It started out okay. Kennedy got elected and it was sort of like the country elected a king or a prince who had a queen or a princess as his wife and their kids were our prince and princess as well. This was king of cool because all the world loved our new royalty.
Then the Cuban missile crisis happened and that was likely the scariest thing anyone had experienced in the U.S. since World war II. Then Kennedy was assassinated (in the middle of the Cold War) which made everyone extremely paranoid in the country. Then people my age got drafted to go to Viet Nam so we watched our friends get wounded and die on TV at dinnertime. Then people my age couldn't deal with their friends dying on TV anymore and started to demonstrate and riot and then the police beat them up for demonstrating and rioting because they couldn't stand to watch their friends blown to hell on TV anymore. Then people took drugs because police were beating them up and their friends were dying on TV. And this is what happened in the 1960s.
However, out of all the complete insanity and people not able to trust anyone anymore or pick up hitchikers safely anymore came human rights, and women's rights and civil rights of all kinds of people and colors of people and ethnic groups.
So, even though NO one trusts each other like we once did in the 1950s at least people have more rights now than they did before.
So, all the deaths and mayhem and craziness and mistrust of government and watching our friends die on TV in Viet Nam and watching president Kennedy be assassinated by "WHO?" we now have more civil rights but don't trust each other at all anymore. That's what the 1960s caused both good and bad.
But, mostly living through it was sort of insane because of all the changes and all the children who never talked to their parents again. It was a social revolution and a lot of people didn't survive it.
No comments:
Post a Comment