I spent a long time in wondering whether or not David Armstrong, the author of A Trumpet to Arms… (1981) was a liberal Democrat or a Red, and then I realized that it was my problem, for I have some difficulties with my conservative FB friends (around issues of feminism, etc.). This blog is about Armstrong’s book on the emergence of the counter-culture and alternative media, begun in the 1960s in the Berkeley Free Speech movement, and then the US involvement in Vietnam, but culminating in ecology (including nuclear power), multiculturalism (as contrasted to “imperialism”), anti-racism, New Age mysticism, anti-Puritanism, “subjectivity,” drug culture, the vogue for electric cars, high rises, “balance,” localism in the style of Woodrow Wilson, excessive wealth, feminism, gay liberation, and the preference for “Love” over “hate.” All these were issues with which I grasped during my short stint as Program Director for the Los Angeles Pacifica radio station, KPFK-FM. (I wondered then too, whether it was a social democratic vs. Marxist outfit. I found the same conflict during graduate work at UCLA). It is same fight for anti-capitalism vs. laissez-faire market forces that I have devoted much of this website to, whatever the topic.

January 20, 2020

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 7:10 pm

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