Haidt and Lukianoff cite "the period of emotionally intense national political events" around 1965-1972 when we "islanders" were in our politically impressionable years, ages 14 to 24.
For Americans born in the early 1950s, all you have to do to evoke visceral flashbacks to 1968 is say things like: MLK, RFK, Black Panthers, Tet offensive, My Lai, Chicago Democratic National Convention, Richard Nixon. If those words don’t flood you with feelings, then do an internet search for “Chuck Braverman 1968.” The five-minute video montage will leave you speechless. Just imagine what it must have been like to be a young adult developing a political identity, perhaps newly arrived on a college campus, as momentous moral struggles, tragedies, and victories happened all around you.I don't have to imagine, but here's the video montage:
The authors proceed to assert that "the years from 2012 through 2018 seem like the closest we’ve come to the intensity of the stretch from 1968 to 1972" and that "[t]oday’s college students have lived through extraordinary times, and, as a result, many of them have developed an extraordinary passion for social justice." There's a long list of "extraordinary things" — Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Donald Trump, Caitlin Jenner, school shootings. But I don't think these can compare with the Vietnam War with the draft, the assassinations, the riots, the Manson murders, the hippie movement, and Nixon.
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130 comments:
They’re even more spoiled than the Boomers.
Given that Vietnam was a Democrat war (going back to FDR's promise to help DeGaulle reclaim France's lost colonies), why should the turmoil from that era have pushed people to the Democrats? It pushed me the other way.
They've lived through Caitlin Jenner. Profound times.
There's a long list of "extraordinary things" — Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Donald Trump, Caitlin Jenner, school shootings. But I don't think these can compare with the Vietnam War with the draft, the assassinations, the riots, the Manson murders, the hippie movement, and Nixon.
I agree with this. In today's world, there is a sea of fake-outrage, tweets, subpoenas and mostly bullshit. In 1968, the Weathermen were bombing buildings, the black panthers were shooting cops, there was a real shooting war, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world.
The 60s were wild, Man. And there was no guarantee that we, as a free country, would survive it.
The 1950-54 crowd saw the older crowd acting like assholes in the late sixties and the made us resolve not to be like them. We used to talk about that in high school, among ourselves. Being a Conservative was a good choice. I question the study.
Thanks mom for having me in 1968. Don’t remember anything until about 1972.
"But I don't think these can compare"
But as Marx said, history repeats itself as farce. He forgot to add that what is most farcical about the repetition is that the repeaters will think of it as tragedy.
I agree that those days in the late 60's seem a lot more chaotic and volatile than these days, but that's from my point of view as an adult. Children today have different threats -- namely school shootings, the overt power and politicization of the media, the threats of terrorism, globalism, climate change, and uncontrolled immigration. Just to have to deal with the threat of a bloodbath in your school is mindboggling.
eh, I was born in 1952 and the last democratic presidential contender I voted for was jimmuh carter in 1976. voting for carter was a stupid, knee jerk reaction to voting for Nixon in 1972. I wasn't sure about Reagan initially, but I figured he had to be better than carter, and I was right.
I'm in that group, and I never vote for republicans for anything.
But that's because I refuse to register to vote.
That video mash-up flits around way too fast for my liking. Almost makes me queasy trying to focus. Maybe I am supposed to go with the flow, man, and just haze the gaze, be a fellow of mellow.
Why the hell would the Vietnam War push you to Democrats? But then again, college kids have always been idiots. It's the period in life when your self-opinion and worldview is like a Ferrari on a tiny race track in the woods on and island.
mikesixes: "Given that Vietnam was a Democrat war (going back to FDR's promise to help DeGaulle reclaim France's lost colonies),...."
Obama and Hillary did their part by removing Gadhafi to support European interests.
The Europeans know they have only to snap their fingers and the lefties/LLR's will send US troops wherever the lefties want them.
In this case, France had lots of oil interests at stake and what better way to protect those interests than turn on the lefty/dem/LLR spigot of US troops?
That cohort started working when old industries were collapsing and the economy was going haywire, yet somehow most never learned that the government was making things worse--when it wasn't actually causing the problem.
That video is the opposite of eye candy.
