With everything happening this year, from Covid-19 to the protests following the death of George Floyd to the behavior of the POTUS and talk of potential shenanigans in this fall’s election, it seems like this year has been the most chaotic I’ve ever lived through. I was born in 1977, so I don’t remember the stuff with gas prices and Iran that happened in the late 70s. Everything that has happened in the US since then, at least to my experience, seems to pale in comparison, even 9/11 and it’s aftermath. I was wondering how this year compares to what it was like in the late 1960s for those who lived through it. What is you all’s opinion?
It’s early to tell, but I’d say things are more chaotic now. Covid-19 takes it up to a new level, while political polarization is much stronger and vitriolic than it was back then. Also, the demonstrations seem bigger. Rioting is in more cities (but they are shorter – the Watts riots lasted almost a weeek; this time around it’s rarely more than a day – and with somewhat less damage). You also don’t have the Internet inciting and organizing people.
Yeah, there’s a little bit of a sixties vibe to me. The sixties lefties didn’t have nearly the level of popular support that our current protesters do. It’s been a long hard pull and there’s years of work yet ahead but I appreciate the progress nonetheless.
I agree with this. BTW, my college years were 1966-1970, so I was an adult during the most turbulent times, not a little kid.
It is worse now, because back then it seemed that the unrest was taking place within a structure that was reasonably stable and could support dissent and even riots. Now, it feels like danger is “coming from inside the house!” The structure cannot be trusted to hold firm. And in fact, cannot be trusted.
Also, and I’ve said this elsewhere, it’s hard to explain what it was like NOT to be immersed in news, information, misinformation, tweets, youtube videos, and the opinions of every person in the world who owns a computer or a smartphone 24/7. We were not inundated with a giant, undifferentiated tsunami of shit all day every day around the clock any time of the day or night. You could actually get away from the news. In fact, you had to seek it out. It wasn’t in your face all the time. You’ve seen pictures in movies of people clustered around the window of a store selling TVs watching the news or whatever was being covered. That really happened. You didn’t have the TV on all the time. With only three major networks (and boring educational TV) there was no point.
You got most of your news from the printed newspaper at least twice a day or more often in big cities. And many cities had two or more daily papers. News could be verified and checked out before it was printed. Same with the very limited TV news.
If you want to see how this worked watch All the President’s Men, or look up the TV series Lou Grant. Journalism was a responsible profession with standards, protocols, and procedures. Imagine producing several printed editions of a newspaper every day with no computer! (Hell, I can’t even remember what it was like to work with no computer.) I’m not saying journalism isn’t still a respected profession… but anybody can put anything up on the internet with no verification from other sources. And responsible news sources compete for the public’s attention with every irresponsible news source out there. One of the prime sources of lies and news MISinformation is our so-called president.
There are some upsides to the ubiquity of digital coverage-- verification of events, which we’ve seen recently. But there’s also the ability to manipulate digital images and the “picture/video or it didn’t happen” mindset.
TL;DR. It’s much worse now. And the COVID thing makes the political situation almost unendurable.
Riots about the same, but the College protests against the Vietnam War and the Draft were much larger and more widespread. Kids had much more at stake. They, themselves, were in danger of being sent to Vietnam. Today your average Floyd protester isn’t in any person danger from the authorities. The Vietnam protests actually got the attention of Washington and shortened the War, today’s protests will end with little or no changes.
Of course you can’t really compare the two periods, but for me, there’s a similar sense of upheaval and of hoping for radical change. Both periods were concerned with racial justice but I think now the concern is shared by a much broader range of people. Back then the government was seen (by protesters) as evil and beholden to the military and the rich. Now it’s that, plus there’s a level of utter incompetence by the government that I don’t think anyone would have ever imagined. Nixon was a bad, bad guy but he wan’t literally a moron. Back then a lot of it was conceived as a clash of “generations” (which wasn’t totally accurate and was an oversimplification), while now it’s a more general cultural clash with broader reach. Back then people dreaded or hoped for violent conflict, depending on their point of view, but now I can really see a new civil war being possible. Back then, voter suppression was aimed at the black community, while now it’s aimed at anyone who’s not a pro-Trump Republican, so it affects a lot more people. I think regular people are seeing that our government’s functioning (when it functions) is a lot more due to social convention rather than to having a wonderful Constitution.
Even leaving Covid out of the mix, these last two weeks have been much more disruptive than anything in the 60s. That was largely limited to students and college and involved mainly opposition to the draft. If the army had been all-volunteer, then even though there was still opposition to the war, it would have been much much less. Although the US has been in two interminable wars for getting on to two decades, how much agitation is there against them? Then add the virus and things feel much worse.
Superb post, ThelmaLou.
I always thought that a lot of the demonstrations in the 60’s were a kind of street theater, no matter how sincere the demonstrators (and I also always suspected that sincerity in many of the protesters, where the first demand was always amnesty for the demonstrators). The civil rights demonstrations were more immediate, in my mind, because it was clear what they were fighting for, and what it meant to them on a human level.
