Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve written about my time in the US Army, and about spending time behind bars getting out of the Army, in my story called It’s Not About Me. In that story, I discussed a bit of my view on the Vietnam war, the view echoed by many who have studied it since—that it was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. My experience was that the Vietnam war damaged every single person it touched, on both sides of the Pacific, and more than anyone it damaged some of the veterans who’d actually done the fighting. I know that because I spent months in the nuthouse assisting the physically crippled and the memory damaged. My friends there were the shell-shocked refuse of the carnage. It’s not my wish to refight the war or what I did regarding the war, just to tell my story about it, so please, let’s not turn this into a referendum on some imaginary “right” response to the Vietnam War—there weren’t any of those, just levels of wrong responses, plus pain and suffering enough for all.
Christina Dorothea Dyer Greene, and looking at that lovely old granny, you’d never guess she’d once put a voodoo death curse on a middle-aged man … and he died within the week. Another story I should tell sometime.
A couple years after I got out of the nuthouse and the Army, I went to live with the Captain’s Daughter, my beloved grandmother we called “My-mummie” whom I’ve written about before. It was a great experience for me. It was after my grandfather’s death, and my oldest cousin was living there as well. She and I have always been close. We cooked dinner and washed and dried the dishes and kept up the grounds and did house maintenance and such for My-mummie. The best part was that I could hear her stories again (and some for the first time) as an adult and not as a seven-year-old kid. I lived with her about a year, it was fascinating, I’ll write more about her sometime.
After a while, though, I wanted my own place. I loved My-mummie, but eventually, I had to move out on my own. A friend of my cousin’s said she needed someone to caretake a tiny one-room cabin she owned near Santa Cruz, totally enclosed by a state forest. I said sure and moved out there. It was an enchanted place. It always reminded me of Snow White’s pad. It was quite close to Santa Cruz but totally hidden. You’d drive through the protected forest, and there was a little clearing with a little house in the sunlight, the famous “bee-loud glade”. I continued making and selling sandals.
This was also the first time I ever made money from my art. I mean as opposed to my music. I started making and selling mobiles. I made light fixtures that were mobiles, using glass, and candelabras, and railroad lanterns, and pieces of cut steel, and crystals, and found objects. They moved and spun, casting an ever-changing, entrancing light. They were beautiful, and they were easy to make and sell, people snapped them up as fast as I finished them, so I generally had a bit of money, not much, but enough.
Of course, the Vietnam War was still going on; it hadn’t stopped because I’d managed to get my invitation canceled. I met some people who were in a loose confederation called “The Resistance”. The Resistance was founded by David Harris, who was married to the singer Joan Baez at the time. Some of us Resistance guys rented a house just behind the Santa Cruz Boardwalk on Second Street. We called it the “Resistance Commune”. We were hippies, we were opposed to the Vietnam War. We believed in peace and love. Bored middle-aged housewives brought food to the house and gave money, so we’d be free to work to end the war. And we did work, we did what we could, and we worked hard at it.
It was a strange time. We believed in something vague called “The Revolution”. We weren’t sure what that was, but we knew we were at the forefront of it. It involved throwing out everything that our parents believed. That much was obvious from the terrible hole it left behind. Beyond that, we were making up the song as we were singing it.
It was also the time of “free love”. I later learned that (for me at least) love is rarely free, but we were young and didn’t know that yet. At the time I was sexually involved with three women. Not at the same instant or in the same bed, you understand, but at the same time. They all three lived in a commune called the “River Street House”. They all knew each other, they were good friends, they all knew about me, there were no secrets between us. None of us thought much about it, it went on for a couple months, it was great … well, it was actually fantastic until I came down with the clap, and I had to tell all three of them.
Gonorrhea. Ugly word, I know, and an ugly reality, but I have to be honest about the bad as well as the good. I’ve said I am telling my tale warts and all, and having the clap definitely qualifies as more than a wart in my world.
I got the usual symptom, a leaky faucet, went to the doctor, got tested, and I got the bad news. So I called the three lovely ladies all together and told them all at one time, so there was no misunderstanding and we could get it clear. I said that I had the clap and that I must have gotten it from one of them, because I hadn’t had sex with anyone else, and I was willing to swear to that.
Now, after I published my story about hopping freight trains, people wrote in the comments to say I should issue clear warnings in my stories, so fools don’t try to follow my path. They said I should do that to keep a bunch of maroons from cluttering up the rail yards with their corpses and body parts and drowning in the Kenai and the like trying to follow my lead. Seemed excessive to me, like the sign on my aluminum foil reflective car screen that keeps the sun off of the dashboard when I park, covering the front window entirely. The sign says, no bull, it says
“WARNING! Do not drive the car with this sunscreen in position”.
Really? We’ve fallen that far?
In any case, to keep folks from complaining about this story, here’s my Official Warning—kids, don’t try this one at home. Do whatever you have to do in order to avoid telling three women at the same time that one gave you gonorrhea and you might have given it to the other two. I assure you, Miss Manners classifies it as a major social blunder.
Plus it’s not an easy subject to bring up, regardless of how you lay the groundwork, and I’ll tell you, gonorrhea is a real bitch to just casually slip into a conversation without groundwork. Like “Oh, yeah, guess what, dearest ladies, funniest thing happened to me yesterday, I was passing by my doctor’s, and I thought I’d drop in, you’ll never believe what he told me …”
That wasn’t the hardest part, though. As uncomfortable and painful as it had been for me to tell the three of them that I’d gotten the clap from one of them and I might have passed it on, there was worse to come.
First, though, we all had to walk on eggshells around each other, no sex for anyone until they got their results back from the lab, from memory that took three-four days.
Now, for those men out there who have had the unfortunate luck to be falsely accused, and who have had to try to convince a furious woman of your actual innocence, that you have been true to her and only her, you have not been cheating on her, and that you are telling her the 100% facts of the case, I’m sure you all can testify how just how hard and painful that is …
Well, just be thankful that you have not had to try to convince three furious women, who have just gotten out of the car after driving back from the clinic together, three furious women who have been discussing your shortcomings and lack of honesty because all of their tests turned out negative. Consider trying to convince them that you have been true to them and only them, that you haven’t been unfaithful to the three of them in either thought or word or deed, and that you’re telling God’s own truth. I don’t recommend it for the weak of heart.
Of course, they didn’t believe a word of what I was saying; understandably, they had the medical proof. The three of them got in my face all at once, shouting, punching my shoulders … it was truly not a pretty picture, folks, your narrator did not appear in a good light at all. First, my faucet starts leaking, then my sacred word is being seriously questioned, and now I’m in the doghouse and getting thumped on by not just one but all three beautiful women that I care about … it was a very bad week for me.
Much battered in spirit, not to mention somewhat bruised about the upper torso, I went to the library and studied up on the tests they’d been given. As always, the science helps. It turned out that the test they used for men back then was pretty good, but in women, you got a false negative about one time in four. That is to say, for one woman in four who actually had gonorrhea, the test didn’t show it. I’d always been a good mathematician, I took out my pencil and figured that if there was one chance in four of a false positive for any one of them, there was an excellent chance that one or more of them had a bad test result.