Actual crime was far worse in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90's than it has been since. Artificial crimes are now taking up the slack. Eventually we will be able to get a subscription on Amazon for victimhood. Every day they send you a new outrage customized with your personal information.
As Dinesh D'souza has been saying, the big lie of our time is what the Democrats have been about through our history. Who they really are, and what they have done. It has been an amazing con-job - one of the biggest and most successful in history. BTW, I'm a lifelong registered Democrat, becuase I'm lazy.
One of D'sousa's most powerful factoids is that no Republican ever owned slaves. Every one was owned by Democrats. If you asked most college students, over 90% would get that completely backward. The Republican party was created to end slavery, and yet people imagine a history of some crazy bizarro world that never was. Most Blacks vote for the slave owner party. WTF?
"We are within reach of great nihilistic forces that have undone civilization...religion has been turned by some into a kind of nihilism, where people wish to destroy themselves and destroy their past and their culture . . . to be pure. They are enraged about the world and they wish to pull it down." This kind of fury and fanaticism is unappeasable. It knows no social, economic, or political solution. "You cannot converge with this [position] because it holds that your life is worthless and your beliefs are criminal and should be extirpated."...
I had this discussion about 6 months ago with someone who wrote a history of the US from 1965 to 1973. From 1965 until 1974 I worked my ass off -- while he marched in the streets -- so, yes, ours were very different views of what was going on. He went to folk/ rock concerts and to political rallies. I hardly got any sleep while "keeping my nose to the grindstone". I have no regrets. You probably can guess how I now vote.
Relax, The Democratsic Socilaists are going to fix all that stuff.
We are demanding:
a. An immediate, labor-friendly and inclusive transition to 100% clean energy.
b. A halt to to fossil fuel infrastructure development.
c. The dismantling of the dirty energy industry and re-distribution of their assets to fund climate reparations.
That'll teach 'em. Another reparations fan.
Baby Lives Matter, #SheKnew, Planet of the Apes, transgender spectrum, political congruence, abortion fields and mills, social justice, school shootings, Democrats don't care... we didn't start the fire.
rp, I was sewing up the sidewalk surgeons all night.
"Why the hell would the Vietnam War push you to Democrats?"
Like that chaotically paced video montage, it scrambled up our mind.
I think you are correct, Althouse. 2012-18 does not compare, with 1966-72.
Another difference; there was no right-wing media environment in 1966-72. There was the hegemony of the three networks, plus PBS and the major big city newspapers; and then the only other competing media world was the then-new counterculture media world of Rolling Stone, FM album rock, and the college campus scenes. All farther to the left than the networks.
Bill Buckley was on PBS! No talk radio (Fairness Doctrine), no internet.
100% clean energy
The green blight. The out-of-sight and out-of-mind strategic duality. In Stork they believe.
Unfortunately, not everyone survived Caitlin Jenner.
bagoh20 said...
Why the hell would the Vietnam War push you to Democrats?
Oh what a great question. But it wasn't Johnson- or Humphrey-Democrats. It was McCarthyMcGovernRFKJohnKerry-Democrats. A civil war in that party. Sort of like Republicans, now.
The 60s were wild, Man. And there was no guarantee that we, as a free country, would survive it.
It required men and women of conviction to stand their ground, to walk forward, as their father and mothers did before them.
The Democratsic Socilaists are going to fix all that stuff.
The DAZIS have big hats to fill. Are they up to it?
From listening to most young people today, I think they are like I remember my childhood in the 60's - oblivious. The young are wrapped up in what is fashionable to know, talk about, and listen to - pop culture. There is and was a small but loud and demanding minority who were obsessed with politics, and they made that focus seem more popular than it was. Many grew up to be media people and kept the obsession front and center, but still mostly among themselves.
Most people saw it as entertainment and background noise to life, but nothing forms ideology as powerfully as entertainment and its backdrop.
"Unfortunately, not everyone survived Caitlin Jenner."
I see what you did there. Besides an American sports hero, there was also an unknown, quickly forgotten victim.
https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/11/trump-inciting-riot-sixth-circuit/
90 seconds for Vietnam, 3 seconds for the Soviets crushing Czechoslovakia,
On balance 1968 was far worse than 2018 so far to date.
