Those of us who lived through 1968 and are fortunate enough to still be around will attest to the fact that it was the most horrible of years.
It was a year filled with death and destruction, dominated by a faraway war that hit home on our TV screens on a daily basis. There were political assassinations and there were riots based on race and riots fueled by rage. And then came some really bad election results. A lot has happened in the 50 years since 1968, but when you get down to it, not nearly enough has happened.
People today will say that 2017 was a tumultuous year, but it really wasn’t. It was the old sound and fury thing, signifying nothing. Seriously, 50 years from now, what will historians say about 2017? The worst president in the history of the country appointed a liberty-hating cracker to the Supreme Court and then Republicans passed a tax cut for rich people. Not exactly earth-shaking news.
Think about this: The first big news story of 1968 involved North Korea. The U.S.S. Pueblo was a spy ship off the coast of North Korea. It was doing what spy ships had done since the cessation of open warfare on the Korean Peninsula 15 years earlier—it was spying. However, the United States has always contended that the ship was in international waters. The North Koreans disagreed and opened fire on the ship, killing an American seaman. They boarded the ship and took it and its crew to North Korea.
For a brief time, it looked like the shooting was going to start back up in those parts, but then it settled into an ugly diplomatic standoff. There’s a famous photograph taken of the crew by their captors. One of the crewmen down front is giving the finger with both hands. He later got beaten for it, but it damn sure made young me proud to be an American. The crew was released later that year, but the North Koreans kept the ship. They were probably trying to figure out how the Americans had managed to get electricity to work out in the open sea.
Right after that came the Tet Offensive, which shocked Americans and pretty much ended the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. LBJ’s presidency, which began not long after the assassination of John F. Kennedy with the somber words before Congress, “All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today…” He used all of his political skills to push through the Civil Rights Bill and then the Voting Rights Act, the two most important pieces of legislation of the 20th century. He then embarked on his sweeping (if, in retrospect, misguided) War on Poverty.
He was rolling and then he bet wrong on Vietnam. The images coming through on the nightly news of fighting the streets of Saigon were shocking. The average American thought that the fighting was all up north and that it would be over soon. What we then saw was the equivalent of Nazis running through the streets of London, heading toward No. 10 Downing Street. As a military action, the Tet Offensive was actually a failure, but it flipped a switch on in America and history turned.
There aren’t enough words in this computer to describe the impact of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and then, just two months later, Bobby Kennedy. Their deaths were painful and personal and they forever made America an uglier and less-hopeful place.
There were riots all over America after King was killed. Two notable exceptions were Indianapolis, which saw Presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy walk through the streets of the black area of that city, speaking from the heart to huge throngs of African-Americans who had spilled into the streets. The other was Boston, which benefited from the presence of the Godfather of Soul. I’ve mentioned it in this publication before, but do yourself a favor and Google “The Night James Brown Saved Boston.”
Riots of various types (race, anti-war, political) continued on through the summer and culminated with the “Whole World Is Watching” riots outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. With front-runner Bobby Kennedy dead, the Dems had to choose between Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, an eminently decent man who was saddled with the failed Vietnam policy of his boss, and Eugene McCarthy, another decent man who had the political charisma of dry toast.
Richard Nixon was elected President and we all know how well that turned out. He benefited from the fact that openly racist George Wallace won the electoral votes from five Southern states in a third-party bid. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he told people that civil rights legislation would turn the South Republican. He got that one right.
The year ended on an oddly hopeful note as Apollo 8, with Commander (and Tucson High grad) Frank Borman reading from the Bible on Christmas Eve as the capsule orbited the Moon.
We survived 1968, but it still ripples through our lives. Let’s try not to merely survive 2018. Let’s grab hold of it and bend it to our collective America will. Let’s move past the nonsense of “Make America Great Again.” America, even at its most imperfect, has always been great.
We need to make America, America again.
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2018.
I remember ’68 all too well. As 2-3rd year student @ U of A College of Nursing (I ended up a 5 year student as I kept flunking that nasty chemistry class) I was trying to make decent grades & get my GPA up. Then the horrors started. MLK, Bobby Kennedy, Tet, the Democrats in Chicago…..a year of true horrors that lead to more. Our Constitution remained a bulwark against self-serving politicians & Nixon’s eventual shenanigans that got him out of the office.
So, here we are again, 50 years later, & the American Public has forgotten how important it is to vote, to be informed, to not give in to overblown rhetoric as we now see all the promises (except for those to the Rep party donors) being revealed as out right lies, exaggerations, & u-turns for the “policies” of our POTUS. We still have to struggle through another case of obstruction of justice & God only knows what else. Yet I still have my faith that our basic goodness & decency, our strong sense of what’s fair, what’s right & what’s wrong will get us through this ugly period of American history.
