler as the bad name you call the other side?

Apparently, "yes." I've been finding "we're upset Manson is called a Nazi 'cause he was a longhair hippie and everyone knew they were on the other side of the culture war" style statements all over the place, which I find kind of funny. Then, of course, there are the "Manson wanted to start a race war and idolized Hilter, so he was a conservative" garbage too. IMHO, Manson and his many crimes had NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS. Many say, and I agree, that they were caused by his anger at not becoming a big pop star. No big surprise if you listen to songs like the "garbage dump" thing.

In the early 1980's, my roommate was a psychologist working at a facility in Denver which was supposed to take care of kids with drug problems, but in reality the "drug" thing was more to get funding than anything else. What the kids had were really bad behavior problems that had them running away from home, stealing cars, getting arrested and such. This was in a big house at an old Army base, where there were full-time "residents" also to keep an eye on the kids. These were typically people who had been through an adult alcoholism programs run by the same people, and were sober now. In the case of my friend's house, they had all gotten religion really big too. So, to torment them, the kids would do any and everything "Satanic" from heavy metal music to drawing a pentagram on the floor in chalk and putting candles at all 5 points (this generated a "lockdown" and call to the police, no doubt the lady resident wanted them in case the evil one showed up in person).

One day, he showed up at home with a tape of Charles Manson music that had been taken from the kids. From the internet, I figure it had to be a copy of "Lie" and included the Garbage Dump song. I know this, because that was what was playing when I came home, the source of the terrible music was explained to me, and I took the tape out of the deck and threw it in our fireplace. My roommate fished it out (it wasn't burning at the time), and promised not to listen to it when I was around anymore, but he was curious to hear the rest. We both noted that if it wasn't done by someone "really bad," the kids at his place, who were really into heavy metal as I said, would NEVER listen to stuff like that. As it was, they only did when the resident was around, and then of course made sure she found out who the performer was...

One more thing about politics. In May of 1970 I was going climbing on a Sunday morning with a friend (rock climbing in the mountains), along with his older brother, who had us stop by the jail to bail out a friend of his, who joined us. The friend had been arrested for getting in a cops face the day before at a Vietnam War protest, and he was also a "coordinator" for the SDS (and anti-war group often vilified). He and I became lifelong friends, and through him I went to many rallies, marches, and the like from 1970 to late 1972 (a peace agreement was signed in early 1973, pretty much ending these). OK, now that I've established my credentials for being exposed to a wide range of leftist thought during this period, which just happened to overlap the Manson family trial (June 1970 - Jan 1971, w/ sentencing in March). I also read quite a few leftist "underground newspapers" at this time, I had a friend who sort of collected them (for the comics, he was an aspiring rude cartoonist) and he would lend them to me to read, or I would just pick them up myself. The number of times I heard ANYTHING about Manson at these doings/writings? NONE. Absolutely none. And it would have been surprising and out-of-place enough to remember.

Alex Jones’ Infowars program ... guest host David Knight ...

No relation, I checked the "Illuminati Bloodlines" app on my phone.

[Deep Knight]

I could make this stuff up, but I can't. I bow my head and admit that reality puts me to shame.

I was driving around shopping for Thanksgiving Dinner (very big Illuminati holiday, what with the "family values initiative" and all) and listening to the local conspiracy-friendly radio station, KHNC (they got Alex Jones on before noon!). This was a local host or his stand in, and a guest, who were talking about cults and whether good people were attracted to cults and went bad, or if they were bad all along. It took some time before I realized they were talking about the Manson family, not liberals.

Then, all of a sudden, the conversation shifted. It went something like this:

"And another thing, have you noticed the similarities between them and Islamic fundamentalists? You know, cults like Al Qaeda and ISIS? There are so many similarities, so many. They should investigate that."

"You raise a good point, a very good point, but WE should be the ones to investigate it."

"That's what I meant, you can't trust the lame stream media. But now that Manson's dead, it might be too late..."

"You know, I was thinking about that too when I first heard. There ARE so many similarities, and you know that that whole thing was to cover up the reason for losing the Vietnam War in the first place ...

Not an original idea. Two years ago, and anti-Islamic website had an article "Was Mohammed (sic) the Charles Manson of His Day?" but that may have only been for clickbait and to insult Muslims. Charlie is only mentioned once in passing, although his wild-haired-and-eyed picture leads the article.

[The Observer]

IMHO, Manson and his many crimes had NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.

Of course. That was the whole point of my post. The leftists thought Charlie was on their side and thus they celebrated his murders for getting back at the establishment. The right-wing extremists (KK., Nazis, etc.) were pretty sure that Charlie was on their side and thus embraced his bigotry since he was against the Jews and blacks just like them. But unfortunately for both sides, Charlie was his own man and he would play both sides of the fields as far as he thought it would get him money, fame, babes, and drugs (and not necessarily in that order).

This had to cause some mental anguish once the activists had to consider all of the contradictions that Manson presented as a poster child for their movement. He was a long-haired, dope-swilling, free-loving, unwashed, tree hugging hippie, all positives for the leftists, but darn it all, he hated minorities and loved Hitler so much he carved a swastika on his brow! So instead of realizing that they needed to jettison their fuzzie-wuzzies for Charlies, they just overlooked them (like they overlooked all the violent shortcomings of Che, Mao, Stalin, and the Red Brigades in Europe). To the rightists, Charlie was a redneck, lynch-mongering, hate-filled race-baiting good ol' boy like they were, but how in tarnation were they supposed to react to Manson claiming to be Jesus Christ while fathering children out of wedlock and living on Haight-Ashbury? So they did the same thing, just ignored the biggest problems and kept looking up to Charlie. As I said, hypocrisy. And today, now the two wings are trying to shove him under their opposition's bus. More hypocrisy.

