As I wrote last year in Taki's Magazine:
One counterintuitive reason for the tumult of the mid-to-late 60s [that followed JFK's assassination] was the evaporation of the long-simmering Protestant-Catholic divide which had provided a stable multigenerational anchor for social tensions.
The instant enshrinement of the martyred Catholic president in the pantheon of American heroes did much to mollify Catholic resentments over being considered fringe Americans. (Back then, being thought a normal American was praise, not denigration.) Meanwhile, the enthusiastic adoption by Catholic women of oral contraceptives (which the FDA approved in 1960) reassured Protestants that they weren’t going to lose the War of the Cradle to the Vatican.
In turn, this closure of the biggest fissure in the white majority opened a space for the Generation Gap. People need divisions around which to organize themselves, and in that mostly racially and ethnically homogeneous era, age differences briefly became central. (In more diverse cultures, such as 21st-century America, people cleave more to their kin.)
Of course, one racial gap was crucial to the story of the 60s. The assassination of the domestically cautious JFK put the ambitious LBJ into power with a mandate to push through civil rights and welfare programs to punish the right-wing racists who had murdered Kennedy. Chief Justice Earl Warren expressed the hopes and dreams of the Establishment when he declaimed on 11/22/63, “A great and good President has suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has [sic] been injected into the life of our nation by bigots….”
It turned out that JFK had been murdered by a communist who had defected to the Soviet Union. When Jackie Kennedy learned the unwelcome truth, she lamented, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It had to be some silly little communist. It robs his death of any meaning.”
But that wasn’t a popular realization, so everybody who was anybody mostly ignored Lee Harvey Oswald and went on acting as if it had been Strom Thurmond up in the Texas Book Depository with the mail-order rifle.
President Johnson announced his Great Society in May 1964 and signed the Civil Rights Act in July. The era’s first black riot followed a couple of weeks later. LBJ won by a landslide in November, and vast riots ensued in Watts in 1965 and Detroit in 1967.
President Johnson announced his Great Society in May 1964 and signed the Civil Rights Act in July. The era’s first black riot followed a couple of weeks later.
ReplyDeleteWell... Gosh! When you put it like that, it makes it seem like one thing followed another!
Can the war of the cradle really end when there are still participants on the battlefield, firing their guns (pun intended)?
ReplyDelete"It robs his death of any meaning": face it, his life had little meaning either. Except he nearly got us all blown to Kingdom come.
ReplyDeleteIt turned out that JFK had been murdered by a communist who had defected to the Soviet Union. When Jackie Kennedy learned the unwelcome truth, she lamented, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It had to be some silly little communist. It robs his death of any meaning.”
ReplyDeleteBut that wasn’t a popular realization, so everybody who was anybody mostly ignored Lee Harvey Oswald and went on acting as if it had been Strom Thurmond up in the Texas Book Depository with the mail-order rifle.
President Johnson announced his Great Society in May 1964 and signed the Civil Rights Act in July. The era’s first black riot followed a couple of weeks later. LBJ won by a landslide in November, and vast riots ensued in Watts in 1965 and Detroit in 1967.
This timeline shows why conspiracy theories stick to JFK like a tar-baby. The collapse of American civil society was so rapid after 1963 that it just had to be a conspiracy. Even the dimmest bulb on the tree can see the JFK assassination as a social inflection point, it was all downhill from there.
However, in Nov 1963 the oldest baby boomers were high school seniors. I think that may have been the social inflection point, not the JFK assassination.
My goodness! Thanks for that bit of history. Earl Warren. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteI am sure Earl is resting easy now. His anti-discrimination has come to full fruition: back in 1963 California's secondary ed system was in the top ranks in the nation. Now California is third from the bottom, just beating out Arkansas and Mississippi.
In fact, to prove just how un-bigoted they are, the LAUSD just threw a final Hail Mary pass with its $1B-iPads-for-everyone initiative.
Earl Warren, the last of our male stripper Chief Justices.
DeleteI've come to the conclusion that the 1960s generation gap was something wanted, needed and encouraged by those in power at the time. Look at the art, architecture, urban planning, divorce laws, education reforms and even Vatican councils that the older generation had brought into being while the Boomers were still too young to vote.
