As things fall apart in America, and talk of secession, “national divorce”, and civil war becomes more common, I’ve seen some people saying that the Sixties were just as bad, or worse — and that as bad as things were then, we got through it nevertheless, and hung together as a nation.
There’s something to this, of course. The Sixties, which I’m old enough to remember very well, were indeed a troubled time; it seemed that everything was crumbling into chaos. The Vietnam War, race relations, feminism, the Pill, the Bomb, the hippie counterculture, protests, race riots, and the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK — all of these things were terribly divisive and corrosive. I can see how someone could make a persuasive argument that the nation was in greater danger of coming apart then than it is now.
I disagree, for two reasons.
The first is that we never really did fully recover from the cultural earthquake of the Sixties; the bedrock of national cohesion and shared identity was badly fractured in that era, and the damage persists. Whatever we have built back since then has been erected on those weakened foundations. Moreover, the great ideological conflict of the Sixties never ended; what happened was that the counterculture consolidated its victories in the nation as a whole, and then its soldiers — most of whom were young — set about burrowing their way into all of the nation’s institutions of power and influence. That process now being complete, the brood, like a population of locusts, has emerged in its mature form — and it is prepared to devour everything.
The other reason is that, for all its discord and strife, the troubles of the Sixties took place in a very different social context. Even at its worst there was a feeling on both sides that America itself was still a noble idea, that the Founding was a triumph of human progress, and that there were objective, natural truths we all could agree on. The conflict of the Sixties felt like like a family argument, a bad patch we needed to get through before we could be a happy family again. The conflict of the present day, by contrast, is much more like a religious war, a struggle for subjugation and territorial conquest — frankly, a battle for extermination — between bitterly antagonistic nations with nothing in common at all.
I was struck by this just the other day when I heard on the radio the old Simon and Garfunkel tune “America”. Simon and Garfunkel were most assuredly a part of the Sixties “counterculture”, but that beautiful song was a paean to the shared American mythos: it sang of the great land of liberty that we were all blessed to live in, and of the endless possibilities for transformative experience and self-realization that this vast nation — containing multitudes and contradictions, but nevertheless dedicated in all its different parts to the same founding principles of liberty and opportunity for each of its citizens, however humble — had to offer. In short, despite being a product of an era of cultural revolution, the song expressed with deep and appealing emotion the traditional, romantic ideal of America, and as such it was profoundly, movingly patriotic.
That was then. It is hard even to imagine such a song, with its poignant affection for the commonality of the American experience, bridging the chasm that separates our warring factions today. It would seem naive at best, and at would almost certainly be seen by the clerisy of our new secular religion as a manifestation of “false consciousness” to be denounced and reviled for giving comfort to the enemy.
So: yes, the Sixties were bad, and set the stage for the crisis we are living through today. But if our situation in 2021 resembles any previous decade of American history, it is not the 1960s — it is the 1850s.
11 Comments
Well said, Malcolm.
We had a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to correct all of this with far less pain in 1989/90. But the uniparty rot had already set in, so we blew it.
If it’s inevitable, sooner suits me better than later.
Culture war and partisan warfare have given way to ideological warfare which we on the right side are losing. For now. Our melting pot is now a boiling pot and the contents are spilling over. With coming shortages of basic goods because of supply chain disruptions and senseless regulations, it will not surprise me to see masses of people—normal people—in the streets and packing to overflow all city council meetings, school board meetings, zoning board meetings and so on. This is happening now over schools teaching CRT and other social and sexual perversion in public schools.
I expect social violence to increase as panicked government functionaries over react in complete shock because normal people are not being ‘conservative’ and placid. As Conservatives, we will not prevail being ‘conservative’. In addition, I suspect violence will break out within Federal agencies and maybe even between Federal agencies—maybe the armed ones—as factions within choose side, meaning Normal v Woke authoritarian.
I saw this earlier today suggesting we are not on the fringe of things but deeply into the maelstrom:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-war-warning-from-michael-yon.html
Peter Turchin, who is a demographic/economic historian at UConn and a Russian expatriate, has analyzed period of social conflict, and he claims that the political and social discord in today’s America is worse than it was on the eve of the Civil War. He expects the 2020’s to be a period of political violence more serious than the 60’s.
I was in college in the 60’s, and I never want to see that again.
I think it’s even worse than the 1850s, for two reasons.
In the 1850s, despite two violently opposed factions, the picture was clear. Should there be slavery in the new territories or not? And they fought over it.
What the hell is the fight supposed to be over today? I really don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be a shared reality. As far as I can tell, there are a bunch of culture war issues that conservatives are worried about. But from my perspective they range from “highly exaggerated” to “completely made up.” CRT, for example, is a concept taught in some college courses, but a rightwing marketer did a brilliant job in convincing people that “CRT” means ANY attempt to teach about racism in America AT ALL. Basically, if a school teaches anything less than “America may have had some racist issues in the past, but those have long been resolved and there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO racism in America today” means “they are teaching Critical Race Theory.”
