Hating on the 60’s

25 Comments

1. 

   donnah on July 4, 2012 at 1:28 pm

   Oh, it’s a lovely scold piece about the fall of empires caused by self indulgence and instant gratification. Here’s one of my favorite lines about the better days:

   “Greed as well as homosexuality was a love that dared not speak its name.”

   What a shit.

   • 

     Oui on July 4, 2012 at 3:01 pm

     .
     Agree, a piece of shit.

     The Political Context: The Rise of the U.S. Feminist Movement

     The 1950s are a complex decade in the U.S. The country is at the height of the McCarthy era, yet it is the same decade that witnesses the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1953 Barrows Dunham, chair of the philosophy department at Temple University is subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Although he is tried and acquitted for refusing to provide more than his name, address, and age, Temple University fires him. A number of philosophers are called upon to testify before the HUAC and others are fired from positions because of their membership in the Communist Party. In 1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for keeping her seat in the front of a bus in Montgomery Alabama just one year after the Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board of Education bans segregation in public schools. In 1957 Martin Luther King is named president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference and begins his campaign to end race discrimination.

     It is important to remember that 1950 is only five years into a campaign to encourage women to return to home and hearth, leaving the jobs they had taken on as part of the war effort. As one telling example, consider Adlai Stevenson’s 1955 address to the Smith College graduating class urging these educated women not to define themselves by a profession but to participate in politics through the role of wife and mother. While McCarthyism rooted out political subversion, science and the media worked to instill proper gender roles. A 1956 Life magazine published interviews with five male psychiatrists who argued that female ambition was the root of mental illness in wives, emotional upsets in husbands, and homosexuality in boys.

     But the increasing involvement of women in freedom marches and, somewhat later, the protests of the Vietnam War give rise to a budding awareness of gender injustices. Looking back in the 1975 edition to her landmark study of the U.S. Women’s Movement in 1959, Eleanor Flexner explains:

     First in the South and eventually everywhere in this country, women were involved in these struggles. Some white women learned the degree to which black women were worse off than they were, or than black men. White and black women learned what the minority of women active in the organized labor movement had learned much earlier: that women were typically excluded from policy-making leadership roles of even the most radical movement, a lesson that would have to be relearned again and again in the political and peace campaigns of the late sixties.  

     Reaganomics and greed has nothing to do with injustice of race and gender nor with youth speaking out against the Vietnam War and devastation of lives through carpetbombing and Agent Orange. Sometimes we are surprised by uprising and protest against injustice in far away places: China protest against copper plant in Shifang.

     "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

     • 

       Oui on July 5, 2012 at 10:56 am

       .
       Worthwhile reading – The Sexual Revolution and the Rise of the Religious Right: How the Secularization of Sexuality Spurred Conservative Religious Mobilization.

       "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

2. 

   JLG on July 4, 2012 at 1:41 pm

   I think the dynamic is that there was a change in the 60’s in what the foundation of liberal politics was.

   From the 1880’s to the 1960’s, liberals were primarily concerned about the economic interests of workers and the poor.  The great achievements of that era included minimum wage laws, child labor laws, and Social Security, and insuring the right of workers to organize.  Part of the program was wealth redistribution, which was evidenced in the 50% Federal estate tax, and the marginal tax rates for the highest tax brackets.

   In the 1960’s, liberalism began to be about rights, equality, and personal freedom.  It started with the civil rights movement, or course, and by the end of the 1960’s, you had a strong women’s rights movement and the beginnings of the gay rights movement.

   Maybe there was a sense at the time that liberalism was embracing new ideas in the 1960’s, but that the old battles would continue to be waged.  That really isn’t what happened though.  The interests of workers got pushed into the background.  The idea of wealth redistribution was abandoned altogether.

   So Axelrod and his crew rally the Democratic faithful with the idea that the Republicans are engaged in a war against women, while remaining silent in the face of a quite explicit war that the Republicans are waging against unions.

   • 

     Davis X Machina on July 4, 2012 at 2:37 pm

     Are Axelrod and his crew reacting, or acting?

   • 

     Errol on July 4, 2012 at 2:48 pm

     Civil Rights, feminism are about economic issues, economic inequality

     • 

       MNPundit on July 5, 2012 at 2:31 am

       But in the minds of a great portion of the electorate they weren’t. Hence mass revolt and defection to the Republicans. The white males were all about keeping business in reasonable limits, until they realized that the fruits of that restraint would go to women and minorities as well instead of just them.