On balance if white people vote disproportionately white maybe it's because they are wising up to the fact that unless they are grifters, parasites, rent seekers, marxists or criminals the Democrats aren't really into them.
Although born slightly before that time frame, I was very much a part of the 60's protests and leftist politics, including trying, at one time, to work within the Democratic Party [what a joke!]. Most of us grew up and had the sense to vote for Reagan. But there are a few who are stuck in that era as if it was the high point of their lives.
Why is it that the generation of white kids born in the early fifties were attracted to political and cultural figures who were violent, insane, self destructive, or revolutionary? They experienced the events of the late 60s as young adults, not children, and it is not as though they lived through the great depression or WW2. Political and cultural trauma is no excuse. I was nine years old in 1968, and I found that older boomers, had crazy ideas about people and politics and were often sad and self destructive. Oh, and they never took responsibility for their actions that hurt them. They blamed their drug addiction on a crappy society, for example.
LLR Chuck: "A civil war in that party. Sort of like Republicans, now."
LOL
Riiiiight....
This is no different than the "moderates" fighting back against Reagan
But the lefty narrative is that the civil war is on the republican side and not the dems so you automatically know what talking point our LLR will be pushing..
Unexpectedly.
No talk radio way back when to push back on complete lefty media dominance?
LLR Chuck heaven....
That cohort wanted Bobby Kennedy, Gene McCarthy and then George McGovern, whose epic loss finally put an end to that shit. Nixon ended the draft and the anti-war movement was over.
6th Circuit reversed an Obama judge and the lawfare types are unhappy.
“Mr. Trump, throughout his campaign, intentionally used crowd violence to suppress dissident speech — the kind of core speech that the First Amendment traditionally protects,” Canon told Reuters. “The court’s opinion today gives him a free pass for that conduct.”
The "dissent speech" was three protestors, sort of like those at the Kavanaugh hearings.
I wonder if any will sue ?
And for the record, I think the division in the country is WORSE now. Back then we had a common culture, that the 50-54 cohort were shitting all over. The country is much more divided now.
The 1950-54 crowd became politically aware amidst the myth-building deification of JFK.
The post 1981 group became politically aware during a time when the classroom really became politicized as indoctrination centers supporting Bill Clinton.
"...and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world."
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
Born in 1960, I used to consider myself a baby boomer but I’m really not by any metric. My dad was in the Korean conflict, not WW II; my mom liked Elvis more than the Beatles. Growing up so near Madison during tha 60s and 70s had a profound political effect on me, but I’ve mostly shed that.
I’m glad that someone has finally identified the core set of boomers — perhaps now they can finally revel in their self-proclaimed cultural superiority, gtf out of the way, and give the rest of us some O2.
"Obama and Hillary did their part by removing Gadhafi to support European interests."
They did it to support our interests. The U.S. never does anything that is not in our interests.
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
What a bunch of hooey. Just because they collapsed doesn’t mean they didn’t try.
Baloney. Who was removed from Trump’s administration because he was doing what our allies wanted on Iran?
The 1950-54 cohort had the population numbers which came to define the baby boom. By the same token, that same cohort will feel the coming “death boom” more profoundly.
Robert Cook said...
"...and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world."
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
*****************************
That's world-historical idiocy right there--just ask the citizens of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland , Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, former East Germany, Moldavia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kakahstan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Georgia....
A lot of White kids born after 1981 were smothered by their parents. Maybe it was Adam Walsh getting kidnapped and killed and the rise of parents magazines. The Helicopter Parents.
These people will always vote Dem because they can’t take care of themselves.
The jihadists will eventually cut off their heads. So they won’t escape Adam Walsh’s fate after all.
And lets not forget the Brezhnev Doctrine, which was :
"When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries."
"In practice, the policy meant that only limited independence of the satellite states' communist parties was allowed and that no socialist country would be allowed to compromise the cohesiveness of the Eastern Bloc in any way. That is, no country could leave the Warsaw Pact or disturb a ruling communist party's monopoly on power. Implicit in this doctrine was that the leadership of the Soviet Union reserved, for itself, the power to define "socialism" and "capitalism"."
Hand over at least half the country to jihadist elements, entirely in Egypt's case.
Argument from diversity is a logical fault.
I don't understand why the 1968 DNC would attract people to be democrats. Ick.