If it were the 1850s, we would be going to war over whether to teach CRT in school or not. But the reality, as far as I can see, is that there is no such thing being taught and there is no such threat. By contrast, I bet you feel the reality is that there IS such a thing being taught.
So if it were the 1850s it would be like if one side wanted slavery in the new territories, and the other side didn’t think there is such a thing as slavery or territories at all.
I don’t see how this plays out long term.
The other reason it’s different from the 1850s is because of what I think is a plausible thesis defended by Tom Nichols. Basically, modern life has gotten so good (relative to history), that people are bored and becoming narcissists. Most of those involved in January 6th were middle to upper-middle class folks, many of him didn’t even vote, and most of whom don’t have anything really to be angry about. But that ironically leads to boredom and the desire to be a hero or a combatant. Off to the Northeast to fight just like our founding fathers did!
Again, I have no idea how this plays out long term.
Maybe it’s just the natural lifespan of an empire. Struggle, finding identity, height, and then…boredom and decline…?
Martin,
I disagree with you about what’s taking place in our schools — but even if you were right about that, to reduce this conflict merely to that relatively minor issue, or to imagine that the causes of this great clash of worldviews are “highly exaggerated”, is a colossal mistake. Contrary to what you say above, the “picture” is very clear indeed, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
I’d say more, but my power’s been knocked out and all I have for the next day or two is a cell-phone. (I’m sure there are others here who might have something to add.)
This is a summary of a bit of 2020-2021.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/20/our-purgatory-is-their-nirvana/
…Simon and Garfunkel
The song America was inspired by Paul Simon’s cross country trip in 1964.
By 1975, Simon was penning My Little Town, a not-so-nice take on America. Also highlights the rural-urban divide which continues to redound.
Well said.
Good to see you back Malcolm.
Forget ideology, this is about power for them and extermination for us. Politics is Power, it was always unnatural to share power, that part is over.
The Elites aren’t by the way aiming at the 60s redux, they are aiming for Syria 2014 redux; and they’ll get it because they are very good at doing chaos wars, its in their interests and nothing organized is in their way.
I said organization.
I still say organize, but of course the FEDS ???? are EVERYWHERE so guess it will be Improvised.
@Martin:
Correct on this count, the “left” and “right” whatever those mean have little in common. They generally watch different things on TV, they browse different websites, they read/watch different news, they work different jobs in different towns.
Conservatives are leftists in decay. One struggles to define racism or left-right precisely. Left-right are more affective terms, I think, than any precise policy prescriptions. Racism on the other hand is a sliding scale. Racism in 1930 meant inflicting violence on account of race; in 1967, it meant that or ‘discriminating’ in business and most matters of life on basis of race; in 1990, it meant having negative opinions about another race. We find that the only consistency is that ‘racism’ was used almost always against whites, and generally against white men, as a means of demoralization and creating schemes to punish working and middle class white men. We also see that the disciplining of whites and white men in particular is tightening ever more while the discipline of non-whites is loose to the point that there are scores of murderers and rapists who have been let off the hook simply because they are black/Mestizo/Arab/non-white in the US and in other formerly white countries. That doesn’t even touch ‘Israeli’ crime which is basically not punished.
Here is your “racism” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Biehl – retarded naive white girl (leftist, with leftist parents) who goes to South Africa in 1993 to protest Apartheid because the negotiations weren’t going fast enough, or more likely she didn’t know that they were already negotiating an end to Apartheid because her head was full of Jewish media agitprop against Boers and South Africa. Long story short, in the midst of a protest she was surrounded by a mob of negroes, gang raped, and beaten to death. Her parents “forgave” the murderers who spitroasted their daughter, and the ANC did too – as part of Truth and Reconciliation all blacks who murdered whites were released from prison. What do you call these people – the ANC and the Biehls? Do Joe Slovo and the Mandelas bear responsibility for her death too?
Everyone is “middle class” in the US. Somehow the US is the only country without a working class or small rich. But the US is not “so good” or there would not have been over 800,000 opioid/opiate overdose deaths in the past 20 years, along with about 320,000 murders and 600,000 suicides by other means. Lest we mistake the windfall of a few for the fortunes of the many.
@crumbwalrus
Right, but my point wasn’t anything to do with racism. It was the fact that the two opposing sides live in completely different worlds, which makes this VERY unlike the 1850s. I don’t know where this is headed when you have two halves of a population cordoned off within their own media ecospheres.
It’s far from perfect, but life in general is better than it’s been in the past. The Depression, WWII, fears of annihilation by the Soviets, etc. Things are “calm” now, and have been for a time. We don’t have as many clear enemies to fear and loathe as we used to. Soviets are gone. Islamists are quiet. So people become bored and want to start feeling like soldiers or superheroes. Hence, they storm the capitol building. You even heard them on that day comparing themselves to the Founding Fathers.