I've long thought that the root cause of the psychology of rebellion in the 60s (aside from the issues themselves) was disillusionment. Born in 1954, I was in elementary school in the early sixties, and I remember the disconnect between the jingoistic indoctrination at school and the images of cops clubbing and hosing marchers in Selma. I saw at an early age that adults were trying to manipulate me, and it made me a somewhat difficult kid. And an instinctive Liberal at a very early age.
I think another part of what we rebelled against was the oppression of Cold War paranoia. One of my earliest memories was learning to duck-and-cover in kindergarten. And looking back, and picturing us rugrats kneeling before a glass wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, hoping that an arm over our necks would save us...I can't help but think of the adults at the time, what the fuck were they thinking of scaring the piss out of little kids? Why fill my little head with visions of a fleet of silvery shark-like Soviet bombers filling the air over the LA basin, about to burn me to a crisp?
And now it seems as if that same generation is trying to relitigate and refight the stale old cultural battles of that time. They lost, the world tried to move on, but they're not going to stand for it.
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