Robert Cook said...
"...and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world."
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
You are close to the correct answer, but that isn't it.
For years the globalists used the US armed forces to push their agenda through BushClintonBushObama.
The republican voters kicked the Chucks out and the neocons/uniparty traitors openly campaigned for Hillary and are campaigning for democrats now.
It is really nice to have a president that ends more wars than he starts.
Cook realizes that his ideology is being pushed by the globalists. That must suck to be on the side of evil.
I don't understand why the 1968 DNC would attract people to be democrats.
It didn't. Just the opposite. It was at that point, seeing the radicalization of the Dems, that the post-1954 group turned Republican.
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
Robert, you have a blind spot.
Althouse wrote "But I don't think these can compare with the Vietnam War with the draft, the assassinations, the riots, the Manson murders, the hippie movement, and Nixon."
Not to mention the Weather Underground, American terrorists setting off bombs in New York and Madison, the Black Panthers, Kent State, Jackson State, bank robberies to fund the revolution, cops killed in the struggle.
The current crop of young have seen nothing like this. 9/11 yes but BLM?
I like this precis of the "Days of Rage" book. It covers left wing violence during the late 60s until the late 70s.
https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
Trying to dominate?
Always selling us short.
Helicopter parenting comes from older parents having fewer kids. Eggs in one or two baskets, and little or no time to try for a replacement or an improvement.
Then there's daycare guilt and paranoia.
Richard Nixon? LBJ (D) was POTUS when I was drafted into the Army and still POTUS when I was sent to Vietnam.
Blogger Robert Cook said...
"Obama and Hillary did their part by removing Gadhafi to support European interests."
They did it to support our interests. The U.S. never does anything that is not in our interests.
They did it to support the interests of the Economic Royalists who bought them, which are not always congruent with the interests of the People.
Being a cohort of the last number, a brownie who just became a citizen after 40+ years of watching this country piss away it’s adavantage, heeereees a Trumpie 2020!
History had an unexpected happy ending. I thought things were going to turn out far worse, and, indeed, after '68 things did get far worse. Rising crime, riots, inflation, a losing war, rampant and militant Communists all over the place, and two utterly charmless Presidents to lead us through our worst days. It all came out all right in the end, but I was half expecting collapse or revolution followed by a thermonuclear war. These were realistic fears. It wasn't very Heaven to be young in those days........The music was probably better, but I can't think of anything else that hasn't gotten better over time.,
Richard Nixon was a big government UniParty man. If Jerry Voorhis had been a Republican, Nixon would have become a Democrat. Most of the federal agencies bedeviling our private lives today got their start under Nixon.
The folks the Bushes associate with in West Texas are the children and grandchildren of LBJ's backers.
I don't think these can compare
You don't, because you lived through those other events and have them as something to measure. The younger people thinking today's world is chaotic (despite it being fairly mild, if they would simply turn off the news) don't have that same experience.
The Vietnam war revealed how our government or any government lie and pretend what is false is true which has continued to the present day. As a result I and some other boomers are distrustful of unrestrained capitalism combined with empire building in the name of freedom.it makes us neither democratic or Republican voters, but skeptical voters who tend to look out for the average guy and tax payer.
Obama's administration did a lot of things just because they were the opposite of what George W.'s had been doing - just assuming that if George W. did it, it had to be wrong.
"I don't think these can compare with the Vietnam War with the draft, the assassinations, the riots, the Manson murders, the hippie movement, and Nixon."
Any generation that yawns at this headline:
'It was brainwashing': Canadian speaks out about yoga guru accused of sexual assault
Is in no position to judge what kind of trouble they've unleashed on us since their arrival.
My Lai does not really belong on a 1968 list. The massacre happened that Spring, but it did not become public until late 1969.
I agree that the recent years in no way compare to 1968-69, although I was out of the country for most of that period.
Ho chi Minh was indeed a,Soviet tool, despite what certain hagiographers say, suppressing the rebellion along the red river,
As a result I and some other boomers are distrustful of unrestrained capitalism
...so we put all our faith in the lying government that pretends what is false is true.
Sounds like the Obama administration all right.
Empire building. What empire building? I'm asking for a friend
Unrestrained capitalism? Which country has that because it sure as hell isnt in the USA.
