Dude
I see now what you meant, and I agree. The 60s were a galvanizing time when America’s resilience was sorely tested, possibly even more so than during the War of Northern Aggression. The Vietnam War was a horrible pall over the American spirit. The people nearly lost their vigilance. It’s amazing that America survived 1968.
‘The Johnson and Nixon administrations’ credibility gap on Vietnam is the direct source of our distrust of the US government.’
Its amazing how all those hippies forget it was Kennedy who got us in and Nixon who got us out. Pot do that to you I guess.
Well, even Kennedy was simply taking specific actions based on the philosophy set (and previous actions taken) by Ike (who inherited issues from Truman and situations that reached back all the way to Wilson). However, regardless how badly Kennedy’s plan might have been, the distrust of government is more directly related to the transparent lies that occurred under “Gulf on Tonkin” Johnson and “I have a plan to end the war” and “No, we have never bombed in Cambodia” Nixon.
It is quite possible to fault Kennedy for many things. In this case, the specific loss of faith in the government is not directly attributable to him.
Well, Kennedy repeatedly lied about the use of airpower in Vietname (yes, helicopters and napalm were used as early as 1962)
‘I can assure you that the United States has no intention of using force to overthrow the Castro regime’
-JFK in 1961
But JFK was just following somebody’s ‘philosophy set’. . . yeah, that’s the ticket.
bumperboy, walking in with a personal animus against Kennedy and ignoring the evidence will not further the discussion. I am perfectly willing to note any number of evil/foolish/disgusting actions on the part of Kennedy. However, Cuba, from 1960 on, was perceived as “bad” and the public would have expected Kennedy to deny any efforts to overthrow Castro while working feverishly behind the scenes to overthrow him. The same is true for the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Laos (which lots of people forget). Kennedy’s actions did not further public distrust of government any more than did Ike’s denial that we were spying on the U.S.S.R. right up until the moment that Gary Powers ejected from a U-2. The U.S. got caught red-handed with Ike lying about the issue, yet the reaction was one of “Oh, we got caught.” not one of “Oh, our leader has lied to us.”
The issue is “What caused a loss of trust?” In retrospect, it is quite valid to point to underhanded actions in which the U.S. engaged and identify them as wrong or stupid or unethical: you can add Iran and Guatemala and a number of African nations to the list. However, given the climate of the times, the U.S. citizenry would have (rightly or wrongly) considered them “necessary” or “par for the course” in order to “stop Communism.” In the cases of Johnson and Nixon, they took or supported actions that led to far more involvement of many more U.S. troops (with the attendant increase in casualties) and people reacted against “government” when they perceived that the lies told had resulted in more deaths with no resulting victory.
I am offering no particular defense of Kennedy’s actions. I am pointing out that on the issue of the loss of public trust, (the “Vietnam credibility gap” to which you originally reacted), the public did not choose to disbelieve Kennedy and then transfer that disbelief to either the presidency or the government in general.
Regarding JFK, I believe he was a relatively conservative political animal. His dominant political concern was maintaining the support which he needed from Southern Democrats. His personal lifestyle rendered him very vulnerable to the influences of reactionaries, such as Hoover.
Regarding the impact of the 60’s, and the sincerity of the proponents of social change during that era, I can say from personal experience that I encountered many people who were willing to risk everything to fight for what they believed in. For example, “hippie” friends of mine petitioned factory workers to drum up support for legislation that would better protect the rights of those workers. These people realized that many of the factory workers hated “hippies”, and that they stood a pretty good chance of getting beaten up by the some of the individuals they were petitioning. Still, they believed that these workers were being exploited, and they wished to help them.
Far more relevant than my little anecdote, above, are the activities of many college students from top-notch universities who knowingly risked their lives on “Freedom Rides” into the heart of the segregated South. These people, mostly from priviledged backgrounds, willingly risked their lives to fight social injustice. These activities forced changes in the very relationship between the national and state governments. That is one hell of a profound change.
My view is that the 60s paved the way for the far right. As usual, conservatives are about 25 years behind the times. Consider the pro-life people using protest tactics such as picketing that come straight from the 60s. Then there are the radicals maintaining that using force against clinics and doctors is morally right. This is just like the bombings of ROTC buildings.
Kent State begat Waco and Ruby Ridge which ended up with the OKC bombing. Conservatives are now the ones that are paranoid about big government. We even have an activist court that put Bush in office.
I remember when having hair to your collar made you a commie fag, now we have legions of mullet-heads going to NASCAR races. People like Rush have rock music as theme music and see no irony.
Gun proponents stopped using hunting to justify themselves and now talk about the need for revolution. Sounds just like the Weathermen or the Panthers.
Conservatives also are becoming isolationists and don’t want to send “our boys” off to fight in Eastern Europe.
