I graduated from high school in 1968 and from college five years
later.
I graduated from high school in 1968 and from college five years later.
During that time, from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, everyone my age had at least some political awareness. There is nothing like an immoral war in Asia and the draft to get the youth of America to pay attention to politics.
Whether you were a greaser (we called them hard guys), a jock, a hippie or a geek, you knew you were just a 2S (Student) draft deferment away from slogging through some Vietnamese jungle or going to Canada or jail.
That will get your attention. Added to the real possibility of going to fight a war we passionately opposed was the new realization that our country could do wrong and immoral things. Prior to this time, we all believed that whatever the president said was true and whatever the United States did was good.
Bookshelves are filled with volumes that have set that misconception straight. Prior to the Vietnam War and since, we now know that we have manipulated domestic and international events to suit an interest, often setting aside human costs or moral principles.
My parents often lament that the sixties with all of its unrest was a very hard time. Everyone was angry. Everything was in turmoil. The very foundation of our society, something that was believed to be rock solid, now looked shaky. I would need to ask a historian whether there has been such a willful internal threat in the United States since the Civil War.
But the flip side of the coin (or is this just the never-ending quest to find nostalgia in our youth?) is that we were motivated to act. People still disagree on whether the actions taken by protesters were appropriate.
Is “revolution” or “tearing down the establishment”, using the exhortations of the time, the right response? That’s a different issue, though I do recall that Jefferson said that a democracy needs a fresh revolution every so often. Whether you have admiration or disdain for the youth of the sixties, one must agree that we DID SOMETHING.
I wish there was a little more give-a-damn in today’s kids. We need it. Nuclear weapons are not the threat they were then, but the world is a more dangerous place today, and the role that the United States will play in forming it is so important. The war in Iraq has reminded us that our actions have long lasting ripples that reach every corner of the world.
There are some obvious reasons kids don’t care about politics like we did then. The absence of the draft is probably the biggest one. But less obvious, and far more dangerous, is pervasive cynicism. I pause before suggesting it because it is the classic easy, dismissive, throw-away line explaining the world’s problems, and offered most often by cynics.
I was first impressed by this difference between then and now when I read “The Selling of the President” by Joe McGinniss. Using the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, the book illustrated how politics had become the province of Madison Avenue rather than a critical examination of the issues that is our ideal. The book was touted at the time as a shocking revelation.
The most shocking feature of the book was how inconsequential the information seemed thirty years later.
What was outrageous and unacceptable in the sixties, whether it was an immoral war or learning that our candidates are packaged like cereal, has become the accepted facts of life in 2004.
Our kids have not grown up in a naive world like we did. To them, our leaders have always been liars. People, countries and corporations have always manipulated people and information for material gain. What’s the big deal? That’s just the way it is.
In the sixties, we had a mind to change the world. I fear we have only gotten used to it. Is it any wonder our kids don’t care?
Ron Erskine has lived and worked as a builder and brewery owner in South Valley for 20 years. He lives in Morgan Hill with his wife and two children.
