by Reed Karaim

About the author: Reed Karaim, who was a newspaper journalist for fifteen years, now writes fiction and magazine articles.

Early in 1995 Kirkpatrick Sale, co-founder in the 1980s of New York’s short- lived Green Party, was among 26 “visionaries” gathered on the stage of Manhattan’s Town Hall by Utne Reader, commonly referred to as the Reader’s Digest of the counterculture. When Sale’s turn came to share his vision with the audience, he was concise.

The 57-year-old activist and writer took a sledgehammer and, swinging it over his shoulder like a lumberjack, smashed a personal computer set up onstage. The first blow connected with the monitor, which bounced and exploded in a puff of shattered glass. The second crushed the keyboard into shards of plastic. &ldquo...