You have activists in the schools trying to retain the right to wear the confederate flag. Their arguments sound just like the liberals in the 60s who wanted to wear peace signs, upside down flags, etc.
Finally, think about Dr Laura. Isn’t she just the prototypical liberated woman. She dumped her husband and went to work even though she had kids. Without the feminist movement she would probably be sitting at home making doilies. After her divorce she would have had no credit history and been shunned socially. She wouldn’t be able to be up front about being Jewish and would probably call herself Dr White. She’d be lucky if the KKK didn’t burn a cross on her lawn for being uppity.
If you can remember the sixties, then you really weren’t there. I can’t remember who said that.
I was there, and I believe the biggest single outcome was the absolute breakdown of the control that the adult generation had on the teenage generation as a society. That is the single lasting change in society that I can point out. In the 50’s, teenagers were skinny little adults. In the sixties and thereafter, one can always identify teenagers by their hair, dress etc.
Oh, one more thing. We now can publicly use the word fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck,fuck, ad infinitem without indicating a lack of vocabulary or attaching stigma.
‘Hence, to avoid painful decisions (“win” or “get out”), LBJ, like Kennedy, always sought to do the minimum and portray it as progress–at the risk of a growing “credibility gap” in the press.
That gap was fatefully opened in 1961-1963, as John F. Kennedy dispatched US advisers, helicopters, and money to the erratic lacklustre regime of Ngo Dinh Diem to stave off gains by the Hanoi-led Communist guerrillas in the South.’
Looks like JFK was the FATHER of the ‘credibility gap’!!!
Are you quoting someone’s opinion? Whose?
If you are simply putting your own spin on history, then you should be able to defend the position that people actually began to distrust “government” under the Kennedy administration. One of the frequent comments heard from supporters of the Vietnam war for years, when confronted with apparent discrepancies in the the news between the battlefield reports and the public pronouncements, was “The president knows more about it than you do.” Given that general reaction among the public, it is hard to argue that Kennedy created the credibility gap.
Kennedy is open to any sort of charge you want to bring regarding his conduct. Those can be debated on their own issues. However, identifying occasions when Kennedy lied or stretched a point has nothing to do with the credibility gap, unless you want to identify Eisenhower as the grandfather, Truman as the great-grandfather, FDR as the great-great-grandfather, etc. going back to Washington.
Since the public did not “catch him in the act,” he did not cause the credibility gap. As long as he got away with creating the appropriate facade, he was not responsible for the breakdown of trust.
bumperboy’s quote came from here
Yeah! What tomndebb just said.
The credibility gap first became apparent under Johnson. And that’s why he chose to resign rather than try for re-election.
I just want to echo much of what Tris said in that wonderfully eloquent speech.
When Tris said
, you were describing my mother. My Southern Baptist, straight-laced, traditional-as-they-come-mother, who was 45 in 1968. When my wife and I marched in Washington, she thought we were crazy. But as the war dragged on and she saw the body count every night, she began to question. And she saw the injustices which brought about the Civil Rights Movement.
My mother is still a Southern Baptist, still goes to church, but doesn’t trust authority figures as she once did. She even became a deacon in the church in the early 1980’s(do you think that would have happened without the 60’s!) and had the audacity to ask questions of male church icons who had ruled it(the Church) as a fiefdom.
Ask my mom if the 1960’s changed anything in her middle-class, conservative life.
I must say that in my study of history,Hippies got too much time in the Media. People forget how little they contributed (civil rights started in the 50s not the 60s) The truth being, there were more people in Vietnam, then at woodstock on the same day. What the problem is, is that the people in the Media, were hippies at one time and try to overplay their actions and not let people see some of the stuff that failed. (Drug use, we still have racism, womens wages are still low) I am not some right wing wacko, my father was a ground medic in Viet Nam, and his stories are horrible ( the war was a bad idea) but again like I am trying to say, the 60s were overplayed, because the Baby boomers cannot take credit for many things. Much of the tech we have (lasers, mainframes, physics theories) came from corperate instiusions or reserch backed up by the government. Its a large case of revisionist history going on.
Could you explain to me where this idea originated, that you and Wierddave have put forth, that anyone (including any ex-hippies) believe that hippies changed the world? The world changed in the 1960s and a lot of people were involved. I have never seen anyone claim that the hippie “movement” succeeded (providing it even had a goal), so why is it being attacked?
This is certainly the first straw hippie that I have encountered.
Many historians agree that there were massive social and political changes in the US in the 60s and early 70s. Having lived through them as an active participant, I would agree. You kids who grew up since then are basing your opinions on… what? Lots of examples have already been given. I’d like to add that women doctors and lawyers were very rare when I was a kid. I could go on…