A Decade of Reaction.

Focuses on the efforts to characterize the 1970's. Inauguration of an exhibition of "American Painting in the 1970," in Buffalo;Comparison of 1970's with that of 1950; View that one of the true symbols of the 1950's was the Strategic Air Command, a prestige force that represented a national will within which the opposition still acted with as much sense of common purpose and identity as the majority; Information on the nonfiction bestseller lists of 1969; View that much of the social protest of the 1960's was primarily that of personal theater, which only seemed to have a public concern because it took place on the streets; Opinion that the 1970's deserve to be called a "Decade of Reaction" because, behind the conservatism, lies an amorality in the individual's association with his society that reaches back to the primitive.