"We are forces of chaos and anarchy
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves
Up against the wall
Up against the wall, motherfucker"
Everything they say we are we are
And we are very
Proud of ourselves
Up against the wall
Up against the wall, motherfucker"
"We Can be Together" Jefferson Airplane, 1970
In the vocabulary of the 1960s, straight wasn't about sexual orientation; it was a look and manner and attitude toward authority and institutions of culture. Straight was contrasted with hip as in hippy. Politically, straight meant I wasn't radical; I supported the electoral system and didn't want revolution. In clothes and appearance, straight meant I had short-ish hair and wore clothes bought in mainstream stores. Straight meant I wasn't a doper. Straight meant that I went to class and wanted to make progress toward a degree so I could get a job. Straight meant that I was hoping to succeed and prosper in the "establishment" world. Straight meant I was glad there was a U.S. military, but wanted it to fight just wars, not the one in Vietnam. I wore a Strike! tee-shirt, but I didn't strike personally.
I was in the culture, not the counterculture. I believed in the institutions that shape America. I wanted to reform them from within. I thought the radical, doper, hippy people around me were impeding reform. They created more backlash than progress. They welcomed chaos and anarchy. Most of us enjoyed the music of revolution, but some people wanted real-life anarchy and chaos and acted on it, either privately with drugs and sex or publicly with violent politics. I thought both were counterproductive to on-the-ground reform. People old and settled enough to vote--people with jobs and mortgages--generally do not want anarchy. They have something to lose. They will choose safety over chaos, I thought.
I saw a version of the countercultural radical left rise again in Portland last summer and fall. They are marginalized, but visible, to the political peril of Democrats facing election in Oregon and nationally. The political right jumped on the opportunity to make Portland anarchists the face of America's political left. Democratic officeholders condemned them, but not clearly and loudly enough, and they didn't stop them, arrest them, prosecute them, and celebrate their imprisonment. Democrats in authority looked ambivalent and hesitant. The Democratic Party chose Biden--the archetypal straight politician--but the image of radical chaos remains. The GOP sees to that.
The irony is that under Trump the GOP became the party of chaos and anarchy. They are the new radicals and hippies. Republican officeholders scoff at authority and contrast it with freedom. Every institution is suspect in the GOP media and messaging environment. Trump says the FBI is corrupt. The intelligence agencies are corrupt--the Deep State. The health authorities are untrustworthy and indeed may have intentionally infected us with COVID. Our international alliances cheat Americans. Our elections are frauds. Our K-12 system misinforms our children, and our universities teach dangerous theories. Our democracy isn't worth defending, not if democracy elects Democrats. Republican officeholders remain mum when Trump says the election should be overturned, and news emerges that he plotted to remain in office by corrupting our justice system. The Supreme Court--even one with a majority of conservatives--is cowardly and failed Americans.
Hippies of the 1960s were the supposed "free love" people; Republicans defended old customs and virtues. Not now. While Democrats demanded quick removal of Al Franken and now Andrew Cuomo, the GOP dismisses the accusations against Trump and ignores the Access Hollywood revelation. Boys will be boys. It's "nothing to get hung about," as the Beatles observed in Strawberry Fields Forever.
Trump-oriented Republicans--the majority--now manage the party of "do your own thing." They are the party that says that vaccinations and masks are burdens on freedom--certainly too much to demand for any common good. They are the draft-dodgers in the war against COVID. Popular red state governors say the war is un-necessary and badly waged and darned if they will participate.
Trump-Republicans are wiser than were the hippies and radicals of the 1960s. They claim the flag, the symbol of America itself, even as they flout and condemn its institutions of culture and government. It makes them a more credible revolutionary. They are anarchists on behalf of all-American freedom.
This is the way the world ends.
ReplyDeleteThis is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang,
But with a whimper.
T.S. Eliot
Peter's blog today exposes the fact that neither factions want to spend the energy to make our form of government work. Biden is criticized by the left for compromising with opponents. Trumpists eat their own when they share a view of their "leader" as dangerous and antithetical to theirs. All factions race to their conners claiming foul. None voice out loud that they are attacking an American, seeing only the other. Quietly we all whimper what has become of our nation? This is the way it will end with our backs turned to each other.