       I’ve often wondered if the trade off was worth it, and I say that as someone who would most certainly have been discriminated against or even killed.

   • 

     Phil Perspective on July 4, 2012 at 9:38 pm

     So Axelrod and his crew rally the Democratic faithful with the idea that the Republicans are engaged in a war against women, while remaining silent in the face of a quite explicit war that the Republicans are waging against unions.

     They aren’t silent.  They are just doing it stealth.  Don’t believe me?  Read this:

     http://bit.ly/M6Ee4D

3. 

   Indianadem on July 4, 2012 at 2:32 pm

   Maybe Maslow’s Hierarchy needs a greed level inserted somewhere in the pyramid.

4. 

   Parallax on July 4, 2012 at 2:43 pm

   I think the author got it about right. I first noticed, in the 1980s, those bumper stickers on RVs that said, “We’re spending our grandchildren’s inheritance.” This, I thought, is the redefined social compact, post “60s.

   • 

     The Voice In The Wilderness on July 4, 2012 at 5:14 pm

     An inheritance is a bequest, hence a gift. No one is entitled to one.

5. 

   Geov Parrish on July 4, 2012 at 5:05 pm

   It’s not a bad thesis, but important pieces are missing. The author’s bemoaning of “extreme individualism” has some truth, but it wasn’t just ’60s ideals that brought it about – in fact, many ’60s ideals are largely unrealized. Racism is still an endemic part of our economy (and politics); women not only can’t get equal pay, but can’t even get redress for such discrimination; DOMA and gay-bashing are still facts of American life; we’re waging more war now than ever; and so on.

   Even more importantly, Anderson doesn’t mention that there has been a major institutional factor in his “extreme individualism”: the rise of enormous corporations that figured out how to make a lot of money by appealing to people’s (often selfish) desires and turning them into needs. Mass advertising has been around nearly a century, but it really came of age wih television, and so was perfectly positioned to hijack ’60s ideals. And what we’ve had since is a half-century of rampant, unrestrained materialism for those who can afford it, fueled by spoon-fed dreams.

   Implicit in a critique of “extreme individualism” is that the bad choices are those of individuals, not a system. And implicit in a burst of ’60s-bashing is that for the last half-century there was nothing, nothing that could have been done to move us in a different direction – a society that, for example, prizes mutual concern but distributes the resulting obligations, and societal rewards, fairly so that no one class of people is discriminated against.

   For a lot of people, that was actually the point of the ’60s. The fact that such an alternative vision, or an analysis of why have not gone that route, doesn’t even seem to occur to Anderson says a lot about where he’s coming from.

   • 

     The Voice In The Wilderness on July 4, 2012 at 5:13 pm

     Extreme Individualism. Isn’t that the definition of Ayn Rand’s ideas?

     • 

       Geov Parrish on July 4, 2012 at 9:30 pm

       He’s bemoaning a cultural shift – he doesn’t even get into the whole notion that a whole wing of our politics now revolves around the premise that taxation for the common good – or concern for the welfare of the common good – has no legitimacy at all. From a guy who seems upset that people don’t wear neckties as often these days, I don’t sense that he’s thinking in that direction.

       Personally, even when I was a kid (in the 70s) I marveled at the realization that almost all of the world’s important decisions were being made not only by men, but by men who were willfully cutting off the oxygen supply to their brains.

6. 

   bento on July 4, 2012 at 7:16 pm

   Among the many ways in which the piece is dishonest is how it treats everything that has happened since the sixties as though it were advocated by hippies, when in fact the changes he condemns were advocated mostly by the backlash against hippies and boomers, specifically by Ronald Reagan and what he represented to people. You’re not politically responsible for what your ideological opponents do, especially when it is explicitly in opposition to you. After all, there has been some racist backlash to Obama. Is this to be blamed on liberals for electing a black president?

7. 

   Ten Bears on July 4, 2012 at 8:16 pm

   Yeah, that’s about right. However, a few of us reserve the right to (violently, if necessary) overthrow the existing order. It’s a tough job, but as you candy-assed “liberals” don’t have what it takes, someone has to do it.