This is 2018; not 1890.
"Obama's administration did a lot of things just because they were the opposite of what George W.'s had been doing - just assuming that if George W. did it, it had to be wrong."
Really? Like what?
I blame 1968 entirely on the slaughter of my hero, JFK. And those who ordered that done are going to meet Justice real soon. Never forgive , never forget.
"But I don't think these can compare with the Vietnam War with the draft, the assassinations, the riots, the Manson murders, the hippie movement, and Nixon."
Seems undeniable.
Much worse back then. Even so, now we have a more unhinged (according to his staff) POTUS than we had then. That seems like the potential for more worsening to come. Best to change course = no more inertia re yutes re Ds.
IMHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5WrgDzNIZ0&index=3&list=PLcK0neBMyFxTqxUmdgZfJSVhnBZPvmnSS
He was shot by a communist, now Oswald probably had contact with two future Cuban intelligence officials, one the late general abrahantes, caught up in the Ochoa matter, the other Fabian escalante who had reason to misdirect (Gus Russo and Brian latell have researched this point( his brother by a Palestinian,
Like reversing W.'s policy of containing Iran and building up Iraq's native government, f. ex.
Retreating from Afghanistan after a furtive advance, pushing for a reset after the invasion of georgia.
As a Baby Boomer (b. 1953) I became a liberal activist against the Viet Nam War and for Civil Rights.
As a thinking person, I realized that the media were liars and the Democrats were incompetent, at best (circa 1982).
If incompetence was the Democrats only problem, they would be a viable party that did not have to revert to media-backed lies, emotional manipulation and just plain craziness.
I feel sorry for much younger people who will have to live with this totalitarian bullshit for most of their lives.
"They did it to support the interests of the Economic Royalists who bought them, which are not always congruent with the interests of the People."
Who or what are the "economic royalists?" And who ever said "our" interests (when speaking of the interests of the U.S.) means the interests of the people? Fuck, no! It's the interests of the elites who own and run the country. Our government does not do anything in the interests of we, the people, at least, certainly not in our international affairs, and all too seldom in our domestic affairs.
Yes but can they recognize the subterfuge take Vietnam ken burns acts like he has learned nothing since 1975, not a few researchers have come to different conclusions.
Who or what are the "economic royalists?
It was a term FDR used to describe the very rich people who believed that their great wealth entitled them to rule. Do they not exist today?
Yes default sent the expedition back, in part thanks to funds that had been disbursed by a young army officer who worked in the finance office of the occupation authority, Louis stone.
"Like reversing W.'s policy of containing Iran and building up Iraq's native government, f. ex."
Why does Iran need "containing?" Iraq had a "native" government, such as it was, under Hussein. We destroyed it for no reason.
"Retreating from Afghanistan after a furtive advance, pushing for a reset after the invasion of georgia."
We should retreat from Afghanistan, post-haste! We had no business ever invading Afghanistan and none for a single day since for remaining there. That goes triple for our invasion of Iraq.
But, of course, we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and too many other places in the mid-east where we shouldn't be.
Oh, yes. The country is run by and for the economic royalists. I didn't know the term. I just call the the wealthy elites. "We, the people" do not count or call the shots and haven't for years.
So the Taliban are the native government of Afghanistan then, and by extension pakistan?
the years from 2012 through 2018 seem like the closest we’ve come to the intensity of the stretch from 1968 to 1972
University students in 2015 experienced the intense conflict about Halloween costumes.
2018 SJW = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJjsm6CVsG8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKrfeMWnpdw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_MXGdSBbAI
Golden years folks are funny.
Thanks.
The Nicki link dropped July of 2018.
Close to 300 million views.
Ha ha ha.
Just that one link.
"We, the people" do not count or call the shots and haven't for years.
Unlike North Korea!
Are you aware, Robert Cook, that perennial Communist Party USA presidential candidate Gus Hall was, in fact, paid by the Soviets to spread communism in the US, and that, in fact, Hall spent the money on his horse breeding farm instead?
You can't trust anyone these days. It's enough to make a person downright conservative.
"in fact, paid by the Soviets to spread communism in the US"
Paid w/ dollars, rubles or in-kind political donations (e.g. stealing emails and nailing yur opponent)?
