The Manichean Paranoia Patch

This post was inspired by this Newsweek article.

Why are we obsessed with the 1960’s? Well, there are plenty of easy answers: the social conflict, the violence, generational divide, the Vietnam War and the clash of values. And yes, we probably romanticize the period a little bit. Ultimately though, I think the real reason we can’t move on from the 1960’s is because we never really reached a new status quo as a nation.

In short, those conflicting values that America was struggling with were never really hashed out. The country couldn’t handle that much tension.  We exhausted ourselves with all the protesting, the violence, the social movements. And not just with the participants. Just like President Wilson’s idealism was rejected by the American mainstream after World War One, so extended periods of drama and idealism inevitably leads people to crave for a “return to normalcy” and stability. That’s a big reason for Nixon’s landslide victory in ‘68. At some point people burn out, just the way the Civil Rights movement did after ‘64.

However, by backing out of the fight before the battle was over, I think American society left itself with some unresolved questions.  If nothing else, the very fact that our national perception of the time varies so much from individual to individual illustrates something unusual about America’s relationship with that part of its past. The dramatically differing views about the 1960’s, some negative and some positive, reflect the divide of the era. We have such a the lack of consensus about the period now and a profound lack of closure.

To quote the closing passage of the Newsweek article (emphasis added):

“So how do we finally escape the ’60s in time for the election of the next president, 40 years after 1968? Not, as Obama would have it, by simply declaring the ’60s done. Too many politicians have tried that before, only to be proved wrong, either by the boomer electorate or their own lingering ’60s souls. The real way to move beyond the ’60s is to have political leaders who are finally willing to do an honest accounting of what that fateful decade was truly about. If the civil-rights movement truly transformed America, why are our cities still segregated? If women were liberated by the ’60s, why do working mothers still feel so chained down? If Vietnam taught us how to be a humble superpower, why are we still bogged down in Iraq? These will all be vital questions facing the next president. The story of 1968 demonstrates that the truly brave presidential candidate will be he, or she, who finally acknowledges the ’60s have everything, not nothing, to do with us..”