So I went back and told that to the good ladies. They were skeptical, but they all went and got retested. It turned out that one of them actually did have the clap, so my honor was restored, I had been telling the truth. I really had been faithful to the three of them and the three of them alone just like I’d sworn to them, and the very best news was … I hadn’t given the disease to either of the other two. And in the end, they all told me they forgave me, although I’m still not clear what I’d done that needed forgiving. But I accepted it with an open heart anyhow, they were wonderful women … however, I digress, I’m just happy I was young after penicillin and before AIDS …
As part of our Resistance work, we arranged all kinds of protests against the war, against imperialism, against poverty. We thought of ourselves as Dadaist revolutionaries, though. I liked to carry random signs in the marches, signs advertising weird stuff, signs just with pictures, strange signs. On one march, I was face to face with the riot police, with everyone waving signs to end the Vietnam war, and yelling slogans. Everyone had their signs, “END THE WAR”, “END THE INVASION”, that kind of thing.
Me, I was in front, hollering at the cops, and I was waving a lovely international orange road sign with black letters I’d found mounted on a post along the protest route, and had brought with me … I was a bit unclear on the “let’s all protest something” concept, I guess, but I knew how to have fun. I used to say that a Revolution you couldn’t laugh at wasn’t worth having.
The Vietnam War went on and on. In December, The Resistance leaders, based in Palo Alto, arranged for the second big mass sit-in at the Alameda Induction Center. At the first Resistance sit-in, everyone had gotten arrested, it was all peaceful, and they all had to do five days at the Santa Rita prison farm. The papers picked it up, it was a one-day wonder, we were all abuzz about how the war machine was cracking and how the Resistance was famous and we were starting to win …
However, the first sit-in had had absolutely no larger effect of any kind that I could tell. After the one day of news, that was it; no follow-up articles, the entire sit-in and the arrests and the jail time just vanished, and the war rolled on without the slightest change.
So the decision was made to do the exact same thing again, another identical sit-in, same time, same place.
Hey, don’t look at me like that. They didn’t solicit my opinion, although at the time I might have agreed. I likely was dumb enough then to do something a second time expecting a different result. So the Santa Cruz Resistance Commune (those of us who could) went up to Oakland for a sit-in at the Army Induction Center to see if we could raise a public outcry and get arrested. “Clog up the gears of the war machine”, I believe was the catchphrase of the time.
I gotta confess, I wasn’t crazy about the whole idea. After spending a month or so locked up in the Navy nuthouse, and then five months behind bars in the Army nuthouse, I was kinda over the whole razor wire and cells and bars and guards experience—the thrill was gone. I’d done my time. But I went along. We were part of The Revolution, so no sacrifice was too great.
Our friends drove us up to Oakland early in the morning. We all got together around six AM, maybe 120 people or so, and we all sat down and blocked the doors of the Induction Center. It was funny, that’s exactly where I’d been inducted a couple of years before. I was one of the few guys in the crowd who’d actually been inside. I’d spent hours in the place.
A “sit-in” is a non-violent event. It’s also, for that very reason, boring as hell. First off, we figured they’d open at eight, but they didn’t even open until nine … so we sat around and told each other stories about how noble our cause was, and how wrong the pigs and the war merchants were, and how much difference we were making. Like I said … booooring.
Eventually, the cops came. The Oakland Police were practiced at the action by then; it wasn’t their first rodeo. They backed up the paddy wagon, the police prisoner van, right up to the mass of sitting people, and just started tossing us in the back. As one wagon got full and left, another pulled right in. It was assembly line arrests; Henry Ford would have been proud. We thought we’d clog up the gears of the war machine? No worries, they had them well-greased. By noon, we were all hauled away, and they were back to inducting draftees into the Army with no sign that anything had happened.
I’d never been in a paddy wagon, the “Black Maria” van the cops use to transport prisoners. But as you know, I’m always up for new experiences. The main thing I remember about it was that it smelled like vomit, no surprise there; it served as the rolling drunk tank most nights of the week. Given a choice, I’d advise taking alternate transportation. They hauled us away to the Justice Center by the packed van load.
We were put in a big cell. No windows, kind of dark. We waited for hours and hours. Waiting bothered some people a lot; they walked and paced, rattled the bars. I’d been locked in rooms like that before in the nuthouse, so I knew waiting of old, waiting was a good friend of mine. I could wait with the best of them. One by one, people left the room to go before the Judge. None came back. We had no idea of our fate.
When my name was finally called, after the darkness of the holding cell, the courtroom was blindingly bright. I blinked and looked around. The Judge was on a high dais; I had to look way up to him. He said, “You are charged with Disturbing the Peace. How do you plead?” Like all of us, I plead guilty to Disturbing the War. The Judge looked just like a frog, puffed up, obviously frustrated by the unending long line of people waiting to come before him and mock his court. He sentenced me to twenty days like everyone else before me, and they started to take me … wait! say what? Twenty days?
Twenty days? We’d figured on getting five days like the last bunch … and since that day was December 13th, that meant we wouldn’t see freedom until the second of January. We’d miss both Christmas and New Year. Pinche cabrón, I hadn’t planned on that, but there it was. My choices were either to dig it or bitch about it, and besides, no sacrifice was too great because we were making such a difference. It just made us more noble. Plus any mathematician could tell you, if we stayed in twenty days we’d make four times the difference that the folks made who stayed five days … of course, that had been zero difference, but we were comforted by the thought that we’d do four times as much.
So I reset my mental retirement clock; my next retirement wouldn’t be in time for Christmas, no, no. I reset for twenty days. No problem, I’d done months inside, I could do twenty days “standing on my head” as they say.
They took us, busload by busload, out to Santa Rita Prison Farm. They had two big connected barracks set aside for us, likely to avoid trouble with the cons. Or maybe to keep us from talking to them about sit-ins, I don’t know. I believe they’ve torn those barracks down since and built something else. We were over 100 guys, including David Harris, the founder of The Resistance. The much smaller number of women went elsewhere.
Being locked up this time wasn’t too bad. I was in a big barracks surrounded by like-minded friends. And best of all, I never once woke up lashed down to a bed, as had happened before several times, and that’s always a huge plus in my world. We talked story and compared lies.
The best day in jail for all of us was Christmas, but not for the usual reason. I woke up and my friend Rodney said, “Hey, check this out!”, with a big grin. He held out a box and told me to look inside. Damn, it was a treasure chest!
What happened was that some guys from the San Jose Resistance had broken into the jail late Christmas eve. That’s right, not out of the jail, but into the jail, like some lifer’s fantasy of Santa Claus for cons. They cut through the outer wire, came across an open area dodging the searchlights, cut through another fence around the barracks area, made it to our barracks, cut through the wire around our barracks, and came right inside.
Zowie. Tip of the Hat.
I talked later to one of the San Jose guys who had done it. He said going that direction was much easier than the alternative because they’re never looking for people breaking into jail. He tried to downplay the whole thing, but I was still very impressed because even if getting in was easier, the guys still had to get back out again … which took some serious stones. I told him what a great gift it had been and what a difference it had made.