In the end, Charlie had to finally make a choice, and it was one, that given his racist outlook, was a no-brainer. He sided with the white supremacist movement since he would need to find some protection from the black gangs in prison.

I also read quite a few leftist "underground newspapers" at this time, I had a friend who sort of collected them (for the comics, he was an aspiring rude cartoonist) and he would lend them to me to read, or I would just pick them up myself. The number of times I heard ANYTHING about Manson at these doings/writings? NONE. Absolutely none.

You led a sheltered leftist existence. For instance, "Tuesday's Child" had a couple of issues dedicated to Manson. They even declared him "Man of the Year." You can read a little more about this tabloid here.

As for your fake quotes from the left about Manson, amusing, but just fake and pointless. My quotes? True and verifiable. You could look them up, as they say, if you have any doubts. Not sure why you think you need to detract from them by just running fake quotes.

[notorial dissent]

Maybe I am/was young and naive, but I never thought he was anything but a psychotic monster who enjoyed/gloried in killing people. He may have had other attributes beliefs, but the above is what I noticed/felt, along with a soul deep revulsion. I never considered or thought of him as being anything political, just that he was a psychotic monster.

[Deep Knight]

Maybe I am/was young and naive, but I never thought he was anything but a psychotic monster who enjoyed/gloried in killing people. He may have had other attributes beliefs, but the above is what I noticed/felt, along with a soul deep revulsion. I never considered or thought of him as being anything political, just that he was a psychotic monster.

Bingo! Give the man a kewpie, er, cuepee, er, quepea doll!

As for a "short lived" underground newspaper that used stories about the occult and Manson to try and boost circulation but this failed - seems to prove my point, don't cha think? Yes, it's true that I had never heard of "Tuesday's Child," but was that because I led a "sheltered leftist existence" or because any newspaper who would pull such a stunt was considered crap and eschewed? Even more likely, they were only around 6 months and never got any circulation beyond the LA Basin.

But don't listen to me, you can read the actual heavy hitter underground newspapers of the day for yourself! They're online (or at least were, and apparently some of them still are). The heavy hitters were: The Berkeley Barb, The Los Angeles Free Press, The Village Voice, The East Village Other, and THE REALIST. This latest was hands down my favorite, Paul Krassner was a genius. There was also one from Detroit (I think) that was comic-heavy and called something like "Up Against the Wall Street Journal Mother-@#$!ers" and a bunch of local stuff, you might be able to find "Chinook" online. You can also read the Rolling Stone article online (although it was having problems loading, no doubt because so many were trying to access it). Please do, and don't rely on cherry-picked quotes.

BTW, for a video showing how people felt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg

[The Observer]

Maybe I am/was young and naive, but I never thought he was anything but a psychotic monster who enjoyed/gloried in killing people. He may have had other attributes beliefs, but the above is what I noticed/felt, along with a soul deep revulsion.

Of course. I have never said anything different. We could throw in the term "sociopath" as well without worrying about being charged with practicing psychology without a license. As I showed above, Manson was an opportunist and admitted to as much in regards to his beliefs and value system. If he could ingratiate himself with a particular movement in order to further his own goals, he'd pretend to be on that bandwagon. Of course, Charlie didn't like being described as a "hippie", despite the fact that he was living what most people would call a hippie lifestyle. His preference was to be labeled as a "slippie" as a descriptor of being able to crawl and move around in the dark undetected while prowling.

But what cannot be denied was that there were political activists and fanatics from both sides of the spectrum who praised Manson, saw him as being a political martyr for their cause, and sought to be within the limelight of the Manson culture, such as they thought existed. Even to the point of making themselves out to be idiots in the process. Now some 40-odd years later, they are trying push ol' Charlie away as though they never heard of him.

As for a "short lived" underground newspaper that used stories about the occult and Manson to try and boost circulation but this failed - seems to prove my point, don't cha think?

Your point, as expressed, was that you had NEVER seen anything published about Manson and as such, meant there is no proof that leftist papers were championing Manson. I merely provided an example that showed that this did happen. Now you want to move the goal posts and somehow claim that the quality and popularity (or lack thereof) means it never happened or that it didn't matter. The latter would have been at least a little more intellectually honest and would have been an entirely different point. But this is just typical of the attitude I have been commenting on here: trying to sweep inconvenient and embarrassing facts under the rug in the hope that no one will notice and we can shift all the blame to the other side of the fence. You cannot bring yourself to acknowledge that there were left-wing activists that were championing Charlie, nor can you deny with proof that they did so. Instead you just rely on sophistry as a way of trying to avoid the unpleasant truth, hence the "cherry-picked quotes" remark. But the quotes exist and are attributable to those persons, and your discomfort is not going to make them any less true.

Of course, this is the only issue I have with this thread: the lack of honesty. Your politics, as such, are your own and entirely your own business. I have never said you personally championed Charles Manson and certainly do not think that your political beliefs implied that you would or did. I don't think that your particular beliefs are going to suffer to any tremendous degree if you have to accept the fact that any idols of yours were less than orthodox in their beliefs or actions. But what will suffer is your reputation for being honest with yourself and others.

[notorial dissent]

Which I entirely agree. You could add sociopath as well i suspect, although I always got the feeling he enjoyed the pain and misery he caused, a true sociopath is generally considered to have no feelings except possibly where they concern them.

And he was most certainly the boogie man poster boy for anybody that wanted to use him, and a great many did.