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There’s battle lines being drawn
And nobody’s right when everybody’s wrong— The Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth
*
In another case of the uncanny synchronicity that often strikes like a bolt from a Sisters Country lightning storm around The Running Iron Report, the unlaid ghosts of the Vietnam era rose in recent weeks, asserting their undying influence over a cultural moment that lies 45 years beyond the fall of Saigon.
On a whim last month, I listened to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast with ace historian Max Hastings, whose 2018 tome Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, is perhaps the best single-volume history of the era we’ll ever see. I followed that with the PBS documentary, Last Days in Vietnam, depicting the chaotic — and strikingly noble — effort to evacuate thousands of South Vietnamese from the American Embassy as that nation crumbled in the face of hammer blows from the North Vietnamese Army in the spring of 1975 . Then Nugget columnist Craig Eisenbeis submitted a travelogue on his trip in January to Vietnam; I attended a Memorial Day service led by a friend who was severely wounded in Vietnam; then I spent hours in conversation with two friends who ardently and actively opposed the war.
And over the past weeks, we have seen scenes unfold on our streets that hearken back to Days of Rage in 1968.
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Yes, the ghosts are stirring.
Two close friends marched in the November 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. I have other friends who saw combat in Southeast Asia. Each and all were shaped in large degree by their experience of that tumultuous era.
*
The Vietnam War era broke open cultural fissures that have never really closed. As Carlin points out, if you were to take a snapshot of America in 1963 and a snapshot of America in 1973 — at the end of the decade of America’s intense direct involvement in Vietnam — you would see two very different countries. We can’t reach back to pre-’63 America; it’s not there anymore, and no amount of yearning for a more united, stable and wholesome America can conjure it back out of the mists of time.
The 1950s, of course, weren’t anywhere near as stable and content as nostalgia would have us believe. The faultlines of American culture were already drawn taut, tectonic plates of tension and conflict grinding beneath the placid surface. The Civil Rights Movement that would gain unstoppable momentum in the early 1960s was already aborning, and the frustrations that would explode in the Free Speech movement in 1964 were stirring long before they burst forth on the Berkeley campus and spread across the nation.
Still, many Americans — white, middle class Americans, at any rate— really did lead quietly satisfying lives in safe, wholesome communities, with real reason to believe in the American Dream. Then the Vietnam War really got rolling and cultural and social ferment swiftly built to a boiling pitch, overflowing onto the streets and into American living rooms, forever transforming the nation’s perception of itself and the way we relate to one another.
Young, rebellious protesters challenged every norm and article of faith of American society, from the legitimacy and righteousness of the nation’s Cold War against Communism to race relations and traditional sexual mores. They called out lies and hypocrisy that had long gone unrecognized and unchallenged, and demanded near absolute personal freedom in the pursuit of happiness. They were right about many things. They were also too often arrogant, self-righteous and destructive.
Traditional Americans looked upon this iconoclasm with horror and disgust, seeing in rebellion an attack on a way of life that was rich and good and true. And they were right about many things. They were also too often heedless, angry and reflexively authoritarian.
The culture war that launched in the 1960s was a profound clash of different understandings of liberty and honor and duty, and what it means to be an American. It was, in part, generational, but only in part — which is why the conflict continues, a couple of generations on.
We see it in different visceral reactions to protests that exploded nationwide after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Some focus on peaceful mass action and see a spontaneous upsurge in support of long-overdue change; some focus on violence and looting and see a tragedy being manipulated to attack police, indulge in opportunistic crime, and destroy the social order.
Some look at defense of property and police as tacit acceptance of a racist order; some see any form of protest, no matter how peaceful and orderly, as an affront or a threat (which creates surreal scenes like a driver on Cascade Avenue giving an angry thumbs-down reaction to a sign that read simply “Love One Another”).
The fissures that the Vietnam era opened still exist, indeed have widened — wedged further and further apart by individuals, businesses and organizations whose agendas and livelihoods are built on division. They render simplistic matters that are complex and cherry pick history to weaponize as propaganda. The Vietnam War era is an inflection point in American history — a complex and complicated tangle of cultural and social flashpoints and geopolitical calculations, idealism and rank cynicism, nobility and atrocity. We live today in its long shadow — and yet, a my daughter pointed out, it is almost entirely unexplored in schools.
If our cultural chasms are ever to be bridged, it will require a real understanding of how and why they came to be, an honest assessment of what they mean — and a wary eye cast upon those who profit from them.
Matthew says
It seems like the 1950s and 60s have an oversized influence in the imagination of Americans. I’ve known conservatives to idealize the 50s and liberals the 60s. Both don’t want to deal with the faults of the era. Personally I think we values from either further back. The political ideas of the 1770s and pioneer values of say the 1850s. Though, we certainly don’t want the racial ideas of those times.
Agree. No era is detached from the era(s) that came before. I would say that the meaning of those earlier values came in for significant reassessment, revision — and and conflict in the ’60s.
Matthew says
I think the mythologizing of both eras comes from the fact it was the time advent of mass media. There are a lot of TV shows from both eras that were rerun a lot. This tends to make them loom larger in our minds than what is good for the nation.
