If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably come across some of my observations regarding the so-called “culturetain wars” everybody is sure we’re in the middle of here in America. Certainly there is stress and heat in relations between conservative and progressive — not necessarily politically speaking — folk, but does anybody really believe America is on the verge of an armed civil war? Not likely. I’d argue that the internal threats to this country were far worse during the W presidency, and a new book about Timothy Leary and Richard Nixon reminds readers that the early 1970s were flat-out crazy times even compared to the state of the states today. Unplug from mainstream media and you will quickly realize that they’re the ones who profit — literally — from fomenting a culture of hate, fear and division. We have real problems in America in 2018, but we’ve seen far worse even during my lifetime.

The Most Dangerous Man in America tells the story of Leary tuning in, turning on and tuning out into a life on the run from the law while it simultaneously documents Nixon’s fall into paranoia and self-destruction. Here’s a taste from the book review on Reason…

For those contemplating exactly how out of control America was then compared to now, the most pertinent evidence is the book’s compendium of a near-constant series of terror bombings.

The authors describe explosions in New York at National Guard headquarters, police headquarters, and three Manhattan banks; bombings in San Francisco’s Presidio and at a church during a police officer’s funeral; Molotov cocktails tossed in Wisconsin city halls and Connecticut ROTC offices; post offices, courthouses, and draft boards lit up across the country; 81 sticks of dynamite found at a Kansas university; and rocks, bottles, and eggs tossed directly at Nixon and California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

According to Bryan Burrough’s 2015 book Days of Rage (Penguin Press), the U.S. suffered nearly five bombings every day during one 18-month period in 1971–72. Hijackings had become so common—33 in 1969 alone—that the president’s family was barred from flying commercial.

Leary’s overseas spree (where he found himself continually squeezed as a cash cow by those he relied on) dovetailed with America’s cultural and political chaos. By January 1973, when the feds decided they weren’t going to let aggravating legal niceties hold them back and just kidnapped him in Afghanistan, the violence that had inspired Nixon to prioritize his capture was winding down.

But for a while there, it was bad. The modern American populace would likely die of head-exploding embolisms if even a quarter of that sort of madness were common today.

Here’s a BBC doc about Leary and his work…

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Unforgivable is the title of a new book that looks back on the life and works of pioneering performance artist Carolee Schneeman. I found out about the book from an article I flipped into our Flipboard magazine the other night. Here’s a bit from The Guardian…

Don’t bring your underaged children or grandchildren. Don’t bring your grandmother or other relatives. Don’t bring your out-of-town guests. The current exhibit is awful. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t art.”

A new book about Carolee Schneemann begins with this warning from a visitor to one of her exhibitions. This review may seem harsh or hysterical, but it’s also fitting: at 76 years old, the artist still divides opinion. For the last 50 years, she has made art that tackles terrorism, war, sex, sensuality and love – “everything from the joyful to the more violent and ferocious aspects of American culture, with the outrage always coming from a very American sense of righteousness”. The book chronicles it all. It is called Unforgivable.

Schneemann’s art has always been raw and personal – and often reviled. I ask if she sees herself as fearless. “No, I think I’m stubborn,” she says. “In the beginning, I had no precedent for being valued. Everything that came from a woman’s experience was considered trivial. I wasn’t sure if my work would shift that paradigm or not, but I had to try.”

Schneemann didn’t just shift the paradigm – she exploded it. Works like Eye Body, from 1963 (in which the naked artist appeared as a warlike Gaia, covered in feathers and fur) met the male gaze unblinking – although critics were more alarmed by the sight of her clitoris than by the snakes decorating her torso.

She had a dancer’s poise, which she used for perversion in pieces such as the film Up to and Including Her Limits, in which she painted while nude and swinging in a harness. Keen to discard feminist cliches, she wanted audiences to see her as ecstatic rather than angry. “My work doesn’t have any kind of furious narrative,” she explains. “It emphasises energy.”

Here’s a long Q&A with the artist from 2008…