LOS ANGELES — Charles Manson, who masterminded a string of bizarre murders in Los Angeles in 1969 that both horrified and fascinated the nation and signified to many the symbolic end of the 1960s and the idealism and naivete the decade represented, has died.
Manson was a white supremacist who wanted to start a race war with the crimes. Note the self-inflicted Nazi scar on his forehead. Wonder who he reminds me of….
“Wonder who he reminds me of….”
Con-man Charlie Manson was an unscrupulous narcissist and a manipulative opportunist.
Just like Trump.
Manson was an amoral racist who stoked peoples fears to benefit himself.
A cult leader who fed his minions lies and nonsense in order to manage their thinking.
Just like Trump…….and Roy Moore.
When I was growing up in Eureka, I ran into Manson groupies a couple of times.
Once when I had a paper route and I was collecting the money, a nice woman invited me in while she got her checkbook from another room. On a typewriter on a shelf just inside the door was a plastic label from one of those label makers they sold back then that read “manson is love”. I got the hell out of there with my money and never went inside again.
When I was in High School, my band played an outdoor party in a little place called Freshwater, and we ended our first set with a rowdy version of “Helter Skelter” that the crowd seemed to like. While I was leaning my guitar against my amp so I could take off for a minute or two, this woman with straight blonde hair and pale blue eyes came up behind me and said “Could you play that song again? It’s my favorite song.”
I was so creeped out that I ran away from the little stage they had set up and told our drummer about it, not what you would call rock and roll behavior.
I also think one of my mom’s bosses, Jim McKittrick, was in one of the books they wrote about the Manson family, in a background piece that covered the counterculture in Northern California, because he represented an FBI agent who shot a guy during a raid of his cabin in the woods.
I know people who question whether Charlie should have done all of that time when he didn’t do any of the murders himself, and I try to politely explain to them the concept of “conspiracy to commit homicide” and usually don’t really get anywhere.