The Great American Newspaper

From The Great American Newspaper by Professor Kevin McAULIFFE:

Norman Mailer, founder of the Village Voice:

"There was no cross-fertilization of ideas because there were no new ideas; the people who might have been expected to think them up were on the defensive. Indeed, one of the stock cliches of the time was that "the end of ideology" was here, that the great seminal thinking had been done and the great problems solved, that from here on out all the American system would require were the sort of minor adjustments one might make with any machine that was functioning smoothly. There was no dialogue because dialogue meant differences of opinion, and above all else people wanted to go along, to play it safe, to be like everybody else. The be different was to be in danger. To be eccentric was to be alone. An entire generation went through life believing that the important thing was to be accepted, to be processed by some institution you could identify yourself with, to go into business, make it up the corporate stepladder, and get a nice house in the suburbs......
It was a surface happiness, cloaking fear and misturst. You were afraid for yourself, suspicious of others. In pursuing that kind of happiness, people were running away from themselves, mindless, seeking sleep, trying to lose themselves in sameness. This was the silent Generation. It conformed. It policed itself."