Moon Pie (was: Re: Zizek = the Third Way)

[John Halle]

> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 11:26:07 EST
> From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Moon Pie (was: Re: Zizek = the Third Way)
> 
> > > One of the obvious faults with the such-as-it-is left is that its
> > > perspective on *everything* seems to be limited to "cold hard looks."
> > > Whatever happened to the warmth and mellowness of the counterculture?
> > >
> > > Carl
> >
> >
> >OK, a warm, soft look, whatever. Point is, people on this list and the left 
> >in general carry on in such a way that it's hard to see what anyone would 
> >be attracted to it. --jks
> 
> Yes, I agree.  One of the main differences between the "old" and "new" left 
> was that the former was characterized by a dukes-up disputatiousness that 
> was wholly self-defeating.  Say what you will about the Yippies and their 
> analogs, there was a spirit of infectious good cheer about leftists during 
> the '60s that rightwingers simply couldn't come to terms with; it always 
> made them look heavy-handed, humorless and ridiculous.
> 
> Carl

Amen to all of this, but with one qualification:  it strikes me that there
is a danger (one that I succumb to myself) in continuing to promote the
sixties as the touchstone for what an effectively organized and broadbased
left coalition would look like.

One big part of the explanation for why "the sixties" happened lies in a
tactical mistake made by the executive to maintain the draft.  This
ensured that every male between the ages of 18 and 27 (I think),
regardless of their circumstances, faced the possibility of getting killed
or maimed. What this meant was that the "movement" looked like us.  It was
also completely predicatable that campuses would explode as they did and
that all sorts of cute young people would be running around carrying signs
and chanting.

When this mistake was rectified under Nixon, my vague memory is-and I
think there is evidence to support this position-the movement went into a
bit of a tailspin. The big mobilizations of '68 and '69 were never
duplicated for the remaining years of the war. Under the "volunteer army"
which has been in existence since, poor people, a lot of them black, are
doing the dying, and we tend not to care as much. (And when they get sick
from exposure to military toxins, Elaine Showalter accuses them of
hysteria.)

The bottom line is that while a movement by all rights ought to be plenty
of fun, it might not nor should it be fun for people like us.


> 
> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 11:29:50 -0500
> From: sawicky at epinet.org (Max Sawicky)
> Subject: RE: Moon Pie (was: Re: Zizek = the Third Way)
> 
> Carl Remick wrote:
> 
> >Whatever happened to the warmth and mellowness of the counterculture?
> 
> Altamont.
> Doug
> >>>>>>>
> 
> I trace it earlier, to the rise of The Who.
> They elevated cynicism to an art form.
> 
> mbs
> 

How about the Velvet Underground and the Warhol clique. By the way, I seem
to remember something about a Warhol/Hitler connection through the
Sedgewick family? I think Cockburn had some stuff about that at one point.

And, oh yeah, Doug's right: Holly Near is the best argument for fascism
anyone has been able to come up with since, and including, Heidegger.

John