   • 

     Geov Parrish on July 4, 2012 at 9:48 pm

     Setting aside moral issues, on a purely pragmatic level attempts in the US at revolution using violence are doomed to bad outcomes, unless a whole lot of other things change (for the worse) first. You can’t even have yahoos breaking a Starbucks window here without most people turning against them. (Cop and military violence, however, is glorious and righteous, always. Until you learn first hand that it’s not.)

     On the need for revolution, though, yeah, I’m with ya. Right now there’s a massive gap between what’s possible and what’s necessary. What’s necessary is a radical restructuring of political and economic systems, both in the US and globally.

     It’s not just a matter of human welfare and promoting systems that give everyone a fair shake. Our common survival is at stake, and the collapse could come a lot sooner than anyone’s thinking – within a generation. And the first few billion victims will primarily be the people least to blame. Climate change alone (along with a dozen other issues – energy, water, arms trade, corporate power, etc.) tells us that we’ve run out of time for half-assed reforms to be sufficient.

     That’s what we need. But at the macro level, it’s hard to maintain any optimism. If you see a clear path from where we are to what we need that doesn’t involve billions of people dying first, please share.

   • 

     DerFarm on July 5, 2012 at 10:37 am

     I don’t know if this post was sarcasm or not, so I’m going to respond as if “not”.

     I was in the Marines during ‘Nam.  I guarrantee that the kids they got in the Marines now, would kick my ass in a New York Minute if I tried to overthrow the “existing order”.  Same goes for ijuts that brag about doing it in a blog where every fibbie on earth can see it and make a note.

     Old Russian Proverb:  When 4 people plot revolution, one is a fool and 3 are police agents.

     • 

       janicket on July 5, 2012 at 11:47 am

       Our ursine friend has repeatedly stated more or less the same here and at another blog I frequent, so I’d take him as seriously as one ever takes a voice on the Internet.

       I loves ya, Ten Bears, always love to read your perspective, often agree with you, but when you get on this armed-insurrection track you go off the rails.

8. 

   TarheelDem on July 5, 2012 at 8:02 am

   “Generations” is a marketing construct.  There never was a revolution in the 1960s outside of some significant structural changes which were accomplished with a very small number of activists.  And to a great degree, those were accomplished by the children of the elite.  Without Robert Kennedy, the Civil Rights movement would not have gotten wide public support.  Without rebellion at elite universities, the anti-Vietnam War movement would never have come to Walter Cronkite’s consciousness.

   And it was a time in which the “perfection of American democracy” through equal rights and ending poverty and working to unwind the Cold War into a permanent peace could be integrated into Henry Luce’s vision of an American Century.

   As for CEOs, Lewis Powell’s memo probably had as much to do with their attitudes and ability to consolidate power (and reading Ayn Rand in the 1950s and 1960s) as any other factor.  And Powell was not a Boomer.  Nor was Ronald Reagan.  (Nor btw Martin Luther King or David Dellinger or Mario Savio).

   Once again the New York Times treats us to backlash from the hype that the Wall Street media pushed when they thought that revolution was a great advertising frame.  Buy those jeans and Nehru jackets and love beads…marketing  technique.

   And then in the 1970s, it was marketed as just having been the rebellious phase of a young demographic  that would get conservative  as it got older and had responsibilities.  That in itself is a form of social control, as is the pressure on jobs.

   • 

     Errol on July 5, 2012 at 9:29 am

     marketing successful, too. I’ve seen reputable scholars teach that when almost all the rest of the world was having 1968 demonstrations what the USA had was Woodstock – wtf???

9. 

   Ten Bears on July 5, 2012 at 9:10 am

   These people don’t long for the good old days gone by, they long for the good old days gone by as represented by the movie American Graffiti. Which is, of course, just another fantasy.

   • 

     BobX on July 5, 2012 at 10:06 am

     Add Norman Rockwell ,Leave it to Beaver, etc., shake well and pour yourself a Conservaperv Cocktail™ fantasy.

     Complete and total delusion.

     • 

       TarheelDem on July 5, 2012 at 11:31 am

       Norman Rockwell is on their commie list for his adulation of FDR and his pushing integration of schools.

       And even Beaver is suspect these days.

       • 

         BobX on July 6, 2012 at 10:07 am

         It’s not them per se, it’s the fantasy projected.