"Like reversing W.'s policy of containing Iran and building up Iraq's native government, f. ex."
Why does Iran need "containing?" Iraq had a "native" government, such as it was, under Hussein. We destroyed it for no reason.
Cookie likes wood chippers with people in them.
I think it was a mistake in retrospect to invade Iraq but I thought, at the time, it was worth trying to see if the Arabs could govern themselves without tyrants.
We now know they can't. I just want us out of Afghanistan but I suspect my reasons are not the same as Cookie's.
Mine have less to do with the communist party.
I think the resistance really lay as much in st. Denis and and finley park, and molenbeek then anything In Iraq proper.
I and some other boomers are distrustful of unrestrained capitalism combined with empire building in the name of freedom.
Yet you eagerly support the most corrupt presidential candidate since Aaron Burr.
Nobody with the IQ of a turnip could fail to recognize what a crook Hillary is.
"I and some other boomers are distrustful of unrestrained capitalism combined with empire building in the name of freedom."
Common denominator seems to be missed w/ this statement:
'I and some other boomers are distrustful of unrestrained capitalism combined with empire building in the name of crony capitalism.'
Fixed.
"Nobody with the IQ of a turnip could fail to recognize what a crook Hillary is."
Presumably after years (decade +) of investigations into her, she and many of her staff must have admitted to and/or been convicted of their crimes.
Or.....that was someone else, after just a wee bit of investigation.
Anywho, what's dumber than a turnip?
Blogger Jay Elink said...
Robert Cook said...
"...and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world."
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
*****************************
That's world-historical idiocy right there--just ask the citizens of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland , Hungary, former Czechoslovakia, former East Germany, Moldavia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kakahstan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Georgia....
Jay Elink proves Roberts point: What you describe is not the world, it is an outback of shitholes and third tier moderns.
anti-de Sitter space: those vids needed multiple trigger-warnings. Doc Mike might choke on his dentures.
Oh, yes. The country is run by and for the economic royalists. I didn't know the term. I just call the the wealthy elites. "We, the people" do not count or call the shots and haven't for years.
Tell that to Hillary.
she and many of her staff must have admitted to and/or been convicted of their crimes.
No, they have turnips like you defending them.
Here's a list.
We know McDonough and Donilon were in the immediate loop on the night of 9/11/12 because they were photographed updating President Obama at 7:30pm in the Oval Office along with a curious Jack Lew who was Chief of Staff at the time.
In addition we know from former White House National Security spokesperson Tommy “dude” Vietor, that President Obama was not in the situation room where Vietor and his boss Tom Donilon were keeping up on events.
Here’s where it gets interesting:
Leon Panetta was the CIA Director when Operation Zero Footprint was authorized and began, but he left the CIA about 4 months later (June 30th, 2011) and was replaced by General David Petraeus (August/Sept 2011).
[*Note* it is important to remember when the 2nd authorized CIA program began in 2012 for Syria Petraeus would have been included]
Under this principle you can see that General Petraeus had ZERO liability for the origin of the Benghazi weapons deals – it was a joint State Dept/CIA program already being conducted when Petraeus arrived. If it blew up, it was not his political problem – THIS MADE PETRAEUS A RISK.
Lots more at the link.
Also, Starr's book is coming out this week. Lots on Hillary's crimes.
Blogger Howard said...
anti-de Sitter space: those vids needed multiple trigger-warnings. Doc Mike might choke on his dentures.
Another turnip weighs in.
Having lived through this, I think that it was Vietnam. I was at the beginning of the 1950-1954 contingent. For those of us in college, we spent it with the draft hanging over our heads. My class started college in 1968, and that was when the war protests got going too. I remember the protest marches, the guys working to get out as conscientious the objectors, or how to flunk your draft physical (which got difficult - a good friend passed his draft physical with flying colors, enlisted, and then flunked his enlistment physical). Pretty much nobody I knew wanted to go to die in a rice paddy halfway around the world in a mismanaged war.
