[twister881]

And let’s not forget the ascendency of Bacchus that July of 1969 when Teddy “The Swimmer” Kennedy wantonly murdered campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne.

[all the best]

You got it. AT the root of our political and economic mess is a moral and cultural super mess. We have been running on fumes for quite some time. Those under thirty, and particularly those under twenty, make the Woodstock crowd look like hard-working, self-disciplined Amish folk.

[mgist]

In the past 2 days...

6.3 earthquake in Western Canada
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/11/6-3-earthquake-shakes-up-western-canada/

4.2 earthquake of California- Oregon coast
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/california-oregon-earthquake_n_2089799.html

5.5 iran
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usb000dlqw.php

7.2 earthquake in Guatemala
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1108/Guatemala-earthquake-Rescue-efforts-underway-at-least-48-dead

[Panzerfaust]

Good post. Another point to add to your narrative is the fact that the U.S. military had to get involved at Woodstock, providing chopper airlift for medevac cases and also their expertise and equipment for handling food/water and sanitation needs for large groups of people living in the open......”Olive Drab Haze, all through my mind.....”

[Misterioso]

Plagiarize much?

http://tinyurl.com/mdf4bo

[Fiji Hill]

Friedrich Nietzsche also addressed the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy in his book Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music) (Leipzig, Germany: Fritzsch, 1872).

[ffusco]

My apologies to the late, great Ayn Rand who penned an essay of the same title using the same 2 events I used as an example of the cultural battle.

[Paladin2]

Woodstock had tickets for sale, but the band lineup was so spectacular that the place was swamped by demand.

[Ouchthatonehurt]

Great post, and a timely discussion...
The analysis of current politics through that classic opposition is not incapable of turning on its head. MM Ponty observed that too often science creates a model of the world so as to measure it and then mistakes the model they made for the world itself. In this event, which I will argue is all too relevant (eg. environmental science/religion) art is the only way out of the model. As A Rand would say, “Art reifies reality.”