Chaotic Transitions

Culture Boundary

The other day I had a conversation with an old friend, Steve, who suffered the attack of Ronald Reagan on the Berkeley campus almost 40 years ago. We were reflecting on those frightening and exhilirating times, when we remembered that, only a few years before, things were totally different. Steve pointed out how ridiculous Clark Kerr's statements sounded. I pointed out, having been there before the Free Speech Movement (FSM), how normal Clark Kerr's statements sounded. In the blink of an eye, "normalcy" became "insanity."
 

In the documentary film, Berkeley in the Sixties (now available at Amazon.com and elsewhere), the point is made that the University Administration and the government drove the protests by committing "atrocities." There were times when the various protest movements were stuck; they didn't know what to do. In the 1960s, the protestors were saved over and over again by the stupidity and carelessness of the authorities. Since then, governing bodies have learned to manage the news and the situation much better, thus bringing about our present state of 1984. Karl Rove and others don't let things get out of hand, so there are no more "atrocities." This is one of the reasons the anti-war movement is stuck in neutral about Iraq, even though the polls say over 50% of Americans now want immediate withdrawal.
 

There is something the documentary doesn't mention, but which I believe is everywhere in the background of all that happened in the 1960s. That same thing is hanging over the United States today, unresolved. Now we think about it as the Red and Blue States, the nation divided. There are two countries, two worlds, which are the house divided that cannot stand. Prior to the FSM, there was a "standard" worldview dominant in the post-war period. Despite the seemingly wonderful world of Camelot in the early 60s, the Kennedy charisma was built on the platitudes and conformity of the 1950s. Jackie Kennedy seemed a complete change from the drabness of the prior era, but was only the pinnacle of the old values put before the public. What impressed the country and the world was the suave chic of aristocrats made President and First Lady, not new policies and a new culture. Nothing really changed until the back country politician, LBJ, assumed office after the assassination. It was that shock and the other shocks that changed everything. It was then the country split into two worlds, an old one still entrenched in the Red States and a new one evolving into the Blue States. They finally parted company when Hubert-Humpty was Dumptied in 1968. They cannot be put back together again.

The Berkeley protestors, including me, underwent a fairly sudden conversion, a Road to Damascus experience, in the early 1960s. Officialdom and most other people continued in their old ways as if nothing had happened. For the converted, the old formulas were suddenly irrelevant and meaningless. They did not assure success or happiness in life. In fact, the old ways instilled fear, nausea and rejection in young men who did not want to get maimed or killed in Vietnam, who did not want to be a stuffed shirt or a grey flannel suit. A little later, the women altered by this new consciousness decided they didn't like being dominated and used by men. Women's Lib, born in the late 1960s, changed everything, the results of which we are seeing today. I think the Women's Movement was actually more effective in changing the culture and society than the FSM, the anti-war movement and the New Left. We begin with our mothers. Those young hippie girls and groupies of the 1960s became mothers of a generation transformed by their youthful experiences. Those mothers of our younger generations set their progeny on a new course which is still developing. It is because those mothers instilled in the young a new and different culture that the Women's Movement was and is ultimately more effective: they institutionalized the revolution.
 

These conversions did not come about at once. They would never have happened if the seeds were not sown. For myself, everything crystallized at the October, 1965 Teach-In sponsored by the Vietnam Day Committee. Until then, I was skeptical of the Vietnam War and of Camelot. I whole-heartedly supported LBJ against Barry Goldwater because I did not want a Cold War or a nuclear war. I also wanted racial justice, fair housing and an egalitarian society. I rejected the stifling mediocrity, conformity and authoritarianism of the 1950s culture, McCarthyism and all the rest of it. The Teach-In somehow caught me, drew me into the anti-war movement, and put me into action. I'm in a frame or two of Berkeley in the Sixities: at the Teach-In, holding my baby son. I remember being scanned by the cameraman covering the event. Shortly thereafter I took up the cause spontaneously, and have been an unabashed activist ever since. In the eye of the conventional world, I was trash, nothing, worthless. The Teach-In set fire to the trash can. As a later saying put it, "I'm mad as Hell, and Won't Take It Any More." For a time in the 1960s, despite the depressing assassination of JFK, it seemed all things were possible. The ideal of a New Order, of a Camelot beyond the 1950s, was squarely before us and in our hands.
 

That ideal was different from whatever was in the minds of our elders, the authorities of that time and since. The conflict in Berkeley was only possible because the authorities had no idea what had happened. They did not understand, much less sympathize, with the counter-culture, as it came to be called. The official point of view perceived the hippies and protestors as unkempt, ill-mannered disordered drug addicts, who were at least loafers, bums and ne'er-do-wells, and at worst revolutionaries, criminals and terrorists. At the time, the authorities and official culture were unable to comprehend any alternative to themselves. They were the way, the truth and the light; and that was that. They were autocrats, but they did not know themselves as such. The same people and culture continued among White people in the South (and elsewhere). (One thing that can be said for the South is its amazing resistance to any siginficant culutral change in more than 200 years. For that reason, I think the South - the Red States' culture - is hopelessly unAmerican for the duration.) But, elsewhere, it was largely replaced by a toned-down Counter-Culture centered in Northern California and very often expressed by Hollywood stars.

The old culture is represented in and by the Bandit Administration to this day, unchanged with one exception: conservatives learned that some people have different views of the world from theirs (in itself, a mind-boggling experience). Conservatives still do not understand or sympathize with cultures different from their own, but they are no longer stunned and rendered helpless by their mere existence. Unlike their predecessors, conservatives realize that people here and abroad have unacceptable thoughts and attitudes, and live by subversive maxims. Conservatives don't like disorderly, multi-cultural societies, independent thinkers or anything non-conforming. They realize such cultures are threatening. They are willing to overcome those differences and resistance to conservative rule by any means necessary because they are still convinced of the righteousness of their cause. The Bandit and his henchmen adopted unilateral and pre-emptive policies to deal with the foreign infidels. They have the same policies regarding domestic enemies, but the policies are implemented differently. They sent the military to Iraq and Afghanistan, but domestic foes are liquidated by denying welfare benefits, increasing unemployment and poverty and harrassing those who disagree. The goal is to isolate and impoverish dissenters, even imprison them, as they used to do in the 1950s. Karl Rove's stated political goal is to destroy the Democratic party and Liberalism in the United States. Conservatives play for keeps.