Mike Lazarus says
Well done. I am reluctant to derive a sense of unrealized nostalgia for what we can imagine were placid times before Vietnam. I’m sure there was plenty of rebellion in various forms. Be it beatnik, or the emergence of motorcycle gangs from WWII veterans. Lets not forget the violent times often associated with prohibition. And of course, New York’s draft riots. Regardless, as long as we enjoy a diverse America, we will not be free of cultural conflict. It is the price of admission. And ultimately, probably worth it.
Greg Waddell says
In 1968 I shared a house with 3 vets who had just returned from Vietnam. They had become dedicated war protesters. They believed it was criminal for the youth of our nation to be required to risk their lives for a cause in which they had no voice. (At this time the voting age was 21). I then received my draft notice. A group of us were picked up from Orange County Calif and transported via an old yellow school bus to the LA induction center for our physicals. Our departure from the bus was delayed for over an hour by protesters laying in our path on the sidewalk. Once inside I was informed that I would be drafted into the Marine Corp. This was at the peak of the Tet Offensive. I made the decision to become a protester and refuse to comply by any means necessary.
Thanks for weighing in here Greg. How did that all play out?
lane batot says
I just reread “Lord Of The Flies”, and “The Beast” is definitely US! Followed that up with his Cro-Magnons-killing-off-the- Neanderthals in Golding’s lesser known “The Inheritors”. Yeah, that shit is DEEP ‑seated in our species. The Romans had a good solution–BREAD AND CIRCUSES! Do you think the Covid-19 shutdown of SPORTS has had anything to do with a lot of this unrest? That statue toppling, as a substitute, has become the new National Sport? Perhaps.…partially. The Authority might just have to get all parental and make a ruling that NO ONE can have ANY STATUE of ANYTHING since everyone is behaving so badly. Except Dog Statues. We should keep our dog monuments, at least. “Old Drum”, “Balto”, Greyfriar’s Bobby”, etc. They ARE better examples for us all, than all the human statues combined!
Matthew says
Lane, you know I also wonder if being stuck at home during Covid plays in to the riots. I know that I was going stir crazy at home. There have to be other factors like the cultural fault-lines Jim talks about, but I think that Covid made the reaction worse. Also the shut down of sports. Sports serve as catharsis for a lot of people. Of course, sports were getting political before Covid. Because everything is political now. Still I wonder how things might have gone down differently without the shutdown.
Rick Schwertfeger says
One thing I remember about the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in Washington, D.C. in November 1969 is that despite the huge, massive crowd of approx. 500,000 — yes, that many — it was almost entirely peaceful. There had been some very minor scuffling the night before, and some tear gas was shot. But on the day itself, there was no major police presence. And everyone behaved. I wondered about this immediately when there was so much storm trooper presence at relatively smaller protests in so many cities over the last few weeks, including my own. The police didn’t dress up like armored Transformers. They didn’t shoot rubber bullets at us, nor shot-filled beanbags. Really, they let us be to do what we’d gone there to do: to protest a War. And everyone behaved. I witnessed absolutely no animosity toward police officers. There may be a lesson there.
Roger says
In my view, one of the important things lost due to the Vietnam war was the public’s trust in government. The trust that the government would NOT lie to the public. The trust that the govt. was prosecuting the war to save the world from communism. And again, the trust that the govt would not LIE to the public.
Sadly we have seen since then, FAR more examples of our govt. (Of the People, By the People and For the People) lying, misdirecting, covering up and manipulating the information going to the people.
Roger, USAF DaNang, Qui Nhon.
Yes. Carlin emphasizes the importance of that change. Of course, government had always lied — the public was just much more naive about it.
Chris Youman says
Having a common consensus on things like morality, law and order might help. I read once that in the1800s a very large number of Americans — the rural ones anyway, learned to read using the family Bible because it was the one book almost every home had. One can see how this could have raised generations of people with a common consensus about a lot of things — useful in a democracy.
Bill Valenti says
The jury is still out as to whether the Iraq War will supplant Vietnam as the greatest diplomatic/military blunder in American history. From the perspective of 50+ years, it sure looks to me that Vietnam will be hard to beat, not just in terms of the casualties, but the lies and stupidity that started it and sustained it for so long against all the evidence that it was a lost cause. Only when we Boomers are gone will that bitter taste and deep-seated distrust of government “wisdom” fade, likely to be replaced by the same attitude amongst those who lived through the Iraq/Afghanistan experience. What have we achieved with the loss of all that blood and treasure?
Roger says
It has long been my belief that all future wars should be fought with the political leaders on both or all sides meet in a field of ‘honor’ all armed with dull knives wearing T shirts and shorts.
It is my suspicion that a whole lot of young men will not die in THAT war.
Yeoman says
Interesting take. And Hasting’s book is also excellent.
More and more, however, I think we have to go back to the 1940s, and then look at the 10s, 20s and 30s, to understand them, to understand what broke open in the 1960s. There was something about that postwar world from 45 to 65 that was broken by the Second World War and the forces unleashed at the time have never been chained back up. Some have weakened and nearly died, but others have not.
It’s a complicated story that I’ve tried to blog about myself. The full history of it, I suspect, will have to be written long after we’re all gone.
It’s always pulling on a string — and the string unravels deeper and deeper into the warp and weft of the whole cloth. You are certainly on to something there — and I always tend to focus on the First World War as the watershed moment when Western Civilization chose a direction of self-destructiveness. I see the 1960s and Vietnam as a clear aftershock not just of the Second World War but of the First.