The funny thing to me is that by the time that I had been in college a couple months, Nixon had been elected, and we were on the road to finally winning the war. The bloodiest year was 1967, and casualties dropped throughout our time in college, so that within months of graduation in 1972, the draft was frozen, and then shortly after that, terminated. I received my 1A in June, but never came close to being inducted. Tet was 1967, as was Cronkite reversing on the war. My point here is that the country was behind the war when it was going badly, and American lives were being squandered, but became immensely unpopular after Nixon turned it around. Rationally, we should have blamed the Democrats, and, in particular, LBJ, who blatantly lied to the American public about the war during the 1964 election. He called Goldwater a war monger for telling the public that we needed to either fight to win, or get out. And then, right after the election, he implemented his plan, developed before the election, to escalate from maybe 50k to 500k military personnel in Vietnam. And not blamed Nixon and the Republicans, who, as usual, won the war. But college aged kids are far more emotional, than rational, and it was during Nixon's first term where we obsessed about the possibility of dying in those rice paddys.
At least in my college, the classes of 1971 and 1972 were when college changed from clean cut guys, no matter what intervisitation between the sexes, house mothers, dressing for Sunday dinner, etc. (the college scene we saw in Animal House) to 24 hour intervisitation, long hair, bare feet, pot, psychedelics, etc. (My claim to fame was to be the first guy at my college to actually live in the freshman women's dorm). Pot went from almost nonexistent to pervasive in less than one year (my freshman year). When we arrived for school that fall, all the guys were still wearing coats and ties for Sunday dinner. By spring, the guys were wearing coats, ties, shorts, and not much else (no shirts, socks, shoes, etc). And after a month or so of that, the almost century old tradition of dressing for that meal was abolished. Everything changed so drastically.
"...and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world."
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
I especially enjoyed the time we sent tanks down the streets of Prague and Budapest to force Czechoslovakia and Hungary to remain capitalist and in NATO. Or when we sent Che to Africa and South America to start capitalist revolutions.
rutabaga
Gahrie think nextdoor neighbors are the "world"
Tet was 1967
68, you old hippy.
Actually every year..
It's around end of January, beginning of Feb. Depends on the Lunar Calendar for the start of the New Year. Same date as the Chinese New Year, where China shuts down for a week.
>>Tet was 1967
>68, you old hippy.
I agree with Michael K., first I was mostly positive about going into Iraq. It was a festering pustule, that I thought the US could use to make the Middle East less dysfunctional. Saddam Hussein was just waiting for the sanctions to end so he could star his nuke program. It was whack a mole, and a LOT of innocents were being tortured and killed each year, nasty dictatorship.
Unfortunately, the rebuilding / nation building was a fiasco, as was Afghanistan. It's incredible the amount of wasted American Lives, Energy, and Money in both countries.
A positive was a LOT of terrorists got killed in Iraq, instead of the US. It's nice to fight a war in somebody elses country, not our own.
Syria and Libya have caused a lot more problems in Europe, than Iraq. Libya because it showed the US can't be trusted to keep a deal, and Syria due to refugees.
Trump is doing a lot of exciting foreign policy changes, and they may have a very positive impact. So much of the US foreign policy was ossified. Trump is taking high explosives and blowing through the log jams. So far it's going good, but we will see.
With a few exceptions, the US got out of the invading / taking over another country through Military means since WW2.
The US did a lot of it before WW2 in our backyard.
That was one thing that bothered my Mother about Iraq, was why where we invading a country we were not at war with. She felt strongly this was out of line with how the US should act.
The US used alliances against the USSR, which was a less costly way of fighting in the Cold War. NATO was a prime example of this.
Without the draft, none of the current crop of White middle-class dramatists has any immediate skin in the game. Which explains how incredibly lightweight they are. I have to wonder how much endurance their ideological enthusiasms will have.
Obama sought to weaken the US in order to level the playing field, as if that were a good thing.
Bruce Hayden,
Correction. Tet was early 1968. It was probably the reason Johnson declined to stand for reelection. Nixon would barely beat Humphrey in November.
The reason the 1950-1954 cohort stayed with the Democrats -- just not the "Establishment" Democrats -- is that the Republicans were even more hawkish than Johnson. And as you point out, to be drafted and sent to Vietnam was to face a lethal possibility with no hope of victory or success. As John Kerry said later, no one wanted to be the last man to die for an unjust war.
