Radical Deja Vu

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by Robert Winter


“Notes From Underground,” read the title of a recent article by David Samuels in Harper’s magazine, and as a product of the late sixties, I found my curiosity piqued. 

I suppose it’s natural for anybody from my generation to see the word “underground” and think back to groups like the radical Weather Underground.   Samuels was in fact writing about his observations among contemporary radicals of the Pacific Northwest, but the sense of overlap between the two generations was, I believe, deliberately cultivated.    The article brought home to me how much my own 60s-era generation and the current one have in common.  

One thing that wasn’t clear to me on reflection, though, was why we still seem to be going over so much of the same old ground, after so many things in society have changed.  The persistence of similar-sounding discontents led me to wonder if maybe the longevity of the protest, despite major changes in the social context, might not be indicative of more fundamental troubles—ones that we haven’t had much success to date in identifying and articulating. 

To even attempt to deal with these questions, I realized I needed to go back and re-consider some of my own experiences in the late 1960s.

 

(c) COPYRIGHT 2000 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.


More Specifics

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In my hometown, radicalism did not seem likely to catch on.

 

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Many of the attitudes we now associate with 60s Counterculture appeared earlier in mainstream society.

 

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Until recently, I believed my experiences of the 60s were typical.

 

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A fellow Baby Boomer's reminiscences of the 60s made me wonder how typical my own experiences had been.

 

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The media were more active participants in The Revolution than many of us realized.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) A desire to enter into a bigger world "on the other side of the screen" underlay my own choice of a career in television news.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) My absorption in Big Weighty Issues kept me from seeing other kinds of potential news stories.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) Distrust of corporate gigantism has remained strong through the decades.

 

butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes)
butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) A sense of being on the outside looking in continues to stoke suspicion of the corporate order.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) Things that we create ourselves still give great satisfaction.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) Things the The System creates are still foci of hip alienation.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) The world of our direct experience continues to be dwarfed by the realm of the media.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) Protests can foster connectedness as well as alienation.

 

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butnsqar.gif (1086 bytes) We can choose to create a more nurturant human scale in our lives.

 

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