'67 revisited

[Doug Millison]

Two more items in my path this morning that may interest some of you:

1. A bit more (perhaps; one size may not fit all),  re GR's closing hymn:

"How beautiful is all  this visible world!
How glorious in its action and in itself!
But we who name  itself our sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride."

(quoted at a daily horoscope site; the stars never lie)

2. A 2001 take, (perhaps; one size may not fit all), on the politics 
of Vineland's 1984:

" [snip] Bill and Hillary entered the White House in 1993 with a set 
of inner conflicts about how to be realistic and preserve 
self-interest while doing as much good as they possibly could. Their 
conflicts were not atypical of most who had been involved in the 
movements of the sixties and been disappointed.

"The experience of actually having an impact on shaping public events 
-- creating the climate within which the Civil Rights legislation, 
environmental legislation, anti-sexist regulations, rights for the 
disabled, and  an end to the funding of the War in Vietnam could get 
passed -- helped many people momentarily  recognize that ordinary 
people could be the creative force in history and not just passive 
recipients of  what others were doing to us.

"Yet the process didn't feel good. On the one hand, undercover police 
agents played on feelings of guilt ("we're not doing enough to end 
the racism against Blacks or the genocide of Vietnamese -- so we 
ought to escalate the level of our struggle") to provoke violence and 
to belittle all that was being accomplished
   through non-violence. On the other hand, our own conditioning as 
Americans had led us to expect a kind  of instant gratification that 
imagined the revolution would take only a few short years, and that 
we could  personally instantaneously become the fullest embodiment of 
our own ideals. When, instead, we found  ourselves surrounded by 
people who were just as limited and screwed up as everyone else, we 
were  furious at each other and ourselves for not yet being the 
perfect embodiments of anti-sexist, anti-racist,  ego-transcendent 
beings.

"Well, duh... What made us imagine that the moment people get a sense 
of higher ideals they can  immediately become their fullest 
embodiment?

"It was this screwed up expectation -- perfectly symbolized in the 
oft-quoted (but misunderstood) Pogo  cartoon which said "We have met 
the enemy, and he is us" -- that created such disappointment. We 
were too young and naïve to realize that any social change would 
necessarily have to be made by  imperfect people, because that is all 
there is on the entire planet." [snip]

from:
"Beyond the Clinton Era"
Bill Clinton's broken promise of a politics of meaning exacerbated 
the cynical individualism of the '90s. It's high time we got 
idealistic again.
By Michael Lerner, Special to Utne Reader Online

http://www.utne.com/bPractSeeker.tmpl?command=search&db=dArticle.db&eqheadlinedata=The%20End%20of%20the%20Clinton%20Era

(you can also get there from today's Web Watch Daily, linked from 
Utne's home page, http://www.utne.com/daily/, recent articles are 
archived if you don't get there today)

-- 
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