In any case, I woke up Christmas morning, and Rodney said that the San Jose guys had awakened him about 2 AM. They had brought in boxes and boxes of cookies, along with several cigarette packs full of joints. Damnbetcha, regular cigarette packets full of neatly-rolled cigarettes of the mystery herb of the ancient Hindus, the eponymous “Indian Hemp”. Plus, there were a few tabs of blotter acid (LSD).
Of course, at that time marijuana and LSD were very illegal, particularly in jail, duh.
But we were in a funny place. Our barracks were the last two in a long row of similar barracks. There was only one way to get to us. It was a long path visible all along its way from the main street to us, and it had four locked gates with long walks in between. So they couldn’t rush us or do anything fast, it took them a couple minutes from when they appeared at the end of the row, out at the far end of the path with four locked gates, to the time when they arrived at the barracks after they had walked and unlocked and relocked and walked and …
So we made no attempt to hide the dope. Instead, we distributed all the joints as fairly as possible, then we all went outside to the veranda. We all lit up at once and stood around sharing joints and eating cookies. We knew that we’d have plenty of time to laugh at the guards if they tried to stop us, and that the cookies and joints would be long gone by the time they got there. The guards did finally show up, late to the party as usual, the weed and the cookies were gone, the acid well hidden. We razzed them, told them they’d missed the party, if only they’d come half an hour earlier we’d have given them cookies and offered them a joint … somehow they didn’t see the humor in it. They ran us all back inside, and lectured us, and searched the veranda area, and then ran us all outside again, and shook down the whole barracks, and found nothing …
The best story of the whole Santa Rita farce, though, happened to one of my friends. He was put in solitary confinement for fighting, not his fault, somehow he’d ended up in a regular cell and his cellmate had attacked him. We smuggled in messages to him, letting him know he wasn’t forgotten.
After Christmas, through our contacts in the joint, we were able to smuggle him one of the tabs of blotter acid that the San Jose guys had brought in. My friend figured, hey, solitary confinement is the best place in the world to drop acid, nobody can mess with me. What are they gonna do … throw me in solitary?
He liked to meditate, that’s what he’d been doing in solitary the whole time. So he took the LSD and figured he’d spend his time doing some really intense meditation. Sat down on the floor, crossed his legs, and pretty soon he was soaring.
Just as the main rush was starting to come on to him, and the cell walls were starting to melt, and the paisley colors were starting to appear on the backs of his hands, he had the very realistic hallucination that his cell door was opening. Of course, being on acid, from the time he first hallucinated hearing the aliens coming towards his door to the time he hallucinated the door finally opening was something like five or six weeks … at least it sure seemed that long, but it was hard to tell, there was that whooshy-whooshy noise that kept coming and going that distorted time too.
It seemed to him in his elevated state that two aliens came in, they looked kinda like guards, he said, but you could tell the difference — he knew they weren’t guards. They said they had a directive from the home planet or something; their words kept echoing and bouncing around his head, or maybe it was just the echoes in the cell, but they were very hard to understand. They said to come with them, so he followed them meekly, wondering vaguely, where were the aliens taking him?
But he didn’t wonder long, because the prison walls of the corridor were so interesting. How come he’d never noticed before that prison walls flex slightly inward and outward when you breathe? He tried to tell the aliens about his discovery, but they told him to shut up.
The faces of the aliens kept changing and melting, but he said he wasn’t afraid; he could tell they were friendly. At one point, the aliens lost the form of guards and then assumed the form of prison officials standing behind a counter. They put a paper bag on the counter and had him sign some papers. One of the alien official people talked to him. He couldn’t hear him at all, but there were little cartoon balloons over the alien’s head. He tried to read them, but they were hard to follow. They said something about how the warden was letting him out two days early because my friend was such a wonderful person, or that he got extra credit for meditating while in the hole, or something; he was never clear on that part, but the aliens walked him right out of the front gate of the prison and left him there. He said he thought they had some power over the guards to let him go.
So before he knew it, there he was in front of the prison farm, let out two days early because of getting credit he didn’t know about for good behavior, all alone, peaking on acid, holding a paper bag with all his possessions, and gazing at the world in total wonder as the miraculous sun shone, and the grass grew, and he was free, free, free! He sat down in the grass right there in front of the Santa Rita prison farm and started talking to the grass, and in a while, the grass grew right through him, he could hear the grass taking over his body, and he became just another part of the very grassiness of the world … and after while he fell asleep.
In the morning, he woke up next to the paper bag containing his wallet and his possessions and didn’t know where he was. He sat up, looked around, saw he was outside the prison, and the memories of the acid trip and his miraculous escape and the aliens came back to him. He got up, walked to the road, and hitchhiked back to Santa Cruz.
And ever after that, he was convinced that LSD could do anything, melt steel bars, open jail doors, and nothing we could say about time off for good behavior would ever convince him differently. The belief never seemed to do him any harm, he never tried to fly off of buildings on acid or anything stupid. He just had an unshakeable faith that everything would turn out right for him … and as is sometimes the case for folks who believe that, for him it always did. Go figure, he was the only one of us who got out in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
They let the rest of us out the day after New Years, a cold windy day. The year had turned while we were away, we’d given stopping the War our best shot, and the War didn’t seem to notice at all. We’d missed Christmas. We’d missed the New Year’s party. We’d even missed our fifteen minutes of fame, we were in the slam the next day when the newspapers hit the streets … and by the time we were let out, after twenty days, the world had totally forgotten the sit-in, the story was dead on arrival …
“Oh, you were in a sit-in? I didn’t realize there had been one. Was it exciting?”
On that last day, we went through the standard drill, lines for this, sign here, lines for that, initial the form, put our civilian clothes back on, they handed us our wallets and belts and out the door with you, boyo.
Two of my three girlfriends picked me and a couple of other Santa Cruz Resistance guys up outside the jail, and we all went back to Santa Cruz to plan the next step in the noble fight against the war. One thing was clear, though.
Throwing my skinny okole in jail, whether they did it or I did it to myself, didn’t seem to change the war one bit. I’m a slow learner sometimes … but I never tried that brilliant plan again.
w.
Bill Curry says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Thanks, Bill, I appreciate it. Your presence, like that of jc, has been incredibly divisive.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck,
w.
Willis:
Here I thought I could have a gentlemanly disagreement with you, but it appears you are too riled up. You want direct quotes? Here:
February 26, 2013 at 8:36 pm “Ask any military man if the war should have been prolonged given the surrounding political reality. Unlike you, military folk don’t like throwing men into a meat grinder in an unwinnable struggle against a fanatically dedicated enemy passionately committed, not to communism or any ism, that was an accident of history … but to throwing out foreign invaders.
We totally misread the motivation of our enemies. We thought they wanted to spread communism. Had nothing to do with it. They had ALREADY BEEN FIGHTING AGAINST OCCUPYING FOREIGN ARMIES FOR 45 YEARS on the day we foolishly entered the war—first the hated Chinese, then the hated French, then the hated Japanese, then the hated French again … and then the final idiots in the line, the hated Americans. And if Communists helped them kick out the latest occupying foreign army, because you cannot deny we were that, well, they’d take it along with its costs … all the poor buggers ever wanted was for everyone to just get the hell out of their country.
