and my sister was in LA when RFK was killed.

Comparisons are not so easy and I am no historian,. But I will say, in my view the threat from within was nothing then like it is now. The fascists have been here for... many decades, but there wasn't the existential threat of the complete destruction of American Democracy then.

Others, I am sure, can add more, or express different views.


Plus, the 1960's produced the greatest 'pop' music ever. :&gt )

The 60s were rough. We still had the draft. We had 3 assassinations, ALL OF THEM OURS. Civil rights leaders murdered. KKK and Jim Crowe. segregation in the South. Riots/violent protests in the streets. Hippies vs. hard hats. Black versus white. It was fucking ugly.

We came out ... minority and women's rights, no draft (talk about male liberation ... Uncle Sam thought he owned our boys from birth)

Everyone now thinks we live in ugly times because we say nasty things about each other on Facebook and our president is evil. We’re upset because we remember how things used to be and we do not want to go back.

The music was great but the times were ugly.

It keeps auto-correcting to “touch.”

..it was so violent on campuses. I waited til I was married, divorced then a single mom then I went to college. different probs...

In the 60’s everything changed when Americans watched for themselves what was going on down south on the evening news on their first television sets. Today, right wing media use technology to bastardize the truth.

The RW funded hate radio, think tanks, publications, FOX, and groomed hundreds of surrogates to deliver the propaganda. It worked to weaken America significantly in the last forty years.

Today is much worse than the sixties were. And Nixon, despite being a crook, was an institutionalist not intent on tearing down the structure of our government.

In fact, that's when civil disobedience became a thing, and it was linked with civil rights first and eventually the Vietnam War protests. I'm proud to have lived through that period, as most baby boomers are, because it shaped our outlook forevermore.

Our kids and grandkids can't really relate to that time period, so I guess it's up to us to explain it. We know that Nazi Germany could never happen here, and we know that our civil disobedience is how we can stop it. If you want to know more - ask an old fart.

A very important precept for us.

History by analogy is a bad practice to begin with. It dulls the mind and confuses the present more, not less. It's also lazy and can give one the illusion of understanding without the need to push for more depth.

That doesn't mean that trends and forces spread over decades and centuries can't be understood and applied to the present. The context of problems in the 1960s was still within a struggle that began with the enlightenment and was contained within it. I don't recall much doubt that there wouldn't be success in some form.

This time around there is the possibility that the enlightenment achievements themselves could all be lost. The two sides - Russia, 1/2 the US, and the non-democratic, fundamentalist remainder in the rest of the world, vs. 1/2 the US, the EU, and other democracies are set on a non-compatible path. The stakes are higher and the climate clock is ticking. Our basic assumptions of war, peace, and truth are challenged. No, it's not like the 1960s.

A relevant article: https://asaculturesection.org/2017/08/18/raging-against-the-enlightenment-the-ideology-of-steven-bannon/

I'd like to read more about the whole set of constructed dogmas and ideologies, because whether by Bannon, Bin Laden, Ghadaffi(Green Book), Bolsheviks, Jordan Peterson, Reagan Republicans, Friedrich Hayek -all of the cons, when the structures they promote collapse, all that is left is simple corruption and concentration of power. But some people do need a crust of justification.

What's novel about Putin though, is that the details of those constructs are unimportant and replaceable, like a modular manufactured piece. As long as it serves the neo-fuedal lord, it's good.

Yes there is urgency but not many are coming home from anywhere in a box

Sorry for any mistakes.

Now I understand.

...in the USSR. We sympathized with the oppressed Russian people to a degree, but the people themselves were not our enemy, and only the actual soldiers and some spies were weaponized against the West. In addition to the USSR being in the then-present tense, my generation was close enough in time to the Third Reich to have an appreciation for democracy versus totalitarianism.

We were facing violence in our own streets, but we were confronting the evils of the day -- racism, sexism, and an unnecessary war.

There were tough and disheartening times -- but I never thought my country would rot from within, or that a major political party ("the loyal opposition," as each side used to refer to the other, without irony) would embody that rot. And now I fear what we have become.

