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Thanks for the fresh air here, Dominic! I find many of the other posts quite narrow here re the history of what some now call "the long sixties" (1964 - 1975). It is true that much of what happened stirred the right wing into a fury - the ultimate political and socila repressions of which are manifest in Bush et al. (Abstinence, 'axis of evil', pre-emptive war, etc., etc). But think of the ideas and actual stuff that actually emerged from or became hugely manifest during that period: Opposition to the Vietnam War Black, Feminist, Gay, Latino & other Third World civil rights and liberation movements (pluralism, multiculturism) Ecological Consciousness and actions (Earth Day), including issue of food and opposition to the food industry. (i.e., organic alternatives, solar eneryg, etc.) Apple computer. Emergence and practice of Buddism and many other 'alternative' religions. Blues, Folks, roots revivals, Beatles, Stones, John Coltrane, Ornette Colman, etc., etc. Oh, yes, poetry's break out from the academy. Not just the Beats, but a wild variety of poets, but a huge interest and audiences for poetry and poets that emerged from all the various movements. (Many of us started Presses during that time,) Yes, there were dark sides to all of this, (Is that a surprise?! But why does it become the obsessive focus instead of important stuff, seeds and all?) Yes, much of the time offered fun, but that was combined with a scary sense of risk, and real acts of courage. Yes, there remains blowback. But to reduce it all to narcissism and drugs is all part of the right wing blowback is part of 'their game'. Those forces have been on an over 30 year campaign to bury it all. Talk about the 'return of repressed' is much more to the point. George Bush and their boys are what that campaign has given us. Whatever might be his forseeable limits, Obama's campaign and the huge support he has drawn from the young, has thrown some much needed light back into the world. So take off the narrow blinders, I say, Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Adam Curtis's "The Century of the Self" traces a line from Reich and Marcuse (and Laing, and...) to yuppies to celeb-culture. It's always important to ask "whose sixties". Most people weren't involved in the swinging metropolitan version. The things my folks passed on to me from the sixties were things like Martin Carthy, the Incredible String Band - intensely curious about the past, about the signs and tokens of our shared culture (conceived vastly more widely than "official" culture, but extending rather than abolishing it), about the future possibilities repressed precisely by a too-limited conception of what our traditions were. Dominic