As to the '60s, I was counter-culture for about two years. I was only there due to profound anger and disgust with the prevailing culture's political manifestation. Other than that, it wasn't me, so to speak. That might sum up a fair amount of the decline of the counter-culture, alongside co-optation, as a social 'force'.

it wasn't a pretty sight watching the counterculture 'do' politics, flaming egomaniacs like rubin and abbie hoffman, cheap shallow stunts, extremely immature, doomed to irrelevance. this was the norm, unfortunately.

serious, 'straight' pols like tom hayden did more for progressive causes than any number of freaks flagging away.

i say this in sadness, as we had the numbers going for us like no generation before or since.

they've got much better networking tools than back then, but between the old wharfrats living longer, and less youth to become stirred to activism, i don't really see the sixties ethos having made much of a dent in realpolitik, other than the environmental movement, which is still getting its ass kicked by the same old PTB.

because you can't fight serious evil with flippant vacancy, like you can't pay the taxi driver with the pentacle of solomon.

perhaps the only lasting legacy of the 60's was a yearning for meaning through hedonism, not a bad thing per se, but hardly the breakfast of political champions.

after the beaver world of the 50's, mcarthy trials, and the misery of the great depression still within living memory, the upsurge of joy and relative freedom to experiment definitely had a culturally novel dimension, but soon enough whatever balance between sanity and adventure that briefly existed was battered to pulp, bought off, commodified and eventually used to sell cars, or took a dark left turn down manson alley.

the innocence was refreshing for a while, the waste and spaciness decidedly less so.

politics was seen as too dirty to mingle with mostly.

i'd just as soon kids learned about alternative energy than politics at the end of the day, too many start pure in politics and end up tie-chewers.

politics is really all about energy anyway, though the connections are still largely occluded.

not for long though, now ET is here to save the day!

~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.