Very interesting article, Peter, which really caught me by surprise. You’ve made some very valid comparisons.
ReplyDeleteI was a pseudo counterculturist. To be a “real” counterculturist you generally had to live with the irony of being just like everyone else in the movement, while talking the talk of individualism. I guess I’d classify myself, both in the old days and now, as more of a “free thinker”. A lot like you, I’m suspecting.
There were two factions of the counterculture movement of the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteThe "cosmic consciousness" wing was into psychedelics and what you could find out from them. "Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" was the summary, but for some of us it went a lot deeper than that. We were called "hippies." We were not "straight."
The "political" wing was into "the revolution" that never came. They consisted of groups like SDS, the Progressive Labor Party (which made SDS look like Republicans), and the Weather Underground (an offshoot of SDS which tried to catch up to the PLP in extremism). They were straight and uptight even when they did the drugs. They were full of opinions about what everybody should be doing, and totally open to the idea that it would be righteous to make everyone obey.
I remember talking to a college professor from the political wing back then. It was at a party where we were all getting stoned, but he was apparently too attached to his intellect to get off. He was dressed in college professor drag (sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows, pipe, etc). I looked into his mind like you could do when you were stoned enough, and his mind was dressed in its own little sports jacket with leather patches, holding onto its own little pipe.
We in the cosmic consciousness wing considered the political wing to be dour, joyless, and uptight. The political wing considered us to be insufficiently committed to the revolution, which was absolutely true given how screwed up their uptight authoritarian revolution would have been had they succeeded.
The radical left here in Portland in the 21st Century are the descendants of the political wing of the 1960s counterculture. Many of them are joyless commies who wouldn't know cosmic consciousness if it bit them in the ass; black-clad thugs determined to eradicate every thought that didn't come out of their own heads; Mao or Pol Pot if they ever had the power.
The 1960s were a sharp break with what had come before. It was described as a "generation gap." The Trump phenomenon is very different. It is largely made up of people who want various things to remain the same: manufacturing jobs here in America, 2 sexes instead of 47.8 "genders," color-blind equality instead of a racial spoils system based on "equity," etc. Some but not all of them are opposed to changes that I think are actually good, like gay marriage, but I support many of their concerns.
They are often unfairly tarred as "racists" via a rhetorical sleight of hand that substitutes a new and incredibly expansive definition of racism (anything that produces a "disparity") for the older and more common definition (hatred of different races).
They are fundamentally attached to cultural continuity, which makes them very different from the 1960s counterculture. It's not that they are wiser or more politically strategic than we were. They claim the flag because they are emotionally attached to the flag. The institutions they flout and condemn are largely institutions that have been taken over by the new woke authoritarians who want to cancel any vestige of cultural continuity.
So I do not think the parallel between the 1960s counterculture and the Trump phenomenon stands up to a deeper look, at least not from where I stand. I like the analysis that was just published by David Brooks:
HOW THE BOBOS BROKE AMERICA
The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction.
By David Brooks
link
There were so many factors driving the changes in the 60’s For one thing it was a fad. But the big change was ending lynching, killing Black Panthers, beating white boy draft dodgers, CIA and FBI spies, birth control, killing fields of Vietnam, using poor young drafted boys for canon fodder. and spraying agent Orange to contaminate the citizens and warriors, loads of bombs, mine fields and napalm all in the name of capitalism and democracy. Vicious Hypocrisy on a grand scale.
ReplyDeleteNo comparison with the Trump money grubbing grabbing and the phony lie of helping the silent majority fight off the inner city races and so called immigrants rushing the border. Yes both had a lot of smoke and mirrors but the sixties brought deep changes for women , and minorities. Trumpism has not built a future of promise like the sixties did. Trumpism tears down cooperation and positive visions of a society
Not love, cynicism. Not tenderness toward the earth but raw exploitation. There is no comparison to me except the greed, it’s still there on both sides. And it will destroy the earth.
Rock music served as a platform from which the half-baked illiterate rantings of groups like Jefferson Airplane launched their mindless maunderings of
ReplyDeletesenseless outrage in lyrics that featured profanity and were nonsensical.
There is always a price for suffering such nonsense and we are paying it today
as all the arts have nosedived into inanity.
Bob Warren