ReplyDeleteAfter WW2, the dominant faction in the West wanted to tear it all down and start over again. They wanted a Year Zero and saw the young as their natural allies. Those spotless modernist university campuses were supposed to produce spotless and modernist minds untainted by the last 2,000yrs or so of western civ but it didn't really work out as planned.
People need divisions around which to organize themselves
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ, Steve.
That's a pretty seriously meta-uber-galacto-sized assertion to be tossing around quite so nonchalantly.
Dudes like Plato and Nietzsche and Veblen [not to mention MacMarx and MacFreud] will devote several thousand pages of blather trying to lull their readers into complacency before they move in for the kill with a thesis like that.
Why did the Kennedys hate Castro so much? Was it just ordinary inter-gangster relations, or was there more to it?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe I should adopt the opposite point of view: In the absence of division, there is no necessity for the organization of people.
ReplyDeleteIf you're the Hobbits, living amongst yourselves [and only yourselves] in the Shire, then you're free to go about living your peaceful bucolic idyllic lifestyles to your hearts' content.
It's only when divisions are introduced into a society that it becomes necessary for the people to be organized.
Which would be a pretty good summation of the plan of attack which the Frankfurt School has been using towards their goal of destroying, annihilating, and eradicating Western Civilization.
Sow the seeds of discontent.
Welcome the termites into the house.
Set your foes at one-anothers' throats.
Divide and Conquer FTW.
"back then being thought a normal american was praise"
ReplyDeleteexcellent point!
"People need divisions around which to organize themselves"
why is that??
with JFK's death, the democrats moved far to the left.
why is that?
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/11/20/nyt-obamacare-debacle-could-kill-big-blue/
ReplyDelete"While it is true that, as Edsall points out, Obamacare is an aggressively redistributionist program that intends to shift hundreds of billions of dollars away from the middle class to the poor, I don’t think many voters have done the math on this."
Wait a minute. If the argument for AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT was that too many Americans are paying way too much for healthcare with the existing system, how does it help them to raise their premiums even higher so that vast numbers of freeloaders can get the same kind of plan too?
The big contradiction in the Liberal argument for healthcare reform.
1. Americans are paying too much in the current system, and reforms are necessary to make healthcare more affordable to them.
2. Too many people are uninsured, and to insure them, we must force the middle class to pay even more than the high cost they are paying right now.
Huh?
I love that last paragraph. Made a graphic out of it.
ReplyDeletehttp://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/11/jfk-lbj-and-civil-rights.html
http://brightlightsfilm.com/82/82-blue-jasmine-woody-allen-wall-street.php#.Uo47-NK-o2Q
ReplyDeleteSo our theories of JFK's assassination are a) it was Oswald, a Communist or b) a US gov't conspiracy to ensure the Vietnam war or c) a US gov't conspiracy to pass Civil Rights legislation. In case b) JFK is an impediment while in case c) JFK is the needed martyr (as indeed a Catholic Church in Georgetown refers to him)
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that conspiracy group b) and conspiracy group c) could have conspired together.
The Catholic/Protestant divide back then is interesting. We haven't had any Catholic candidates since Kennedy and I would think if there were one now there would be less Protestant concern about them taking direction from Rome, as there was in 1960 (though mainstream Protestant concern about Romney makes me wonder if that's true).
ReplyDeleteIn the unlikely event of a Biden Presidency I would feel more secure in thinking he was taking direction from SOMEWHERE, and not from the voices in his head which frequently lead to his outrageous statements.
I don't think that much changed politically on 11/23/63. Political power is very diffuse in America. No single person wields much of it. On the one hand Americans tend to be proud of not living under one-man rule, on the other they always end up talking about presidents much more and with much greater passion than these presidents' actual importance warrants. It's as if Americans would secretly LIKE to live under one-man rule. All this endless minutia about presidents' personalities, educations, family backgrounds. An obsession of this sort would have actually been justified in ancien regime France or in Mao's China.
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that Kennedy would have done most of the things that Johnson ended up doing simply because he would have had to respond to the same media trends.
Why did the 1960s upheavals happen? TV plus the baby boom (1946 + 18 = 1964). Boomers were a fertile soil, TV was like a new and improved sowing machine,
Earl Warren knew from bigotry. He interned Japanese-Americans during the war.
ReplyDeleteCraig Roberts gone bonkers?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/11/21/kennedy-assassination-november-22-1963-50-years-later/
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/11/20/bin-ladens-obituary-notice/
No way the official story on JFK is true, Oswald was a patsy. It was CIA with a fully helpful LBJ.