And that is an incredibly difficult army to overcome, it melts like quicksilver in your hands, and the US has proven that. Because what we didn’t realize at the time is that we were fighting against our own history—in the minds of the enemy, right or wrong, they spent sixty years as Patriots and Minutemen doing what we did in our Revolution, overthrowing the armies of the occupying power, throwing them out so they could be free men. Pity they ended up with Communism … but by god, it’s Vietnamese communism, not Chinese or French or any other kind.
Knowing all of that … do you really think that we’d just walk in the door and kick some butts and take names and straighten things out? Kennedy thought that, he thought it was just some communists. So we tried it, and we got our asses handed to us just like the Chinese, and then the French, and then the Japanese, and then the French again before us were defeated and thrown out of Vietnam …”
You made other statements along the same line, but this is wrong, straight out of the communists’ propaganda handbook. You were lied to and believed those lies (the same way I believed the lies told by our government). By agreement, all the dedicated communists were to have moved to North Vietnam. That they were already fighting a guerrilla war directed by North Vietnam in South Vietnam in the late 1950s when there was no U.S. presence to speak of is a de facto invasion from the North. Neither side was then prepared for the larger scale battles that came later.
I cannot defend the U.S. government’s response to this. It was half-assed and incompetent, Like Korea, it appears to have been designed for us not to win, yet our troops whipped North Vietnamese ass. What we were not prepared for was the political battle, waged not only by the communists in Asia, but also their allies in the U.S. media and even Congress. In losing the political battle, our troops were stabbed in the back and defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory.
That our government was lying made it impossible for it to make a good case for why we were in Vietnam. I knew about communists and the atrocities they do (theirs were deliberate and pre-planned, ours through incompetence and stupidity), but government lies fogged up the communications so no message got out. Some caught on faster than others (I was one of the slower ones) about government lies. Now I realize I’ve been lied to so often that I no longer believe anything a government spokesman says, without independent confirmation.
I read a book, “The Guerilla and How to Fight Him” put out by the Marine Corps in 1962, and long wondered why the lessons described there were not put into practice in Vietnam. Years later I read a report that even named names, that the general who devised the forced relocations and free fire zones had posthumously been revealed to have been a communist mole. There was my answer.
I didn’t call you names nor diss you as a person, I’ve tried to be a gentleman about this. Will you disagree as a gentleman?
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 27, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Here’s a joke from that time that I heard in the army. The grunts at least understood the war. Here’s the joke.
“Charlie is a South Vietnamese teenager…”
______________________
Hello Willis,
I heard that story too, a long time ago, but diametrically different from your version.
I heard it as a report of the fighting at Khe Sanh, like this:
A young NVA soldier gave as one of his reasons for surrendering to a US support group trying to relieve the besieged Marines at Khe Sanh, that after enduring weeks carrying 2 mortar shells to Khe Sanh, watching them fired and then being ordered to go get two more, saw the futility of the fight and gave up.
As GI BS stories go, which version is likely closer to the truth?
The noble cause- heroic youth resisting the bad old Americans who had killed his poor helpless sister, spurring him to the long march all the way North and back, determined to never give up? or… the other version? or, which side had the best propaganda?
———————–
———————–
Any teenagers in the South wishing to fight the Americans would have merely joined up with the local Viet Cong units, rather than make some “heroic” trek all the way to the North. Any NVA troop in the fight would have very likely been conscripted and indeed could have served as bearer to bring munitions south… we killed them by the thousands, up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
———————
———————
I had a job in the late 80’s which put me in contact with many in the Vietnamese immigrant population, here in OKC. I can still speak some of the language, so that helped me become acquainted and friends with several of them.
Among my friends, was a former NVA soldier, born and raised in Haiphong. We would have tried to kill each other, in previous times. After the US pullout, his unit was sent into Cambodia, where after a time, he and another friend became so sick of it all that they deserted into Thailand, eventually making his way to Oklahoma.
Several others have told me the horror stories of their lives after the US withdrawal, and yet, just a month ago, I asked a Vietnamese lady friend about mutual friends and learned that those friends had recently decided to ‘retire’ and move back to Viet Nam.
I wonder about their chances of success… another friend just returned from a visit home and told stories of the near universal corruption of the local Commie officials, and how dangerous they could be… some things never change.
______________________
We took different roads to get here, yet in the pages of WUWT, we are now standing together against those who would usurp the liberties of mankind and who currently appear to hold sway in world governance, even and especially in our own nation, against all the truths which illuminate them as what they truly are.
Willis Eschenbach says, February 28, 2013 at 2:59 am: “You have no idea what I don’t know and how I don’t know it. As far as what I was talking about, I consider that modern communism started in 1917 when the first communist country emerged, and so that’s the date I picked. And no, I didn’t know there was some meeting of some proto-communist dickweeds in eighteen hundred whatever … so sue me. I spoke of when Communists first came to power and were in a position to help Ho.”
==========================================================
No, you did not refer to the Russian communists being able to help Ho first after they came to power.
You were talking specifically about Ho’s <b<motivation in 1905, not about help (“it’s clear what drove the man”), claiming that it could not have been communism, because communism, as you put it referring to the year 1905, “wouldn’t even be invented for another decade”.
Here are your own words, again: “Ho started fighting the hated invaders when he was 15 … and that was in 1905. Since communism wouldn’t even be invented for another decade, it’s clear what drove the man.”
“…You were talking specifically about Ho’s <b<motivation in 1905, not about help (“it’s clear what drove the man”), claiming that it could not have been communism, because communism, as you put it referring to the year 1905…”
Greg is correct in that all of Ho Chi Minh’s early education and support and experiences was in communist ideology.
Willis is correct in stating that his communist leanings began to take shape in 1917 –
In a society of peasant farmers dominated by large landholder/landlords with deep government connections on can understand why at the time communist ideology would have seemed to provide a far preferable structure.
But following a now discredited theory /doctrine in no way whatsoever makes a man any less of a nationalist or says anything about his primary motivation.
markx says, February 28, 2013 at 9:03 pm: “Greg is correct in that all of Ho Chi Minh’s early education and support and experiences was in communist ideology.
Willis is correct in stating that his communist leanings began to take shape in 1917”
==========================================================
I did not say that. Willis did not say that.
It would be nice, if you could make your point without putting words in someone’s mouth.
R Ortiz says: February 28, 2013 at 1:49 pm
“….later I read a report that even named names, that the general who devised the forced relocations and free fire zones had posthumously been revealed to have been a communist mole….”
This appears to me to be an Orwellian rewriting of inconvenient history of an appallingly managed policy and war and is a massive charge.
You can’t make accusations of this scale without citations.
Details, please, Sir.
Greg House says: February 28, 2013 at 9:26 pm
“…I did not say that. Willis did not say that….”
Fair enough, overly simplified and and over summarized on my part. But you are laboriously debating historical facts related to the history of communism and not remotely related to the issue under discussion – point scoring, I guess.
