1960s Counterculture

Despite the negative portrayal in mainstream 1960s media, justifications expressed by counterculture activists for further investigation, education and experimentation under government control of LSD were rational and valid arguments. Sex, drugs, protests, war, political upheaval, cultural chaos, and social rebellion; the many comforts TV dinner eating, republican voting, church going, suburbia conformists tried to escape through conservative ideals, town meetings, and The Andy Williams Family Hour. National consciousness in 1960s United States was alive, but existed differently in every mind it dwelled, and stirred uninterrupted in every life to which it was introduced. A dream of money, success, and a house with a white picket fence still
Television situation comedies created ideal families and contenting distractions from unsettling national realities. Mainstream media, both fact and fiction, influenced the nation's minds resulting in the effect of political change and further media influence over the government. The new decade, along with the effects of the Vietnam War and the strong influence of television, began to leak from the cracks of the nation a new counterculture of rebellious teenagers, unfamiliar narcotics, and a wave of promiscuity. Among the many issues and events molding our nation into a new decade, came the question of government and mind control. For some it was the next step into human evolution, a potential tool for mind control, a liberator of human kind, but for most LSD helped define 1960s counterculture, in which it was
A sense of comfort in mainstream media was portrayed using money, power, suburbia and the idea of a perfect family, through situation comedies. Television shows such as "Leave It to Beaver", "The Andy Williams Family Hour", "Donny and Marie", and "I Love Lucy", all penetrated themes of comfort and comic relief through the realities of student protests, non conformity, and sexual and neurological advancements. Mainstream media and counterculture media were specifically differentiated. Mainstream media's reaction to LSD, was a concentration of negativity. According to mainstream media LSD was "evil" and "made people crazy." This one sided opinion of the drug allowed no room for justifications or education of LSD. There was a "journalistic exaggeration of the dangers of LSD" and the media's oppositions to the drug were highly recognized by the conservative majority. LSD separated itself from the idea of the American dream and presented itself as a potential problem with no beneficial results. LSD was a problem and threat, which only contributed to the political chaos and corruption of society in an unstable decade. Mainstream media instilled the comfort, in its public, that if LSD were made illegal, it would become completely void. Therefore media having a direct influence on the opinions of the majority of society,