Those of us who lived through that era thought we, our leaders, and our cohort made a difference in the end. But no victory is ever final, and regressive forces live on in their caves and beneath their rocks, awaiting the time the majority will have forgotten them. Each generation fights them anew, in different form, but the same evil. America has always been protected by mighty oceans and friendly neighbors, but those days are over thanks to cyber-warfare.

Go to it -- we are counting on you.

..that I don't see today. But, I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...

By that I mean that it is tapping into a great deal of latent pent up anger over pervasive injustice that effects tens of millions of people on a very personal basis. And it is still in its relatively early stages - it it unpredictable exactly how it will play out from here. That type of unpredictability was a hallmark of the 60's.

The institutions of government itself were under attack in the 60's, from different sides for different reasons; starting of course with the assassination of a President. In the South reactionary forces were claiming States Rights were being trampled on by the Federal Government. Massive anti-war protests had some fearing that some form of revolution was in the air. And there were major riots and periodic local impositions of curfews etc (virtual martial law). We are not quite there yet but sometimes it seems like, under this presidency.that we are heading to a place where the center refuses to hold; the Right Wing is getting uglier by the nanosecond.

So much though is very different. There was growing material wealth in the U.S. during the 60's with the middle class on the rise, rather than today's descent. The counter culture was as much fueled by optimism as it was by anger - a belief that a better future was well within reach.

Yet to be determined is whether the issues of the current day will lead to the rise of massive youth led movements that challenge the status quo in America. Without that it is hard to make credible comparisons between now and the 60's. Our nation does again face grave threats now, but the 60's were by no means unique in that in prior "recent" history. Go back to the McCarthy era, World War !!, the Great Depression etc. for other examples of that. It is how large sectors of the the public reacted to those threats, along with a vibrant positive vision that a new dawn was breaking, that largely defined the spirit of the 60's. That and a cultural revolution, but that's going off on a tangent...

The names have changed, but the game is the same.

only not at the same cycle.

I think of it as the second stage of the cultural issues that were front and center then. As powerful as the civil rights and gender equality movements were they basically broke down the door. The movement ran forward on natural inertia for many years, but the job was not finished. Along the way the resistance to true equality grew stronger. The embers of simmering racism and misogyny were carefully fanned into furious resentment and we are witnessing the resulting attacks on equality that were the result of the 60s.

In the last couple of decades there has been a systematic false construct of a counter movement against the ideas and gains for equality. As we know we still have much work to do to fight racism and misogyny. The problems truly erupted when President Obama was elected twice.

The white male backlash has been massive and effective in reversing some of the gains women and people of color had gained. They worked assiduously to erode the gained rights on a State level, and now they’re ready to put a known misogynist who is almost certainly a sexual predator on the Supreme Court.

Those of us who fought in the 60s could see this coming but the younger generations, already enjoying the fruits of acquired equality didn’t see how their rights were being systematically destroyed.

So now people are waking up to the fact that their rights can be taken away thanks to a whole new generation of activists. The fight is the same one, but on a higher level. The struggle continues as it always will. The adage that freedom is not free is proving to be a fact.

information wasn't available back then. We had to wait til 6:00 for the only news each day. So while times were very tumultuous, people wern't as aware. Today, we're fed a constant stream of it today and it's fraying all our nerves.

This is The Year of Gaslighting. Take a break if you need to.

The darkest hour is always just before the dawn - CSN:

Lots of us thought US had moved forward, that we were on an upward path.

We didn't realize we were/are in a war and that the enemy works 24/7 to create a 'golden era' pre FDR . Or pre Teddy R.

Gingrich and gang's win in 92 was a major wake-up call that most of us were too complacent to see.

Also important to remember there was no media monopoly in 60s. IIRC, it was Halberstam some yrs ago in a C-Span discussion who saw this as permitting the nightly broadcast of images such as the firehoses and dogs unleashed on black children by the Birmingham police.