From all of this however do arise some useful indisputable facts:
1. Ho Chi Minh was a communist.
2. Ho Chi Minh was primarily a nationalist.
3. Ho Chi Minh was a popular figure: “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the communist Ho Chi Minh.” President Dwight Eisenhower. Memoirs.
4. All evidence seems to point strongly towards the case that Willis was never a communist, or a student of communism, or ever studied communist history in detail!
jc says: February 28, 2013 at 11:39 am
It is certainly true that people of a certain age at any time don’t just collectively erupt into one thing or another. So in that sense, it is correct to say it is unreasonable to blame a particular age group for this or pretty much anything.
…..[……]…..
But it is also true that influences tend to come to a culmination at a particular time amongst particular people when “conditions are ripe”, the main one – or really only one – being that there is a core group of people dedicated to that, and that there is at least some resonance with the majority of the balance.
…..[……]…..
So it is fair and reasonable to describe all this as a generational issue – and when it comes down to it that’s exactly how it was seen by the participants at that time who defiantly proclaimed it. So there is no getting away from this fact.
Everything you say in the above from start to finish is well worded and I largely agree with you.
Everything you say below is a vaguely theoretical oversimplification, and contradicts much of what you say above;
“….And the defining characteristic of this generation is the failure of responsibility….
EVERY age, group, generation, has seen that what the world is supposed to be is not what it is. Through history, this has spurred the desire to improve that. This generation as a whole walked away from that. That was the choice…..”
You have already stated that every generation is shaped by preceding generations and events.
So no-one bears nay responsibility for four presidents and their executive structures consistently lying to an up and coming generation and their parents? Johnson for example was voted in on the basis he would end or limit the war, but behind the scenes he had already promised the Generals “You can have your war your way, as soon as the election is over”. (Sounds to me like :…”…the defining characteristic of this generation is the failure of responsibility….”)
No-one bears any responsibility for lying to, maiming, destroying and dividing a generation, bar that generation itself?
You forget that the electorate Nixon was responding to in exiting Vietnam was not just the young, it included their parents and grandparents.
And societal behaviour is not simply driven by ideology and beliefs of the young of the time, and then magically by the influences of that generation thereafter!!; There are huge number of technological political and other influences in play: (re Bill Curry’s appalling simplifications in discussing immorality, divorce rates, and ADHD kids and blaming it on a single generation):
How about we consider the advent of simple effective contraception, increased mobility (away from family- cars, planes automobiles), the increased number of women with independent lifestyles and jobs not locked into domestic life; how about ubiquitous easy communication, how about fast food and changes in dining habits (families not eating together or at home), how about a now ubiquitous mass media all pedalling their own particular distortions, how about the brain altering effects of modern film making methods, screen grabs of 2 to 6 seconds spliced into a continuous narrative (or even shorter splices if you are talking about modern music videos), How about modern advertising methods and ubiquity, how about the ready availability of copious information ‘proving’ (truly or falsely) that our government is lying to us, how about a greater rich/poor divide brought about by political machinations and a propensity to always keep a war ticking over somewhere in the world, how about the ubiquitous presence of plastic and other chemicals in our lives and foods, how about the continued usage and availability of more and more recreational drugs which started in the early 1900’s and continues until today………
“…the whole GW thing could not exist otherwise. And the GW thing is actually about what is true, how to discover it, and what to do when known: values….”
Sure enough. Vietnam at least proved to you your government will lie to you without compunction to uphold its own beliefs and purposes. And it takes a concerted effort to say an unthinking public one way or the other.
CAGW is a similar case.
You should probably start protesting.
Wow, you guys have been going back and forth for days about how right or wrong the Vietnam war was, how you responded to the rightness and wrongness…
And I still haven’t heard from even a single damn real Vietnamese person from that time how they felt about the war being fought in their name.
Half a century later, nothing has changed. It was your war that you people fought amongst yourselves, on all possible fronts, between family, friends, allies, and distant enemies. What the locals think didn’t matter then, still doesn’t matter now.
It was never then, and you sure can’t make it so now, their war for them to fight for their own country.
Congratulations, your continuous bickering and inability to set aside grievances and reach compromise after four-plus decades of theoretically increasing maturity, has lead me to an inescapable conclusion:
Your entire generation sucked.
Now feel free to continue quibbling yourselves into further obscurity, as those of us who came after you continue to clean up your messes and work hard to keep others of your ilk from making more.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: February 28, 2013 at 11:09 pm
“….Congratulations, your continuous bickering and inability to set aside grievances and reach compromise after four-plus decades of theoretically increasing maturity, has lead me to an inescapable conclusion:
Your entire generation sucked….”
At least half of the debate in here would appear to be by people of younger generations, making substantial more contribution than you have to the debate.
I would hate to assume that you are a presumptuous idiot with nothing to say, sir.
Ah, sorry my mistake, you do have something to say:
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: February 25, 2013 at 4:24 am
I wonder if the “Free Love” generation will ever acknowledge the enormous burden they’ve thrust on those after them, as their behavior is being relentlessly promoted by their generation as “normal” and “natural” by their movies and TV shows, with anything but unprotected one-nights and “whomever’s available” bed-hopping portrayed as prudish and old-fashioned.
Is there no logical thinking left in this world?
I see you too hold to the modern ‘blame everyone else’ meme that everything the flower children did in their teens and twenties irreversibly inscribed their doctrines and morality on the time and somehow on subsequent generations. Who now somehow bear no responsibility for what you see as their current ‘immoral behavior’…… however all behavior of said hippie was NOT due to the lies and missteps of preceding generations, it was somehow only fault too.
I’ve said it above, but with the short attention span of youngsters and the apparent inability to comprehend these days it probably bears repeating :
Consider a few factors at play on modern society which are simply a product of continued technological development and not due to the hippies’ behavior in the 1960s or since:
The advent of simple effective contraception,
Increased mobility (away from family- cars, planes automobiles),
The increased number of women with independent lifestyles and jobs not locked into domestic life;
Ubiquitous easy communication,
Fast food and changes in dining habits (families not eating together or at home),
A now ubiquitous mass media all pedalling their own particular distortions,
The brain altering effects of modern film making methods, screen grabs of 2 to 6 seconds spliced into a continuous narrative (or even shorter splices if you are talking about modern music videos), (and video games!)
Modern advertising, methods and ubiquity,
The ready availability of copious information ‘proving’ (truly or falsely) that our government is lying to us,
A greater rich/poor divide brought about by political machinations and a propensity to always keep a war ticking over somewhere in the world,
The ubiquitous presence of plastics and other chemicals in our lives and foods,
The continued usage and availability of more and more recreational drugs which started in the early 1900’s and continues until today………
And this one really cracked me up:!
“… wonder if the “Free Love” generation will ever acknowledge the enormous burden they’ve thrust on those after them…”
Ya clown. If you don’t want to live like that, take some responsibility and don’t do it.
From markx on February 28, 2013 at 11:59 pm:
Bad behavior by those older is not sanctified through repetition by those younger.