ReplyDeleteThe official story -- Big Lie--is still being forced on us from all sides--MSM and the Limbaughs of the world, Government and Schools-- yet the people know it's bogus as this, the Single Loogie theory--from Seinfeld
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBz3PqA2Fmc
Alan Ehrenhalt had a nice line about the retrospective sentimentalization of the Kennedy assassination: “The only teenage males I know who were emotionally shattered by the Kennedy assassination are the ones I read about in books or see in movies.”
ReplyDeleteChief Justice Earl Warren expressed the hopes and dreams of the Establishment when he declaimed on 11/22/63, “A great and good President has suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has [sic] been injected into the life of our nation by bigots….”
ReplyDeleteThose wonderfully smug and historically inaccurate comments came from a man who 20 years earlier did this:
Japanese-American internment
As Attorney General (of California), Warren is most remembered for being the moving force behind Japanese internment during the war: the compulsory removal of people of Japanese descent to inland internment camps out of fear that they might sabotage military bases on the coast. Following the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Warren organized the state's civilian defense program, warning in January 1942 that, "The Japanese situation as it exists in this state today may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort."[10][11] He later said he:
"since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens...Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken...[i]t was wrong to react so impulsively, without positive evidence of disloyalty"
—The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977)[12]
Why did the Kennedys hate Castro so much? Was it just ordinary inter-gangster relations, or was there more to it?
ReplyDeleteIn Batista's Cuba, the mob (Chicago Outfit) ran the casinos. Castro came to power and kicked them out, which cut off a big source of income. So the deal was that the mob would help get JFK elected (remember Joe Sr's old connections from Boston back in the bootlegging days) and then he would overthrow Castro and let the Chicago boys take their casinos back. Well, Jack royally fucked up the Bay of Pigs and then sort of gave up on Cuba, so something had to be done about that.
Note: I learned all this from American Tabloid, so take it with a huge grain of salt.
Why did the Kennedys hate Castro so much? Was it just ordinary inter-gangster relations, or was there more to it?
ReplyDelete??? They hated communists in general. AND this was a communist country just a few miles from the U.S. -- within nuclear-missile range, you might say. What more justification do you need??
My comment is to a previous thread but needs to be said. Another commenter mentioned that if patriotic americans got a scalp, a real scalp, of a pro-amnesty republican, the effort might die. Bob bennett and dick lugar didnt cut it. Lindsey graham would.
ReplyDeleteAll this talk about primarying people like Mcconnell and Lamar Alexander, come on. Mcconnell's not even that bad. Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, is arguably the worst Republican in all of congress, especially when you consider what state he represents. (Dont worry, i see you lisa murkowski.)
Its not just the wanting amnesty and suicide for the country, its also his complete disingenuousness. Now hes pushing some abortion bill to pretend to be a conservative near election time. But his corporate masters are fine as long as he wants amnesty.
So heres the deal, patriotic conservatives across the country must take Graham out. He has tons of money which is why we need to unite against him. And only him. Give money to his opponents, hopefully one will emerge as the best option. I cant imagine most south carolina conservatives like him once they know what he is really about...more third world immigration.
If we all work to take out Lindsey, we change the game.
Steve, looks like you were rightly skeptical of the "MOOC" hype. Turns out that only a small percentage of people even complete the courses, let alone complete them well, and most of them already have Bachelor's degrees:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb
"Sebastian Thrun attracted a stunning number of students--1.6 million to date into using his Massive Open Online Courses (MOOD). He was obsessing over a data point that was rarely mentioned in the breathless accounts about the power of new forms of free online education: the shockingly low number of students who actually finish the classes, which is fewer than 10%. Not all of those people received a passing grade, either, meaning that for every 100 pupils who enrolled in a free course, something like five actually learned the topic. If this was an education revolution, it was a disturbingly uneven one.
"We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product," Thrun tells me. "It was a painful moment." Turns out he doesn't even like the term MOOC.
A recent study found that only 7% of students in this type of class actually make it to the end. (This is even worse than for-profit colleges such as the University of Phoenix, which graduates 17% of its full-time online students, according to the Department of Education.) Although Thrun initially positioned his company as "free to the world and accessible everywhere," and aimed at "people in Africa, India, and China," the reality is that the vast majority of people who sign up for this type of class already have bachelor's degree."
