Your tally doesn’t include what might be called “indigenous personnel” or the “collaterally damaged”. They weren’t “drafted”, but they didn’t get much choice in the matter, either. Not nearly so precise, either, we know “4,781 and another 137”. Crisp, precise numbers, exact. Their dead? Somewhere north of 50,000, south of 200,000. Just as dead. No such thing as Dead Lite.
Boomers know how to eat fruit.
(peaches are in season and had such a bumper crop on the tree in the back yard I am more regular than usual)
Whoever said they were engaged in anti-government protests? I can’t claim to have been there myself because I’m seven or eight years too young to have participated. But I have always interpreted the protest movement, in general, to have been directed at certain people in that government and against specific actions and decisions they’d taken and made. The political center of gravity was much more to the left, and it was even possible for some on the left to despise Nixon for his escalation of the war in Cambodia, but support some things he wanted to do in other areas, like HCR.
So what you’re saying is that “we didn’t start the fire”
Movin’ to the country
Gonna eat me alot of peaches…
Presidents Of the United States Of America
[It’s a band you Boomers wouldn’t recognize]
I was in lots of anti Vietnam marches. They were not just college students but women, priests, old folks, housewives, nuns and a cross section of America. They occurred across the country in many campuses and many cities. It was pretty simple, we were against the Vietnamese war and the drafting of our young men to fight in a very unpopular and completely unnecessary war.Of course ,every escalation brought more protesters. Every time we caught the administration lying, it brought more.
I re-read the earlier posts in this thread and realized I had omitted an important point I wanted to make about popular music. It isn’t that the music of 1965 -1973 is objectively the best, or even the beginning of rock and roll as a mainstream popular phenomenon. But it is the time during which this music became sufficiently mainstream, for example, to serve as the sound track for films and television. (In the 1950s there were virtually no films other than exploitation movies that used rock music[sup]1[/sup]). The point here wasn’t to say we get to take all the credit for this transition, but to illustrate the seismic shift through which music went. It came down to the music before–crooners, Broadway hits, and maybe some jazz vocalists like Peggy Lee and Sarah Vaughn at the intersection of jazz and pop. Afterwards it was rock, soul, R&B, and so on. There was “old people’s music” and “young people’s music”, and with the exception of the more adventurous and receptive listeners on both sides, you didn’t get a lot of crossover in terms of the listeners.
Now that’s all changed. I assert that fans of a contemporary band like My Morning Jacket could probably find something to like on a Doors record–and vice versa. There’s more similarity between the two bands, though forty years apart, then there was between the Doors and Bing Crosby.
[sup]1[/sup]The exception that proves the rule is Orson Welles’ A Touch Of Evil. In one scene the leading female character has been kidnapped and injected with some kind of narcotic drug. At this point the sound track turns into a slow electric blues number with heavy reverb on the guitar, and the result sounds uncannily like a stereotypical psychedelic blues jam ten years hence.
Which is precisely why the Boomers were more politically noisy than later generations. Taking to the streets to stop a war is no ground for patting yourself on the back when you are motivated by self-preservation. Hell, if I were at risk of being drafted to go fight a questionable war against my will, I might take to the streets too. How does that make me noble?
I’m not going to offer you an argument, but an insight. Give you an idea what we were up against. Have you ever seen The Green Berets, with John Wayne? One of the most brilliant pieces of propaganda ever produced. Leni Riefenstal’s Triumph of the Will, by comparison, was ham-fisted, stupid, and unsophisticated. Green Berets was brilliant, it pushed every button, used every cliché. Up to and including a hit single, sung by a wounded American soldier. Well, “sung” might be an exaggeration… A litle post-production magic, and its a hit.
You had, of course, Big John Wayne. And you had the ne’er do well slacker gold-brick (Jim Hutton), who gets whipped into shape by Big John, and dies nobly defending something or other. You got your cynical, unpatriotic reporter (David Janssen), damned and determined to only show one side of the question, who eventually gets religion when he sees the nobility and courage of the South Viet Namese army resisting Communist aggression. (Of course, almost none of the actors were Vietnamese: some long standing Hollywood character actors of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino extraction. We couldn’t tell the difference…We wouldn’t have cared if we did…)
It was fucking brilliant, in the dark and shiny way that Darth Vader’s costume makes visual. And it was a lie, from opening scene to the last, with Big John walking along the beach with the adoring Vietnamese child he was protecting. About the only thing it didn’t include was Bob Hope making job-bath-haircut jokes, har-de-har-har.
This isn’t an argument, just an insight, just a hint of the power we were up against. And every professional who had anything to do with its production should stand naked before the Monument and say “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I got paid, I’m sorry”. Because in an abstract way, but still a very real way, that movie killed thousands. And that includes you, George Takei (Captain Nim)
It embodied The Lie we grew up with, that all around the world, when the poor, afraid, and oppressed heard “The Americans are coming!”, they rejoiced, because the righteous power of America would soon protect them. Now, this is not to even suggest that the VC and NVA were noble freedom fighters, they were not. But at least it was their fucking country, and not ours.
You don’t have to be “noble” to oppose a monstrosity, you simply have to give a shit.
Well, I recognize the inspiration for this derivative song. It’s that ole Boomer John Prine’s Spanish Pipe Dream:
Which does not have any effect on his social development. He is not a Boomer. I’ve said it before in this thread. He was twelve when the cease-fire was called in Vietnam. Not a contemporary of Clinton and GWB.
Look, 'luci, I’m not fighting you. I recognize that taking to the streets and facing the ill will of a propagandized public is not easy.
I just think Boomers need to acknowledge that there was considerable self-interest involved in the anti-war movement, and that maybe they need to be a little less self-congratulatory about it, and a little less condescending to later generations.
Speaking of which, with regard to the side debate about what comprises the “Boomers,” I think the cutoff ought to be whether you (or male members of your cohort) were old enough to face the draft. In my experience there is considerable difference in mindset between Boomers and folks who were born in the early 60s (like Obama) and never had to think about the draft.
Sure, there was “self-interest” involved. Its our damn country!
John Prine wrote ninja fights into his songs?
OK then, so that’s a “no” on avoiding self-congratulation and condescension?
That all you got? People who did the right thing are proud of themselves for doing it? You want we should apologize? To who?
Hell no, We won’t go!
Apologize? No. But admit that half the marchers were just trying to keep their own asses out of a rice paddy? That might be a good start.
I’m a big believer in the “between generations” generations like Obama’s Generation Jones birth year. Especially because I was born in 1981 (either the last year of X or the first year of Y depending upon who you ask) and I’ve never felt like I belonged in either generation. I don’t think this bi-generational group has an official name like Jones, but I’ve heard it referred to as Generation XY.
What special insight permits you to offer such a figure? My experience was that people hated the Vietnam war and thought it was wrong. At marches there were old people. kids, nuns, priests and people of all ages. On campuses ,you would get a skewed ratio, but across the country there was a cross section of America carrying signs.