1968

I was watching TV the other night, and happened on a Tom Brokaw special on the History Channel, 1968. I decided to watch it because I remember 1968 well, and was curious to see what Brokaw would have to say about it;

the opinions, clips, sound bites and interviews. I was interested to find out what he would put together in remembrance of a pivotal time, 40 years ago.

In 1968, I wasn’t yet grown. I wasn’t quite old enough to participate in the “goings-on” of the time, but I was definitely old enough to watch, be aware and form my own opinions. I remember the Goldwater commercial featuring an Atomic bomb, I remember Hubert Humphrey and his promises that sounded so good, but a little too late in his campaign to make a difference. I remember thinking that the death of Bobby Kennedy was unnecessary, and that it tolled the end of the Democratic Party, as it had been.

This was really the year that the WWII/Depression Generation gave over the reins of power to the Baby-Boomers, although it wasn’t really evident yet for several years to come. Our parents had been so hard, they had resolve, a toughness of character that they tried to pass on to us. I don’t think that it would have been possible, no matter what they did. We were a different generation, with different social pressures, but the same “stick with it” attitude that had characterized our parents. I think we all realized that the “American Dream” as such was dead; as dead as the Kennedy brothers, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968 was the year of the beginning of the downfall of “America, land of the Free, and home of the Brave.”

The Draft, and the anti-war movement;

Nowadays, we have a “War” or “Police Action” going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then we had Vietnam, of course. Today, kids are protesting the current conflict just as we did back then, and they are being led by some of the same people, but today’s protests are lackluster in comparison. For some reason, they don’t have the energy, the fire that the protests back in the sixties did. Have you ever wondered why that is? If these young college radicals truly believe in what they’re doing, then why can’t they raise enough furor to make their protests catch fire? They are dying as they’re born, each protest in it’s time. The reason for this is simple;

Back then in 1968, we had the draft. We watched the news every day, we saw the body count of US troops escalating daily, we saw the corruption of our own Government, the ineptness, the mistakes, the oversights and money-grubbing by everyone in the Nation’s Capitol from the President down. We saw all of this everyday, and we saw our older brothers being drafted, either right after High-School, or during any break in college lasting more than 6 weeks. They were gone. Gone to the AFEE’s Station, for a physical, then gone to spend 2 years in Uncle Sam’s Army whether that’s what they wanted or not, and then for too many of them, gone to their grave before their lives had truly begun. Of course they could have run, gone to Canada or somewhere, but we had been raised that this was our Country, and that we owed a debt to America. The only way to play this for most of us was to go to school, have some fun and answer the call to duty when it came. Meanwhile we sat in front of the TV every night, horrified at what we were seeing, horrified to know that this was what was in store for us, glued to the tube as if it was a training film and that our lives might depend on it and hoping against hope that maybe, by some miracle they might come to some agreement at the Peace-Talks in Paris, but knowing, deep inside ourselves that they wouldn’t. Our hearts and souls were in the protests of the time, because our asses were on the line. You see, nowadays kids have a choice, the Military is all volunteer. Back then that wasn’t the case. Of course some did volunteer, many joined the Navy, Marines or Air Force so that they’d have some bargaining power. At least a little say over their destiny, and in the case of the ones of us who joined the Marines, then if we went over there, at least we’d be a part of the finest fighting force the world had ever known. The recruiters told us so, and we, in our naiveté, we believed them.

We fought for the right to be heard, on campus, in the streets and anywhere we may be heard. We protested that someone who was too old to go himself could have the power to control our destiny, to take our youth, our burgeoning manhood away from us before it had fairly begun. In a way, at about the age of 13 or so, a boy in America in the ’60’s lost his childhood and began to become a man, because he realized at about that time that his clock was ticking.

Nowadays, with an all volunteer force, the war is just as deadly and perhaps more meaningless, but the fire is gone from the protest, taken away by a Government that listened to it’s youth those many years ago, and rather than striving to end wars as we had hoped, it figured out how to pull the teeth of protest. Our Government found the key to ending the protest by making sure that all of the boys and girls they send in harm’s way now, still without accountability for the gray-heads doing the saber-rattling, and incidentally making the millions of dollars off of the war, are all volunteers. The powers –that-be can stand in front of the Press, in front of all of us questioning the losses, and say, “They were volunteers, they knew what they were doing and they wanted to go, otherwise, they wouldn’t have volunteered.” Of course this doesn’t take into account that many are there because of the education opportunities they’d not have access to any other way, or because they didn’t have a job or a future, and the Military was a way out. It is a way out of Poverty, lack of Education, Homelessness, and for some, a way out of Jail. They just have to make a deal with the Devil, in the guise of the US Government.

We were willing to riot in the streets in our time, to face getting our heads bashed by the cops, sprayed with Mace, and sometimes even shot at to make ourselves heard, because we had no choice. Maybe the next generation will realize that having the choices that we bought them, they have the choice to control the Government, we certainly never got that far, and it needs to be controlled.

I think I may do a part II to this one. I'm not sure yet.