"Is The MOOC Hype Dying?"
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/11/19/is-the-mooc-hype-dying/
"After a year of setback after setback, the hype around MOOCs is settling down a bit. The latest evidence of this comes courtesy of an interesting profile piece at Fast Company of Udacidy CEO Sebastian Thrun, a man who is in many ways the godfather of the MOOC concept.
When he first founded Udacity, Thrun, a Stanford professor was motivated by a desire to bring a Stanford-quality education to millions of students around the world. Yet after seeing the extremely low completion rates for his company’s courses—often lower than 10 percent—he has shifted his vision towards something considerably more modest"
I'll give it a shot.
ReplyDelete1. People need a group identity to form themselves into a group. This premise should be self-evident.
2. Group identity is formed as much by who is excluded from the group as by who is included. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin.
Therefore, people need an out-group in order to form an in-group. In other words, division is the necessary condition for group self-organization or "People need divisions around which to organize themselves ".ou
"People need divisions around which to organize themselves ".
ReplyDeleteIn what sense of the word "need"?
Why do the Hobbits in the Shire "NEED" any sort of division?
Why can't they go on living the peaceful bucolic idyllic lifestyles which they have always lived?
They only "NEED" to organize themselves if someone like The Old Took were to have foolishly allowed millions upon millions upon millions of Goblins and Trolls and Orcs* to immigrate into the Shire [legally or illegally].
*Credit to Heartiste as being the first to have used the term in this context.
"I've come to the conclusion that the 1960s generation gap was something wanted, needed and encouraged by those in power at the time."
ReplyDeleteSome dare call it the Aquarian Conspiracy, but it seems to me have been an appendage of Cultural Marxism.
thanks to Antioco D. & to anonymous for providing those answers - i'm fine with those thoughts:)
ReplyDeleteOld Took
ReplyDeleteI think you are confusing him with "Bullroarer" Took
http://www.vdare.com/posts/young-women-just-don-t-get-it
ReplyDelete“I just see it as another reason why we need to better support our youths with activities and youth programs, which is actually what I do for work.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTYRdkdIVD8
dearieme asks:
ReplyDeleteWhy did the Kennedys hate Castro so much?
Because he was stealing his charisma.
http://www.vdare.com/posts/young-women-just-don-t-get-it
ReplyDeleteDon't blame Nazis for killing Jews.
It was because Hitler Youth programs were underfunded.
"AND this was a communist country just a few miles from the U.S. -- within nuclear-missile range": that's a daft argument. All the USA was within missile range of the USSR itself and, especially, its submarines in the Atlantic. Why in God's name would it matter whether you were incinerated by a missile from Cuba or one from a sub?
ReplyDeleteThe Kennedy image was bigger then that of a political leader. He really was what America thought of itself.
ReplyDeleteHe was young and vigorous, he had a family image, there were young children in the White House. What could be happier? He had the capacity to overcome problems and the boldness to take us to the Moon. Optimism reigned.
Then that stinking little commie bastard killed him and the beginning of America’s downfall started. There is no question about it - Nov 22 1963 changed America and the world for the worse.
p.s. One can only have contempt for the stinking little dishonest liberal minds that lie and make political hay out of this sad event.
>>"When Jackie Kennedy learned the unwelcome truth, she lamented, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It had to be some silly little communist. It robs his death of any meaning.”
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that, as a Cold War Hawk, JFK would have DEFINITELY thought that his death had meaning, having been taken out by a USSR citizen. 'You bastards better avenge me!" He would've pointed at the Secret Councils, Armed Forces, etc.
Irony: JFK himself would've thought that dying in pursuit of freedom (from Cold War perspective) would be the absolute HEIGHT of meaning and significance. He'd probably sooner have that than dying for something as nebulous (in late 63, anyway) as "civil rights".
Steve, thought you'd pick up on that bit of irony.
ReplyDeleteWhat changed on On 22 November 1963?
It's obvious: Oswald won.
Oh, you don't think so? Then why are today's young not wearing JFK T-shirts and nailing up JFK posters in their dorm rooms, and why are they instead wearing Che T-shirts and glomming Che posters on their dorm room walls?
I think you are confusing him with "Bullroarer" Took
ReplyDelete???