Danehick,
Using the term “liberal hating cracker” to describe Neil Gorsuch is not only racist, but also completely unfounded.
You are such a douchbag.
Boomers consistently and annoyingly overestimate the historic importance of the times in which they grew up.
Nonsense? I will give you nonsense.
1995 Bill Clinton said that providing North Korea with nuclear capabilities would create a better spirit of shared cooperation.
In 2011 Barack Obama said the same exact thing about Iran, and included $150B in cash on pallets.
Learn how to lose with a little more grace. Everyone else isn’t crazy.
Deflecting to the irrelevant instead of defending trump himself. As usual
Neither Obama nor Clinton said anything like that. If I’m wrong give me the cites. Bill Clinton actually got an agreement with NK, the Agreed Framework which lead to NK moving towards eliminating its nuclear infrastructure. There were violations but inspectors did arrive, and cooling tower was blown up, and fuel sealed. Bush II trashed it and the first nuke was exploded when he was in office. Trump said he’d never let NK have an ICBM. Remember? Here’s his tweet if you forgot. http://bit.ly/2nhvH9b
I read the tweet and he said “never happen” to it reaching the US. Has it happened? Not sure what you thought he meant. It seems many Americans don’t understand New Yorkers.
Same old bullshit rant from you every other week also troll. It’s simple, if you despise this column so much, then quit reading it.
Here’s the tweet: “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!” If you think he’s succeeded with his “won’t happen” because a NK nuke hasn’t exploded in California you’re to deep into the Trump tank to be objective. Its obvious what he meant-that NK won’t get an ICBM. They have.
Nathan, I believe we of the boomer generation have contributed greatly to the nation’s well-being. First, with probably 100 million citizens over 35, we managed to produce Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the major party candidates for POTUS. What are the odds of another matchup like that ever again? Second, and with apologies to Lewis Black, our greatest legislative achievements have been centered on the legalization of marijuana. Which explains why we got nothing else of note done.
“Nonsense? I will give you nonsense.”
Never has anything truer been stated. I guess Wayne Olson does get the big picture sometimes.
Old whore. Seriously? Where did you learn to “respect” ladies like that? I’ll take a stab at it. You learned to “respect” ladies in that way from your hero tRump the Chump. He loves to degrade women and he’s all inclusive. Just ask his ex-wives and his current wife. He’s cheated on all of them, just like he is cheating the average American, because he doesn’t give a shit about the 99% of us. I’m sure you didn’t learn to “respect” women in that way from your Mother, your Sisters, your Grandmother, your Aunts or your Female Cousins or even your Wife. Never mind. If you actually have a wife, she’s got to be more of a punching bag. If any one of the women I just mentioned has one ounce of self respect, they’re going to grab you by your earlobe, pull you up the basement staircase and throw you out on the front porch in your skivvies. The only remedy you have is to pull those skivvies off and make a mad dash for the nearest saguaro cactus. Climb up that tree and sit directly on top of it. Make sure to wiggle a bit so that the acupuncture hits all the right areas.
Struck a nerve, eh?
1) I don’t have a basement.
2) I don’t have a porch.
3) I don’t wear skivvies.
Just a little fact checking .
No, actually, you didn’t strike a nerve. I’m just pointing out how out of touch you actually are. I guess you haven’t been paying much attention to the news that isn’t fake. Women aren’t accepting this bullshit behavior from men anymore. Maybe you are too much of a moron to understand that, but I would hope that your female relatives aren’t. Go sit on that saguaro, you need it more than anyone ever has.
I was 13 in 1968, old enough to be well aware of what was going on. In those days a clock radio set to a Los Angeles news station woke me up for school. On June 5 it woke me to the news that RFK had been assassinated in my home town. I didn’t change my wake-up station, but remember being afraid of what news it would bring each morning for a long time afterwards.
I find you very amusing. You can insult me all you want and that’s ok. But if I fight back, you go crazy. I also have to laugh at how you act like you’ve known me forever. Truth is you wouldn’t know me if I stood next to you waiting to cross the street. Bottom line is you can go on and on with your nonsense, I’m through dealing with an idiot.
Oh yeah, now you can start dinner !!
How does pointing out that you’re out of touch make me crazy? When people read this thread, they’ll figure out who the cray-cray person is. ( I understand that you’re dense CW13, so I will tell you who it is: it’s you.)