Thursday, July 31, 2014
1968
I just watched the CNN Special presentation on 1968 on the "Sixties"
series and it took me back to how I felt then. In 1968 I turned 20.
Though I had been to college I really didn't know many people yet like
demonstrated at the Democratic National convention and were beat up by
the police there yet. That would come later in the 1970s for me. I
mostly had been exposed to more conservative types of people so far even
in college.
You had to be a student at UC Berkeley or Columbia University or UCLA or someplace like that where the most elitist student went who were class presidents and valedictorians of this Senior Classes across the U.S. to meet kids like that.
Most of the people I knew were not that thoughtful or privileged or insightful (at least yet). Even I was trying to figure everything out and it wasn't until I was 21 when I really saw how bad things really were for both me and for the world and was very upset about the whole thing then. At 20 I was still in the (the universe revolves around me) kind of bubble a teenager still sort of lives in. The more thoughtful and insightful Straight A students from richer families that got involved in leadership roles in the 1968 convention were mostly all Straight A students and Seniors in college or graduate students working on their master's degrees or something like that at a prestigious university. So, when bunches of High School class presidents and Valedictorians from their high schools got together all sorts of interesting things could happen back then.
However, most people under 21 even in college then were sort of like "What? Why are my friends who didn't go to college all dying in Viet Nam and coming home in a box?"
Since more people my age (born in 1948) died in Viet Nam than any other age I sort of still take all that very personally.
However, the world was still insane then (not that it isn't now too) but then it was insane in a different way that was sort of a carry over from World War II and the Korean War. But that kind of thinking no longer was working because it was disassociated from reality then in 1968 and the young all sensed the disconnection and dislocation but the older generation was exhausted still from World War II and didn't want to listen. They still were getting over PTSD from world War II and the Korean war and "By the way just shut up about the Viet nam War because we died now it's your turn to die too!"
However, my generation(at least the smartest ones) were not going to give up even if a lot of us died. Because our generation's lives were all at stake not just in Viet Nam but the whole planet looked like it was going to be nuked out of existence as well.
Not if we had anything to say about it!
That was what was really going on back then in a nutshell.
You had to be a student at UC Berkeley or Columbia University or UCLA or someplace like that where the most elitist student went who were class presidents and valedictorians of this Senior Classes across the U.S. to meet kids like that.
Most of the people I knew were not that thoughtful or privileged or insightful (at least yet). Even I was trying to figure everything out and it wasn't until I was 21 when I really saw how bad things really were for both me and for the world and was very upset about the whole thing then. At 20 I was still in the (the universe revolves around me) kind of bubble a teenager still sort of lives in. The more thoughtful and insightful Straight A students from richer families that got involved in leadership roles in the 1968 convention were mostly all Straight A students and Seniors in college or graduate students working on their master's degrees or something like that at a prestigious university. So, when bunches of High School class presidents and Valedictorians from their high schools got together all sorts of interesting things could happen back then.
However, most people under 21 even in college then were sort of like "What? Why are my friends who didn't go to college all dying in Viet Nam and coming home in a box?"
Since more people my age (born in 1948) died in Viet Nam than any other age I sort of still take all that very personally.
However, the world was still insane then (not that it isn't now too) but then it was insane in a different way that was sort of a carry over from World War II and the Korean War. But that kind of thinking no longer was working because it was disassociated from reality then in 1968 and the young all sensed the disconnection and dislocation but the older generation was exhausted still from World War II and didn't want to listen. They still were getting over PTSD from world War II and the Korean war and "By the way just shut up about the Viet nam War because we died now it's your turn to die too!"
However, my generation(at least the smartest ones) were not going to give up even if a lot of us died. Because our generation's lives were all at stake not just in Viet Nam but the whole planet looked like it was going to be nuked out of existence as well.
Not if we had anything to say about it!
That was what was really going on back then in a nutshell.
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