No, I was thinking of The Old Took [died aged 130, surpassed only by Bilbo, living in Rivendell].
What are you thinking of?
It's obvious: Oswald won.
ReplyDeleteBingo.
That was exactly my thought, before I got off on the tangent of "what exactly does the word 'need' mean"?
It was the day the 1950s ended and the 60s began.
ReplyDeleteAll this talk about primarying people like Mcconnell and Lamar Alexander, come on. Mcconnell's not even that bad. Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, is arguably the worst Republican in all of congress, especially when you consider what state he represents. (Dont worry, i see you lisa murkowski.)
ReplyDelete...
So heres the deal, patriotic conservatives across the country must take Graham out.
If NJ Gov. Kristie Kreme campaigns for Graham in SC, that fat man may be the one who "takes Graham out."
Lame-R Alexander is currently running ads here in Nashville on both Rush's and the Rev. Huckleberry's radio shows. "I am a conservative," Lame-R says in the ads.
His Repub. primary opponent is the rather obscure TN State Senator Joe Carr, a Tea Party and 2nd Amendment rights stalwart. If Sen. Alexander wasn't a little worried about winning the primary next summer, why is he spending money now on campaign ads?
www.carrfortn.com
... Joe will be a strong advocate to protect our constitutional rights as well as our state's sovereignty so that future Tennesseans can enjoy the same liberties and opportunities he has enjoyed.
"I am a proud lifetime member of the NRA and Gun Owners of America, and I have a 100% pro-gun voting record in the Tennessee legislature. In Senate, I will continue the fight to protect and defend your right to keep and bear arms. ( Including the right of good TN citizens to get a "concealed carry" permit without undue gooberment restrictions. --DD ) We must never allow federal bureaucrats to take away our ability to protect our lives, liberty and property."
Help Joe keep DC out of Tennessee ...
Joe Carr, Not Lame-R!
Why I don't buy the conspiracy theory. The notion that so many people were involved with the killing, but there were no leaks is just too incredible.
ReplyDeleteI mean Nixon couldn't even get away with Watergate. So, how did they get away with the Kennedy killing? Too ludicrous.
Reagan got caught with Iran-Contra.
Clinton got caught with his pants down.
No way such a cover-up would have been possible.
A lot of conspiracy theorists seem to lose themselves in the who-dun-it scenario. In most mysteries, there is a murder and a whole bunch of characters with the motives for having wanted the dead man dead. His ex-wife, his chauffeur, his business partner, his son, his mistress,and etc, etc, had reasons for wanting to see the man dead. So, it's tempting to suspect ALL OF THEM, or one might even want to believe that they all plotted the murder together. But generally, there was only one person who did it and the rest were innocent(even if not in their heart). So, even if 10 people wanted the man dead, only one did the actual killing.
ReplyDeleteThis is the case in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and SOLDIER'S STORY. There are lots of characters who wanted the dead victim dead. But only one person in each film did the killing.
It's true that many people hated Kennedy and wouldn't have minded seeing him dead. But that doesn't mean they were involved in the killing. It's like lots of people hated Reagan, but it was Hinckley who nearly killed him.
It seems like Liberals now confuse will and intention for culpability. So, if you don't like someone, you 'willed' his death. The corollary to this is NO MATTER HOW WORTHLESS LIBERAL POLICIES ARE FIXING PROBLEMS, IF THEY WERE WILLED TO DO GOOD, THEY WERE JUSTIFIED. In fact, Liberals really don't do much to improve the world, but they 'will' a lot of good sentiments about 'saving the world' and that makes them feel superior to everyone else.
The opposite of the IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT scenario is THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE scenario where the conspiracy turns out to be much larger than anyone can possibly imagine.
I guess something in between is the CHINATOWN scenario. The mystery is bigger than one thought but it's still about a handful of corrupt men doing something sordid than a mega-conspiracy.
The problem with Stone's film is it connects too many dots. It's like a mystery novel where it turns out EVERYONE DUN IT.
The Kennedy Assassination theory I favor: Oswald shot Kennedy and Conolly as reported, but Kennedy was also wounded by a bullet fired accidentally by one of his own Secret Service guards. Sadly, though this theory explains all the strange facts that conspiracy theorists like to chew over, it involves no conspiracy and is therefore too boring to hold the public's interest.
ReplyDeleteAuntie Analogue said...
