Wednesday cont.

Wednesday September 16, 2009 cont.

. . . . .For all of my friends my age or older, who somehow see themselves as "different" or above it all, or unique. Lee Siegel in The Daily Beast today with a slightly different perspective:

In society, culture and now politics, what was once considered countercultural is today the establishment. And so it’s no surprise that what was once considered the establishment—the war cry of patriotism, religion, and morality—is the new counterculture.

The parallels between today’s right-wing radicals and radical tactics of the 1960s are striking. Sixties’ Dada theatrics—e.g. Allen Ginsberg leading people in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon (my favorite)—are echoed in the alarmist and conspiratorial theatrics of right-wing cable television. Then, too, just as the radical left was inspired by a few personalities—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Mark Rudd et al.—today’s radical right is whipped up by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin et al.

And while the new counterculture’s racist images of Obama are sickening, they are similar in their emotional violence to the images of the old counterculture’s Representative Villain, Richard Nixon—caricatures which ran the gamut from violent to pornographic. Just as Nixon exemplified middle-class, middle-aged white, repressive stasis, so Obama exemplifies—for his haters—ceaseless, wearying, uprooting change.

Each man presented the perfect vexation to enraged opponents—Nixon a hurdle to change, Obama a wide-open door to an uncertain future.

But there are two important differences between the old and new countercultures. The old one grew in strength, after a long, tortuous time gathering into its antiwar fold decent people from all sectors of American society who were outraged by all the official mayhem at home and overseas. The new counterculture, for all its hollering, seems less numerous than loud, depending on liberal cable TV to eagerly pick up and opportunistically amplify conservative cable TV’s sensationalist assaults. Without the moral center of an unjust war—without any clear moral event, for that matter—the new counterculture will only become more hysterical as its numbers dwindle to a few talking heads and “maverick” politicians.

The other difference is violence. So far, no bombs have exploded, no conservative college students have been fired on by the National Guard, and no riots have engulfed the streets.

It could well be that comparing Obama to Hitler and Stalin, calling him an illegitimate occupant of the White House, and accusing him of virtually executing a coup d’etat is, as some people say, an incitement to violence. But the ancestors of the same people hurling these slurs once accused FDR of being a "Jew" agent of the Soviet Union and claimed that his wife had caught syphilis from her "Negro" lover.

In other words, everyone, calm down. What we are seeing is the good, old American Berserk in action. It’s just that, ever since the 1960s, we are not accustomed to seeing it come from the other side.

. . . .Back later on today