So, yes, like the proverbial prisoner who is to be executed at dawn, the threat of draft and dying intensely focused the minds of those subject to the threat. It also didn't hurt that Democrats were far more supportive of a "progressive" social policy, certainly in their rhetoric.
"going back to FDR's promise to help DeGaulle reclaim France's lost colonies)" ????
This is something new, something out of the blue. How does one call such a statement and remain nice? Let's just call it weird.
Ok - "Islanders," riddle me this: If it was Vietnam, why wasn't JFK mentioned? He got us into the First Indochina War. At the end of the Eisenhower administration we had only 700 military advisors stationed in Vietnam. During Kennedy's shortened term, the advisor count had risen to 12,000 American troops, including many who commanded ARVN units. The 2nd Indochina War officially began on August 5, 1964 with the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam as a result of a daylight attack on the USS Maddox while the destroyer was in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, Congress gave LBJ permission to wage war by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Officially 58,220 Americans lost their lives when we gave up on May 7, 1975 when Gerald Ford declared the war was over.
This is why I come to this blog: to laugh at the narcissism of baby boomers. I never wish ill of the nearly dead, but when pumpkin spice and all of you navel gazers shuffle of this mortal coil, it will be a better world, more cooperative and caring. Please keep it up, I'm going to miss your humor.
Translation: Young people get off my cultural lawn.
Damn right we Boomers are idiots. Just like every generation before and after us. I was born in 1950, and graduated from high school in the middle of the Vietnam war madness. No male who was keeping up with the commentary on the war, who had an entree into the university system chose that over a useless potential death. Although Kennedy and Johnson was complicit in the ramp up of the war, Nixon campaigned in 1968 on pulling our troops out of Nam, but chose to bomb Cambodia, etc. The lasting effect of this period on impressionable minds. Hence, during my party like it is 1975 period, was a time when I voted Democratic. I grew up in Atlanta, so Jimmah! Marriage, maturity, and Reagan changed all that.
Robert Cook said...
"...and the Soviet Union was actively trying to dominate the world."
The only nation that has been actively trying to dominate the world since WWII is the U.S., and we haven't stopped.
We're the only nation whose efforts you opposed anyway.
Boomers have always been self-focused and afflicted, and so worthy of derision. If you are unsure of how important they are, just ask them. Always struck me as insecure. I must say though, the list of current "extraordinary things" is a list of superficial nonsense, with the exception of PDT. And he is extraordinary simply because he is the only non-politician I can think of to successfully attain the office of POTUS.
-sw
Things are always extraordinary times. Today, for Americans, we live in extraordinarily good times, unless you are relying on government or social media to solve your own problems (and even then, it’s your own mentality which is holding you back).
"I don't understand why the 1968 DNC would attract people to be democrats."
I'd argue the key event that led whites born between 1950--1954 to vote Democrat was not Vietnam but Brown v School Board.
You get older, you get smarter. And as for the "island" betgween 1950 and 54, weren't they listening to Country Joe & The Fish singing 'Waist Deep in The Big Muddy, and The Big Fool Says Press On"? That was about ol big ears LBJ. He was maybe the first jug eared fool to be a Dem President. Obama, I'm looking at you.
Born in '51 and attending University of Michigan in the early 70s, I remember living in an environment seething with counter-cultural hubris, and like today's SJWs, we truly and sincerely believed that our parents' and grandparents' values should be euthanized so that we could create the wonderful world that in their folly and blindness they refused to make.
We were the first generational cohort to have the Pill, to afford college in mass numbers, to be well fed and educated, to be raised on television's hypnotic (and destructive) power to dumb people down--and as such were necessarily clueless about the radical impact these were having on our ability to understand what had got us there. And thus we were fully ready to be manipulated by what we today understand as the Deep State.
And boy howdy, were we ever! And now look at our children and grandchildren: look at the world we created. Along with unprecedented wealth and interconnectivity, we created enormous drug addiction, abortion on demand, postmodernist dismissal of Truth, Orwellian media, and an insane preference for Utopia. We continue the self-violence born in the toxic combination of narcissism and nihilism that were born on that "island."
But at least we also had the Beatles.
My cousin was Braverman's filmmaking partner for several years (in the '70s). Braverman dubbed the technique he used for American Time Capsule "kinestasis."
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