OK, I Vas Dere Charlie - I was in Berkeley throughout (including the large marches there and in SF.) Later.. some Livermore Lab protests: Hah! protesting my own 'sister'-Lab! in early '80s for its duplicity, role in MIRV-ing everybody's missiles = Unnecessarily.. except to force more nuke e$calation. Etc. [See Edward Teller]
Yer tryin to characterize a Decade + ?? Fool's errand, so I'll try too; no links were scanned for this report, or puppies killed.
First - why would anyone imagine! that magically.. there was 90% participation solely by altruistic brilliant Sages? In '60s or any other time. Gawd we love our mindless slogans.
I'll go with your sense that - Yes, along with the poseurs, the embryo wanna-be MBAs and other expected detritus, were a significant portion of 'sincere' but more than that, informed folks - willing indeed to risk injury in opposition to bogus laws, recent State actions (and the same old Corp hegemony du jour / 3% Ruling Class who ever manage to prevail over always unorg. opposition, for obvious reasons of possessing the power). Ho hum?
'Spirit' there was, as we (US) haven't seen since. IMhO. There was lots of participation in regular drudge work.. for law students, ex. - refs and reading and lectures, often enough by credentialed folk: no class credit; Use the law. Nothing subversive in that.
(OK - I interviewed-sorta Mario Savio, with my Uher 'Report-L' recorder, for ~ 20 min - under guise of 'Reporter' status. This via my program on KBRG about stereophile nonsense + some hastily installed decals on the case.. This during the FSM sit-in at UCB: an hour before the CHP arrived to drag folks down the steps, bouncing heads down each one, etc. First-hand vignette, at least. Damn! missed - Joan Baez singing, on the front steps. :(
I saw genuinely selfless deeds along with some just stupidly dangerous ones - accompanying the expected parasites and sillies. Putting a % on any of the above? would just be personal estimate and bogus.
The press? - Guess! what they chose then as now - to extirpate from a mass of actions anything Photo-Op; ignore.. the sustained, daily hard work done by ordinary folks - and most-all of the results of those works. A bare boob and - press nirvana. Babies same as now. But moving back a few years to IMO the Start:
There is no doubt that 11/22/63 and the later assassinations catalyzed the initial Wake-up Little Suzie calls.. and the momentum built from that day. I don't believe that 9/11 had nearly the same *kind* of Shock as 11/22; the country is now so different in composition, daily routine nastiness on- and off-screen: 9/11 was just an Extreme event, not a different Kind of event. We've been exploding others' buildings.. forever. And gleefully watching smart bombs blow up a bunker (Ooops - full of civilians - bomb shelter. Oh well, collateral). Now catch this shot of the F-99 chasing down a runner! *POW* got 'im. And now a word from..
11/22 was: an unKnown volcano erupting in every major city --> burg. The power of the television medium to 'communicate' were realized for the very First (and Last time, since). People Shut Up, news-types apologized! when they thought they had to murmur some next factoid. No narratives.. mainly: just stark photos (for many, B&W TV == ultimate film noir, Live).
This saturated the emotional centers of *Everyone* from noon on 11/22 through the Monday of the funeral, a tour de force almost entirely of Jacqueline Kennedy direction. Performing ~supernaturally, as she tacitly planned to get self + kids outta this nutzo culture SAP. As she eventually did, after RFK.
IMhO: this surreal Mood STUCK.. underlay all subsequent events in the US (and many other places). On through Vietnam (and some of it persists in small ways).
At JFK's death there were <15 K Murican 'advisors' in Vietnam -- and JFK was himself mightily disturbed by realizing that his inactions had directly caused the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem (sp) [it has been said by several, later]. He planned to reduce the 15K, as of mid-Nov. '63.
Johnson went, simply - NUTZO. Read about it all.
By the time of Woodstock.. the music, the mood the main *hourly* Interest of (in my experience, an unprecedentedly large group) was:
Politics! ('sociology' near-enough?) ie what these governing critters were saying VS what 'was being done in Our name' ie why so much sucked.. yet so many ordinary folk kept babblin '50s platitudes and watchin the War on Tee Vee and then Lawrence Welk or whatever: both in the same catatonic state of disconnect.
Just reread the '68 Democratic Convention events for a soup\ufffdon, a mere whiff of grapeshot. Kent State - child wannabe-Brown Shirts shooting students - through 0-training, immaturity and patently unjustified panic. Lots of lesser events in kind.
And no - there's not been any remotely generalized 'movement' of Any kind I can recall.. since!
(Ronnie brought us Corporate Greed as Sacrament + go-Back-to sleep, but Get Yours and Theirs First.)
Certainly nothing with any real Spirit! - and Spirit there Was, whatever else, galvanized from especially the Moment of:
RFK's assassination '68: he certainly would have become President. Now the 'conspiracy' idea of, "killing off *any* Great Hopes" [??] began to fester and transform and exponentiate. That was the last straw for many.. I met. An electric evening and for days following. DOOM: there would be Nixon. Again, and despite his shameless? shameful juvenile exit from being beaten by Pat Brown for CA Gov.
Muricans mostly (on through current ones) have yet to fully face our behaviour, the absurd rationale, our acts in Vietnam over YEARS. We are In Denial still IMO. The rush to allow the Constitution to become trashed by all 3 collaborating Estates of Govt - is all the proof required. Add in the 4th Estate: Corporate owns that. (Mostly, of course; there's never >90ish% - for the number folk)
I know some who carried their early awareness of the massive hypocrisy of Murica's fav slogans.. on into 'adult'hood and academia, local business, even govt. Do *my* 'numbers' count? Of course not.
Peace..
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[That Word] always Was a chimera and most?.. Knew.. that all the theatrics were about simply - changing alertness, awakening a precious few [max] to the nakedness of the Emperor's slogans. No one with a 3-digit IQ believed that the fat, reactionary fence-enclosed wielders of power would
Ever! suffer an Epiphany?!
(Any more than believe Billy/Bally might)
Did significant numbers Really imagine that next, all them Yahoos would beat their swords into plowshares? Return the offshore deposits?
C'mon - they weren't all (or even mostly) Stupid!
They simply - stopped being sheep And Puritans izzall, and at ~ the same time. (Had lots to learn after dropping that mind-numbing load.) Some learned / some didn't. Ho hum. Read more Vonnegut.
Ashton
sloppy summary, but WTF there cannot be
The Complete True Story\ufffd or even
the full all-purpose definition of 'Hippie'