You still don't get it, do you. They just got done teaching us about democracy and why it's better than other forms of government, then they turned around and trashed the democratic process right before our eyes. It seemed like they were saying, "Okay, we taught you about democracy because we were required to do so, but we really don't believe in it ourselves. What we really believe in is deception, manipulation, intimidation, and raw power." These were the very qualities that they had criticized about the Soviet Union. Coincidence? I think not! It looked to me like they were a bunch of Communists, sent to Sawyer Elementary to subvert the democratic ideals of America's youth. I am still not totally convinced that wasn't the case, but I'm now willing to admit there might have been other possibilities.
As "The Lost City" pointed out, those people were nervous about losing control of their schools. We certainly had them outnumbered, but whose fault was that? We didn't tell them to make all those babies at the end of World War II. It's good that they made you and me, but we could have done without many of the others. Anybody who has studied the subject knows that, if you want to maintain control of oppressed people, you can't cut them a bit of slack. "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile.", as the saying goes. Another thing you've got to watch out for is the development of any kind of solidarity. Blue jeans was becoming a kind of a national uniform among the youth, which might have raised a few red flags among the Establishment. Funny, though, the kids at St. Galls a few blocks away had been wearing uniforms since forever, and nobody was worried about that. Maybe that was because their uniforms had been imposed upon them from above while ours were the spontaneous upwelling of our developing mass consciousness.
That still doesn't explain why they felt the need to trash American democracy in the process. They could have just as easily issued a decree from the principal. We had no reason to expect democracy in our schools because we had never had it before. First they had to teach us about democracy so that we would know what they were depriving us of. I guess it's no fun fucking with somebody unless they know they're being fucked with.
What you said about Western civilization got me to thinking that blue jeans are as much a part of Western civilization as anything. Long before they became a fashion statement of American youth, they were worn by cowboys, farmers, miners, and lumberjacks, all honest hard working people who helped make America great. Jeans were invented in 1873 by Levi Strauss, a poor San Francisco sail maker, who made the first prototype out of sail cloth remnants because he couldn't afford to buy a decent pair of pants for himself. It's a rags to riches story if I ever heard one, the Great American Dream come true. Anybody who goes against blue jeans goes against America and, in those days, the only people who went against America were the Communists.
I suppose that a lot of my classmates became cynical about American democracy from this experience, but I didn't. If that was the intent, well it didn't work on me. All I became cynical about was school.
8/30/15: I looked up Levi Strauss on Wiki, and it turns out that he didn't start off all that poor. He wasn't a sail maker either, he ran a dry goods store and made some tents on the side. The scraps he used to make his first pair of jeans were probably from one of his tent projects. Also he didn't make them himself, he had some help from a guy named Davis. I got my original story from an episode of the old TV show "Death Valley Days", and it was advertised as true. Man, you can't believe nothing nowadays! Nevertheless, I still believe that anybody who doesn't like blue jeans is not a true American.
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