You cannot fight your way to peace. But you can fight to cease the fighting, when needed, from there you may then build peace.
You want to fight, but not to cease the fighting. You have decided to remain the problem. Perhaps you will decide to be something else later.
Good bye.
Markx:
,“This appears to me to be an Orwellian rewriting of inconvenient history of an appallingly managed policy and war and is a massive charge.
“You can’t make accusations of this scale without citations. ”
Sorry, this was in an article I read 15–20 years ago and I no longer remember where. This charge was in documentation the author came across, and it appeared to me that the author himself didn’t recognize the full impact of what he wrote. I know had I written that article, I would not have written only one paragraph on that finding, as was in that article. The only reason I recognized the import of that finding was because of my interest in military tactics that I had at that time.
I had long realized that the tactics used in Vietnam were about the worst that could have been done, from reading about guerilla tactics that worked and those that didn’t even from Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Minh, and one of the failures was in how to deal with civilians. This little paragraph answered that question for me.
Kadaka wrote:
“And I still haven’t heard from even a single damn real Vietnamese person from that time how they felt about the war being fought in their name.
“Half a century later, nothing has changed. It was your war that you people fought amongst yourselves, on all possible fronts, between family, friends, allies, and distant enemies. What the locals think didn’t matter then, still doesn’t matter now.
“It was never then, and you sure can’t make it so now, their war for them to fight for their own country.”
The purpose sold to the American public in 1965 for going into Vietnam was to do right by the local people. That we didn’t do so was an epic failure on our part.
First, the tactics we used during the war were designed to alienate the local people from us.
Then, when we left, we left behind people ready and willing to fight, but refused to give them the supplies they needed to fight: second failure.
In 1955 the local people had no idea what is communism, all they knew was that Ho Chi Minh was a hero for fighting the French. By 1975 the people knew what communism meant if the North took over the South, and were willing to fight, but then we (our government, i.e. Sam Erwin and his democrats) left them defenseless in the face of the coming bloodbath. Millions died. The blood of those millions is on the hands of those who abandoned them to their fate and on the hands of those who approved of that abandonment. In that abandonment, we also threw away the blood of our men who bled, died and fought over there.
@ur momisugly markx says: February 28, 2013 at 10:57 pm
As an introduction I reproduce your only previous comment directed to me, or alluding to me, to be precise:
“markx says:
February 27, 2013 at 8:59 am
jc says: February 25, 2013 at 9:16 am (etc etc)
[…. a lot…]
I’d like to respond to jc, I think he is anti-everything, but I can’t understand what he is getting at; anyone out there want to chance a succinct summary? Pro Vietnam War? Anti hippie? Jealous of Willis’ early love life? Did he swallow a thesaurus?”
And the last two paragraphs of my response, having provided you with what reassurances I could in answering your questions:
“I gather from this last, and your apparent prostation in the face of my output {(etc etc) and [a lot…]} that there is something impenetrable about my comments that relates to the expression and the volume of them. I am a little surprised by the latter since you yourself have been posting a vast amount of no doubt worthy material, but I suppose some have more of greater legitimacy to say.
If i wasn’t convinced of your sincerity in all this, I might wonder whether your post was intended to call up a mob to deal with something you didn’t like but were incapable of handling yourself. Thankfully this site is not the sort of place where such people might be encountered.”
Since there were no further comments by others in response to your plea, I gather your capacity to now engage directly has been enhanced by this, and/or further deciphering of my comments, to a degree that has allowed sufficient clarity of understanding for your originally stated desire to respond, to blossom. I’m glad.
Much of your comment relates to details of the political and societal process around the war.
As I said in my previous post to you, I have no particular interest in either the war or other specific manifestations of the time. Others, who either experienced the war, or the times and issues, or have taken an active interest to the degree that they feel they have something to contribute to discussion of particular details, do. And it is their business to pursue that as they will, not mine.
My core interest, as expressed in the post you quote, and, dare I venture, consistently shown in my previous posts that apparently left you bereft of bearings adequate to direct you, is in the nature of the times generally and the implications of that.
Obviously, the fact of the war existed. As did any political response. Or any level of support or not across the whole population for any particular thing as a whole or in part.
So far as the war is concerned, in terms of the formative impact of it, I see it not as the cause in itself of anything, rather as a focal point or touch point for all the elements at work in any case. The fact of the war certainly threw these into high relief, and became the vehicle for a division in society and a demarcation between the apposing perspectives on what, much more generally, life was about and how that should be shown in behavior and decisions made.
So I have no doubt at all that any distinctions in approach to life which are commonly attributed to the war – perhaps as a shorthand in many cases – would have been made manifest anyway.
Jack Kerouac knew nothing of this war when he lived as he did and wrote On The Road.
The expression of these things would theoretically have been more muted, although that is very debatable, since the nature of what for simplicities sake I will call two apposing philosophies, made them incompatible, mutually exclusive. So I think if not for the war, events would have unfolded in such a way that this was crystallized in any case. The outlook of the the ’60’s generation, [I will continue to use this to describe, collectively, those who adhered to this creed regardless of age: Timothy Leary and Willis Eschenbach being examples of those of different age], demanded a capacity to claim moral validity, no matter how ill founded.
If muted, it would have still existed and worked its way through society as it has done now. The fact of the war, was undoubtably significant in another important way in that it played a part in drawing a line between the 60’s generation and those who followed thereafter.
Speaking as someone who turned 18 in the mid 1970’s I can attest that this was an emergence into a wasteland. Neither the values repudiated by the 60’s generation nor the positions that were adopted in its stead, had any validity whatsoever. Both, in their own ways, gone. This distinction may not have been so obvious if the war had not served as such a defining event.
So someone of my age had a familiarity with both but a capacity to adhere to none, or more exactly to expect general society to adhere to anything, at least collectively. So perhaps my comments here are made possible by that or compelled by that. I too, may be merely a victim of my age and times (!).
For that reason there is a line in the sand based on age and times.
And there is a line, much more savagely drawn, between those of a certain age who could be said to constitute the 60’s generation and those of the same age who were not.
And this is where it gets nasty.
The adherents of the 60’s generation in effect went to war on those who either weren’t, or who were uncertain. The nature of this is shown in attacking the serving soldiers directly and in belittling and deligitimizing them and the basis for their actions or decisions: denying the validity of their existence by denying the validity of their basis for meaning in life.
This displays sheer viciousness. A viciousness that can only come from a depth of self-interest that excludes all other considerations.
It won’t wash for anyone who identified with what is now described as ’60’s generation precepts to say “not me! I didn’t attack others”. To simply make clear through word, deed, or omission that you are apposed to “the other side” is to be complicit in all acts committed in that name: it is to be culpable.
The 60’s generation won that battle, although insofar as there is any interest in what comes after, they will find they have ultimately lost the war. The cost of that battle was the loss from that age group in particular but extending to others, of those best able to represent the alternative basis for dealing with life: through death in the war, and afterwards; through demoralization and incapacity; through confusion and questioning of what certainty can be given to any course of action.
The result has been the primacy of the underlying compulsions driving the ’60’s generation, even after many of the guises and expressions of the time have fallen away:
Pure self-interest.