But ThelmaLou is absolutely right, even in the most gripping times (Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy assassinations 1 and 2, riots after the MLK Jr assassination, '68 Democratic convention, to name a few) it was not normal to be watching the news all the time, even when it was available. There was time to think, process and digest.
The existential threat to everyone, nuclear war, was very removed from day to day life, so much so that I never really took it seriously. I couldn’t believe world leaders could be that crazy. I no longer have that comforting belief. Anyway, that’s very different from a disease that potentially picks off friends and family and the people next door, and that leaves our downtowns deserted and closed for business.
tl;dr – now is worse. Now it really feels like things are unraveling and may never be put right. Now there is precious little comfort to be had.
But back in the 60s, you had the Vietnam War and the assassination of political leaders like JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X. Plus as you stated, I feel like the 60s riots were a lot bigger and more destructive.
I think the general answer to your question is in the affirmative, based on what I saw by the time I turned twelve in 1970. Which brings me to my point: you need to raise the age a little bit. Today’s sixty-year-olds were eight years old in 1968. I was a bit older at the time but still just a kid, more concerned with finding another Mercury Redstone model kit to replace the one my dog had chewed up. (I never did!) Most of what I know about the protests and other events of the 1960s is based on what I learned about them much later.
I’m assuming you mean late '60s, early '70s. I was at the wrong end of a police riot then. But anti-war marches, even the college strike against the Cambodian incursion were localized and relatively short. They were not all that disruptive. Neither were riots for most people.
There was nothing like the universal disruption we see today.
And Nixon, whatever his faults, seemed rational back then. His lying was not several standard deviations above average, like Trump’s, and he knew what he was doing from long government service.
Watergate seemed far more similar to today than the late '60s, being the focus of all of our attention and destroying what little faith in the presidency we had left.
I was in college and grad school during that time, so I didn’t need to get involved with the real world.
No. The sixties were a lot worse. We haven’t seen anything like the March to Selma, and we don’t have a war in Vietnam.
This is spot on.
There was also stuff going on outside the US that pales in comparison to today, especially in 1968. In addition to the MLK and Bobby Kennedy assassinations in April and June, things like the Paris riots in May, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviets/Warsaw Pact in August, and the Nigerian civil war and subsequent genocidal famine in Biafra throughout the whole year, got a lot of airtime. Walter Cronkite was busy. Not to mention Tet and Khe Sanh. Things were insane.
The average Floyd protester is in danger from the authorities for simply showing up.
This is a big shift: Nixon won by a landslide in 1972, by appealing to everyone who feared and hated the protestors and wanted a Law-And-Order government. We know what happened during that election, sure, but it was still a strong sign that the protestors were in the minority. These days, NASCAR has banned the Confederate flag directly due to BLM and other companies are showing support in at least token ways despite the ability of people who disagree with them to be very loud indeed. You can fool yourself with filter bubbles, and think everyone agrees with you and never feel, as Kael did, the Other Side silently surrounding you in public places, but fast food places don’t make supportive statements if they think they’ll alienate most of their potential customers.
Might the idea that the protestors have more popular support these days make the chaos (feel) worse? After all, if there’s majority disapproval of something, it’s a lot easier for the mainstream media and people in general to ignore or downplay.
I was in college during that time period, and was surrounded by anti-war protests on a daily basis. I even participated in a few, and was a member of a few organizations like SDS. We lived in a bubble, and to us, anti-war and anti-draft sentiment was everywhere. The enemy was outside the bubble, the “other”. I literally didn’t have one friend or acquaintance who was for the war or against the protesters.
Because of this, we thought we were making permanent changes in the world. With the illusions of youth, we really believed that much better days were ahead. No more war. No more racism. No more poverty. And no more oppressive organized religion.
I turned 13 in 1970 and the general fear seemed quite real through the late '60s. I don’t feel that at all now, even though I live in a slightly more urban area now. As a child I remember the riots of '68 affecting everyone I knew, and fear of rioters and looters, even in my rural world, was tangible.
These days it just seems like another one of those ‘protests against whatever’ that will soon go away, even if we lose some very good statues of heroes who are no longer in vogue.
The music was better.
The demographic of protestors was younger. When older people marched who weren’t even black, it felt like news. It was much more of a divide between the generation which had been through WWII and the one which hadn’t.
The political climate was very different. Conservatives were rather dull and staid and responsible, instead of spittle-flecked neo-nazis. Liberals were earnest do-gooders who wanted change within the system. Women were still wearing dresses that came to the exact middle of their knees.
There was a lot less global despair. The middle class was in the strongest most stable position it ever enjoyed. Most any white man could get a job that would support a wife and children and could afford a modest house. The confidence in a progressive affluence which could be relied upon by their children and grandchildren was almost universal. Few could imagine a time when the ecological future seemed too terrifying to consider even having children.
The protests are much bigger, much more broadly supported. There is a lot more agreement that everything is really really fucked up and unfair. I guess that’s a good thing?