I am a sucker for the shelf of Pelican books in the local Oxfam shop - there seems to be a mode of discourse about these 'vintage' essays that we just don't get anymore.
Segal is writing at the tail end of the 1960s and yet much of what he writes shines a light on very contemporary issues - this is depressing, in 'the war on terror' and the economic fiasco of the last few years we have witnessed the intensification of issues which Segal identified as debasements of America's ideals and founding values. Segal writes with a tone of hope, seeing the civil rights movement as the key example of people forcing the nation to live up to the ideal of America as it should be not as it is - people who saw that things are bad right now but we can make them better. The trouble is how are we to remain hopeful given that in the intervening 40 years America has not only failed to turn back but run headlong into the abyss.
Some examples: Segal writes "People are incalculably capable of adapting themselves to protracted periods of social disruption... It is not impossible to imagine an America in which a regime of ruthless repression would preserve some semblance of order, even prosperity, in the face of sustained racial rebellion. But it would not be America any longer." This seems to fit the situation since 9/11, we are blind foolS when we sacrifice our freedom in order to maintain it.
He also quotes Jack Newfield who said that "To be a radical in America today is like trying to punch your way out of a cage made of marshmallow. Every thrust at the jugular draws not blood, but sweet success; every hack at the roots draws not retaliation, but fame and affluence ... Yesterday's underground becomes today's vaudevillee and tomorrow's cliche." Which makes me think particularly of Micheal Moore whose voice seems to have been deadened by the 'celebrity' of being Micheal Moore - he is the event not the message.
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