Observably illustrated in countless ways since, from the “What do we want (everything). When do we want it NOW” of the early and mid 70’s demonstrations to the “Greed is good” iteration in the 1980’s, these being just two sides to the same coin, which to a large degree have abandoned this false distinction and live triumphant in the organism known as Al Gore.
That the capacity for viciousness did not diminish over time was shown in an example I quoted in an earlier post where an element of reportage around the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 was the occasion for this cohort to crush their own children. This is unnatural to the point of opening the question of whether such beings qualify as human rather than just homo sapiens.
It also shows the relentlessness with which this group or mentality has sought to establish itself as the dominant factor in societal relations. Such an influence can only be profoundly negative and so it has proved to be.
This gives a context for my judgements about decisions made, actions taken, by people at that time.
I understand that people make mistakes, misjudgements. That they can surrender to peer group or wider influences. That in uncertain times these things are magnified.
But they can, and must, review those things at a point where they are able. And themselves make a judgement. And, if necessary or possible, put things right. Collectively, the ’60’s generation never did this. Many if not most individuals never did this in a manner that materially altered their outlook or actions.
For this they can only be condemned.
To return to your comments.
“Everything you say below is a vaguely theoretical oversimplification, and contradicts much of what you say above;”
“You have already stated that every generation is shaped by preceding generations and events.”
Your second statement being supposedly that element which contradicts my preceeding comments of which you approve.
I would not claim that the comments you refer to are comprehensive. Just as I would not claim that this post is. To be so would require, not a book, since the fundamentals are actually quite simple, but perhaps 10,000 words, which this forum obviously is not suited to. I do, however expect that people respond to the substance of anything said and to infer what that is derived from, which can later be clarified if need be. Perhaps this post goes some way to doing that.
It is not at all true that there is any contradiction. At any time. In any circumstance.
In this case this is amply shown by the fact that a substantial part of that generation by age did not identify with the characteristics defining the ’60’s generation to the degree that they abandoned other reference points or values. The fact of many serving in the war gives indisputable proof of that.
This commonplace or cliche of justification will not fly.
We are in general accord regarding the impact of technology of people and therefore culture. In particular in this instance, your reference to contraception I agree with. The advent of The Pill ushered in a hitherto unknown level of possibility for sex without apparent implications. And certainly this was taken up with gusto and allowed a plank for elements of what was to follow.
Where we might disagree, I think, is that you seem to be proposing that the direct implications of that could only end in one thing. I do not agree. People can and always have, utilized technology in such a way that allows different expressions in actions.
It could possibly be claimed (I don’t know the history) that the desire to create The Pill in the first instance was driven directly by a growing desire for sexual nirvana in the ’50’s and that therefore its existence was in fact as a result of a cultural impulse with direct links to “free love”, and so this was a manifestation of culture.
Regardless, the mere advent of such things does not in itself inevitably demand just one course of action. The response will be determined by the priorities of the society in which it appears.
As to your finishing points, and taking into account your first response concerning me, reproduced at the beginning of this comment, and also your comment to kadaka (KD Knoebel) at Feb 28th 11.59 pm, on which, in itself, I will comment later, you are becoming increasingly transparent.
Your conflation of CAGW with Vietnam War protests, or the nature or behavior of government was not my point. You know that.
My point was that if not for the attitudes and characteristics exhibited, developed, and applied by the ’60’s generation the issue would not exist in the first place. But you do know that.
@ur momisugly markx says: February 28, 2013 at 11:59 pm
Some quotes from your post:
“Is there no logical thinking left in this world?”
This in response to a statement or opinion in which there was no internal logical disagreement.
This opens the question of whether your understanding of the word “logic” in itself, or knowledge of any process that might comprise of define “logic”, differs from that maintained by the general run of sentient beings.
Alternatively, you made this statement, perhaps reflexively, or perhaps after calculation, in order to dismiss the statement you applied it to in what can be described as a bogus manner.
Reviewing your following statement, contained within a paragraph, the first sentence makes clear that you would merely supplant the supposedly “illogical” statement that has prompted your despair, with your own opinion.
A curious process for someone committed to logic as generally understood. Your second sentence as support for this I find, in detail, more than a little disjointed, but I take to mean that you confirm your disagreement.
Following directly on:
“I’ve said it above, but with the short attention span of youngsters and the apparent inability to comprehend these days it probably bears repeating :”
This is remarkable.
A Tour-de-Force.
The “short attention span of youngsters” being what? Well, nothing at all!
The “apparent inability to comprehend” actually referring to the requirement to accept the propositions that follow! Comprehend = Acceptance of what you say! Marvelous!
And to finish:
“Ya clown. If you don’t want to live like that, take some responsibility and don’t do it.”
The sneer.
Which I personally do take as being the response that logically can be attributed to a certain type of person.
The assertion that someone is not obliged to live according to or subject to the mores of the time from someone who in just the previous post to me has maintained that the ’60’s generation were helplessly entwined in the societal currents of the day. You demonstrate an extraordinary flexibility of mind.
I haven’t examined your profuse posts in detail, but beyond these three dealt with here and in my previous post I don’t think it is really necessary.
The pattern has emerged. The underlying form is coming into focus.
I await your subsequent posts with interest. As you may have picked up by now I have an abiding interest in kicking over rocks to see what lies beneath.
jc says: March 1, 2013 at 12:30 pm
“……I have no particular interest in either the war or other specific manifestations of the time. …..My core interest …..is in the nature of the times generally and the implications of that…..”
In my view it is difficult to discuss the nature of the times without taking into account he profound influence of the politics, the war, and the protest movement and the effects this all had on society as a whole.
“….Jack Kerouac knew nothing of this war when he lived as he did and wrote On The Road….”
I never had any desire to read Kerouac’s “On the Road”, for some reason the theme of aimless wandering and the concept of ‘flow of consciousness writing’ turned me away from it. But I did read it last year, and now regard it as a carefully crafted piece of art. It gets a bad rap in the description of how it was written; I researched it a bit and found it was written and re-written for years before and after he sat down full of benzedrine and coffee and committed it to his scroll.
What most fail to recognize (perhaps even Kerouac) is it is more a story of young men (Kerouac and Neal Cassady,) vaguely seeking to escape the drudgery of the lower working class poverty they were born into or drifted into, rather than simply some sort of escape from societal norms of the time.
“….Observably illustrated in countless ways since, from the “What do we want (everything). When do we want it NOW” of the early and mid 70′s demonstrations to the “Greed is good” iteration in the 1980′s, these being just two sides to the same coin,….”
Perhaps a natural development of a developing society. Look at China. Look at Deng Xiaoping “..To be rich is glorious…”
“…Kurt Cobain in 1994 was the occasion for this cohort to crush their own children. …It also shows the relentlessness with which this group or mentality has sought to establish itself as the dominant factor in societal relations..”
I’m unfamiliar with this event or how it relates to the discussion. I include comment on it to make the point that gathering isolated reports of isolated incidents is no indication of societal attitudes. Every few years people die in crowds following the haj in Mecca, too. I fail to see how isolated events can help you to reach such a sweeping conclusion.