ReplyDeleteWhat changed on On 22 November 1963?
It's obvious: Oswald won.
Oh, you don't think so? Then why are today's young not wearing JFK T-shirts and nailing up JFK posters in their dorm rooms, and why are they instead wearing Che T-shirts and glomming Che posters on their dorm room walls?
Nope. Oswald and his buddies and their dream of socialist world revolution got blown away!
Capitalism, brutal transnational capitalism won!
Communism is a joke to everyone who matters. The Soviet Union gone, the new Russia run by gangsters, China is an engine of capitalism serving Western investors and consumers, the Third world is pretty much a whore house of international capitalism exploited for raw materials and cheap labor.
The heroes to the young range from millionaire black rappers and athletes to billionaire White tech nerds.
The young couldn't give a damn about Che, Nasser, Nkrumah, Mao, Ho or whatever.
No, I was thinking of The Old Took [died aged 130, surpassed only by Bilbo, living in Rivendell].
ReplyDeleteWhat are you thinking of?
Bullroarer Took needing to fight orcs/goblins.
Bullroarer Took needing to fight orcs/goblins.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about Bullroarer inventing the game of golf.
But back to the question at hand - I was trying to think of an important prominent elitist politician in Hobbit history who could have ruined the peaceful bucolic idyllic lifestyle of the Shire by allowing "The Other" to infiltrate.
And I thought of The Old Took.
You can think of the analogy being to, say, Ronald Reagan stupidly signing the 1986 immigration act, or Dubya-43 refusing to enforce the immigration laws of the country [and also lobbying hard for amnesty].
Whereas LBJ signing the 1965 immigration act, or Clinton flooding the country with illegals, could be thought of more as Wormtongues, who were obviously working directly for the enemy.
But the point is that The Old Took [and other Thains like him] most certainly did NOT ruin the Shire by allowing "The Other" to infiltrate.
Your theory, that the loosening of tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the '60s helps to explain that decade's upheaval, is thought-provoking. But since the cultural revolution of the '60s also occurred in countries without a strong Catholic-Protestant divide, your theory can only, at best, partially explain the tumult. (Not that you claim your theory fully explains it, because, as far as I know, you don't.)
ReplyDeleteWhy the "1968" revolution happened is still a mystery to me and, apparently, also to you. The best explanation I've encountered is that it was simply a continuation of the larger revolution in the West since 1517, the revolution whose notable stages include Protestantism, liberalism, and socialism. All of those movements had libertarian and egalitarian impulses to some degree, and the New Left, more radically, applied those impulses in new ways, such as to the family. So why did this new stage of the revolution manifest itself in the 1960's and not sooner or later? Well the previous stage, socialism, had its big breakthrough in 1917, so it had to happen after that. Indeed, in the interwar period, with the "Roaring Twenties" and "Weimar decadence," the New Left had some clear precursors. But the furthering of the revolution was delayed by the hardships of the Depression and World War II. Only when the West had sufficiently recovered from World War II long enough, did the next stage of the revolution break through in the 1960's.
So that explains the '60s. I think...
wiseguy
Auntie Analog, you have been quibcagged again! Congratulations!.
ReplyDeleteLotho Pimple did invite lots of Orcs and mestiz--excuse me, half-Orcs--into the Shire at the behest of his master, (Loan) Sharkey, formerly of Eisner--excuse me again!--Isen-gard.
ReplyDeleteTelevision won.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who followed the Nixon Kennedy debates on radio thought that Nixon won.
Since then all presidents have to be photogenic to win because if they are not ... .
Ask Bob Dole and John Mccain.
True, but in the 1960's white California which only had 7 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic made it popular with the counterculture In fact the praise bands of modern evangelical churches had no black influence. It was white boys and girls from La/Orange County that play music at Calvary Chapel that changed evangelicals from using organs to guitars. There was a film called Lonnie Frisbee: A death of a Hippie preacher about this time period.
ReplyDeleteConsider also the population turnaround in evangelical churches at the time. In 1960-70, those churches were so "square" that not even the mainstream squares (Methodists, Presbys, Episcoes, etc.) would touch them. It was the hippies-turned-Jesus Freaks that revitalized the evangelical churches between 1970 and 1980. They brought in rock and roll, guitars, amplified guitars, flowers, beads, and psychedelic colours. The liberal mainstream churches would not have any of that stuff until much later.