Let's not go overboard, o.k.? Your characterization of the left is more sweeping and jaundiced than the merits would support.
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. . . American Left assumed when it wantonly embraced the 1960s
"counterculture". . . .
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The "counter-culture" was great. This sort of thing has surfaced here a few times from some of you young whippersnappers, so a few lines of consciousness raising:
First we need to distinguish the real counter-culture from the media construction of it, its commercialization, "commodification," and eventual absorption into the mainstream.
The c-c was a college thing. It started from the premise that universities were factories for regimenting people into being cogs in a machine that was prosecuting a brutal war abroad and enforcing a racist regime at home. "Dropping out" was first and foremost the validation of a rejection of this future. This was a good thing (with a few bad components).
Dropping out in a variety of ways was a means of getting one's head clear of the mountains of bullshit that legitimated the regime -- the endless lies about the war, the hypocrisy underlying the treatment of minorities, and on and on. This skepticism fed the movements of that day, which accomplished a lot of good.
The media began to try to reinvent all this from the beginning. (In reaction to this, in the middle 1960's a group in San Francisco staged a mock funeral -- "The death of Hippie" -- to stress their awareness of the attempts to redefine what was going on.) The media emphasized hedonism, sexism, mysticism, and political terrorism as the fruits of whole affair.
Worse, the 'friendly' liberal treatments put out the "Big Chill" portrayal, which begins with a suicide and depicts the alleged movement stalwarts wallowing in nostalgia, sexual obsession, and their fade into the middle class.
The basic values of the pre-commercialized c-c included communalism, non-violence, equality, anti-authoritarianism, and democracy. These are not bad as first principles.
mbs