”….And, if necessary or possible, put things right. Collectively, the ’60′s generation never did this. Many if not most individuals never did this in a manner that materially altered their outlook or actions. For this they can only be condemned….”
I’d be interested to see a short list of the major points you want “the 60’s generation” to apologize for, or to set right.
“….The nature of this is shown in attacking the serving soldiers directly and in belittling and de-legitimizing them and the basis for their actions or decisions: denying the validity of their existence by denying the validity of their basis for meaning in life……This displays sheer viciousness. A viciousness that can only come from a depth of self-interest that excludes all other considerations. …”
And how many did that? Apparently very, very few. Do an online search – some regard that as in urban myth, though I’d expect somewhere it may have occurred. The fact it created wide-spread publicity, almost totally condemning the acts, shows the real attitudes of society at the time. It is very hard to find any reports of this actually happening.
On the contrary, most protesters were concerned for the safety and that the lives of those soldiers were being wasted for nothing. The emphasis the attacking/spitting stories received is more about anti-protester propaganda than concern for the soldiers. Right wing, rural kids like me had no time for hippies, and we lapped this rubbish up. The repeating of this story is more an indictment on the propensity of the general public to succumb to propaganda than it is an indication of attitudes of the sixties.
“….a substantial part of that generation by age did not identify with the characteristics defining the ’60′s generation to the degree that they abandoned other reference points or values. The fact of many serving in the war gives indisputable proof of that….”
There you have it. With my rural, right wing upbringing had I been old enough I’d have gone to that war unhesitatingly, because I’d have believed what my government was telling me. Some, less naive than I, benefited from having a bunch of protesting hippies (including returned servicemen!) telling them what was happening and gave them a broader view.
…It could possibly be claimed (I don’t know the history) that the desire to create The Pill in the first instance was driven directly by a growing desire for sexual nirvana in the ’50′s …People can and always have, utilized technology in such a way that allows different expressions in actions.
A real stretch of the imagination. There was a need. Scientific understanding developed to the point it could be met. Potential market; Every adult female in the world. A commercial and scientific cause. And, as you say, the younger generation now can make their own choice on how to utilize such technology. They are not magically “locked in” to a certain course of action just because it was done that way before.
…“free love”, and so this was a manifestation of culture….Regardless, the mere advent of such things does not in itself inevitably demand just one course of action. The response will be determined by the priorities of the society in which it appears….
Following the events of WWII where many women were suddenly thrust into the workforce, the follow on of the naturally increased promiscuity of war time men and women, the
natural development of women escaping the confinement of domestic housekeeping as a societal norm, increased mobility, the government and media promoted (perhaps realistically, perhaps not) mood of a dark and foreboding nuclear war future, increased mobility coming with availability of vehicles and increasing wealth, combined with the invention of the pill, were only ever going to lead to one thing.
“…My point was that if not for the attitudes and characteristics exhibited, developed, and applied by the ’60′s generation the issue would not exist in the first place. But you do know that…”
Yes, I know what you meant. And I think it is a spurious conclusion. Governments are forever finding ways to regulate and tax people. And big business is always happy to step in and sell them that which was previously free.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: March 1, 2013 at 12:38 am
“…You cannot fight your way to peace. But you can fight to cease the fighting, when needed, from there you may then build peace…..You want to fight, but not to cease the fighting. You have decided to remain the problem. Perhaps you will decide to be something else later….”
You misread me.
When I was younger I was strongly of the opinion that we should have “gone in and done it properly”.
Now I am older, more widely read, more widely travelled, and with the wisdom of hindsight, I know we should simply have never have gone there in the first place.
jc says: March 1, 2013 at 2:38 pm
“…This in response to a statement or opinion in which there was no internal logical disagreement…”.
Some definitions:
log·i·cal (lj-kl)adj.
Reasoning or capable of reasoning in a clear and consistent manner.
capable of or characterized by clear or valid reasoning
reasonable or necessary because of facts, events,
logi·cal·ly adv. Synonyms: logical, analytic, ratiocinative, rational
These adjectives mean capable of or reflecting the capability for correct and valid reasoning: a logical mind; an analytic thinker; the ratiocinative process; a rational being.
Are you perhaps being a little too pedantic in your definition?
Re the statement: “….acknowledge the enormous burden they’ve thrust on those after them, as their behavior is being relentlessly promoted by their generation as “normal” and “natural” by their movies and TV shows….”
The statement itself puts forward the illogical premises that somehow the preceding generation is solely responsible for the behavior of the current one, and implies they (younger generation) bear no personal responsibility for their actions. It also ignores the logical (there is that word again) conclusion that if its premise is true, the 60’s generation can be forgiven because they were simply the children of a wartime generation with all the effects that has, including unrecognized at the time PTSD, and they grew up under the shadow to the cold war and associated government indoctrination.
The behavior and experiences of one generation undoubtedly influence the later generations, but if the current generation decided they disapprove of the current set of morals, they need to start defining and encouraging what they do want, not simply make a scapegoat our of an entire generation.
But, please be selective: I don’t think you want to go back to a time where unmarried mothers were spurned, children born out of wedlock were forcibly taken away, racism was the norm, homosexuals were not tolerated, priests had unfettered sexual access to their flocks…. etc etc
Dear markx,
You have many unresolved issues.
@ur momisugly markx says: March 1, 2013 at 5:09 pm
Your character and mindset are clear. Although this seemed likely to me when I first took in your initial post alluding to me, (not having looked very closely at your others as dealing with the war itself in detail), its reasonable not to prejudge the extent of such things without further confirmation. Now supplied across a breadth and depth.
Although your mind may be set, what issues from it is obviously variable on any given point according to circumstance, and along with the rest of your bag of tricks makes conversation futile, and probably worse, is only ever encouraging of that.
Being obdurate, perhaps obtuse, is OK. That not.
So that’s that then.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: March 1, 2013 at 11:01 pm
“Dear markx…..You have many unresolved issues…”
Ah, at last we have a point we can agree upon.
And a lot of those issues have to do with lying politicians and a gullible easily swayed public.
jc says: March 2, 2013 at 3:29 pm
…Your character and mindset are clear. …….. Although your mind may be set, what issues from it is obviously variable on any given point according to circumstance, and along with the rest of your bag of tricks makes conversation futile, and probably worse, is only ever encouraging of that. …Being obdurate, perhaps obtuse, is OK. That not…”
Apologies if my thoughts were unclear; Here they are in point form:
1. I think Ho Chi Minh was initially and primarily a nationalist.
2. We should never have gone into Vietnam in the first place.
3.The whole region would have been better off. The “domino effect” which we were purportedly battling to prevent did occur anyway in Laos and Cambodia (of sorts), triggered by the unrest of an extra two decades so war and chaos in the region.
4. The generational blame game is an abomination. Every generation is subject to and reacts to the culture, events, lawmaking and economic decisions which precede it, and react to the cultural, technological and economic changes of their own time. To single out a generation and to solely blame them for the events of their teens, AND for all the disliked behaviors of subsequent generations is illogical.