The 60s didn’t end. Streams don’t dematerialize as they merge with a larger river. But it did seem our engagement with the idealistic and the political had come to an end. We, almost literally, abandoned the field. We abandoned the field out of out of exhaustion, excess, despair, weakness. Who knows? But nature abhors a vacuum and while we may have abandoned politics, politics did not abandon us. As the years rolled on our conflicts, our protests, our extravagances were melted down and recast into a series of images that then defined the era. And this has a lot to do with why our history is characterized as it is.
In 1971 African-American jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron released his best known poem/rap, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” The problem was that, popular as his sentiment may have been, the revolution would indeed be televised. In fact, it already had been and it continues to this day. And it was through that lens that the lies got in.
(From ETHAN RUSSELL: AN AMERICAN STORY)
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