We are at about 1960 right now.

Need that Gulf of Tonkin like incident where North Korea launches on Guam.

I see Korea as WWI. Some BS incident is going to set the whole thing off. Given that both the leaders are unfit for their positions and largely motivated by ego, I don't see them being able to keep the lid on when the incident happens.

I thought the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag operation to tRump up an reason to escalate the war.. We originally did the attack on the coast, but when the NVA boats attacked us we acted like it was un provoked....
I could see tRump verbally pushing NK to the point where they do something stupid and that would cause our retaliation... Every president needs their war.. uffda
m

where one of the members revisited the bomb house in Greenwich Village and all he could say was, "the war made us crazy." Not an excuse, but not too hard to grasp either.

They started as protesters. And evolved. They always had the goal of building a better world. But to do that, they needed to disrupt the existing one. Are their goals so different from yours or mine? Only the tactics differed. Violence is never the answer.

"The Weathermen emerged from the campus-based opposition to the Vietnam War, and from the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s. One of the factors that contributed to the radicalization of SDS members was the Economic Research and Action Project that the SDS undertook in Northern urban neighborhoods from 1963 to 1968. This project was aimed at creating an interracial movement of the poor that would mobilize for full and fair employment or guaranteed annual income and political rights for poverty class Americans. Their goal was to create a more democratic society "which guarantees political freedom, economic and physical security, abundant education, and incentives for wide cultural variety". While the initial phase of the SDS involved campus organizing, phase two involved community organizing. These experiences led some SDS members to conclude that deep social change would not happen through community organizing and electoral politics, and that more radical and disruptive tactics were needed."

It went on for a very long time and our government would not listen to us. So many young men being killed. Others having to go to Canada. Others in jail for refusing to go. It was a really tense period in our lives.

....I used to envy people who came of age during the 1960s because I thought it was more exciting with all the protests and what was going on in the world and I thought it was great how people seemed so socially aware. I always wanted to have lived in the 1960s.

But after seeing this, and after having to live through another period of upheaval and chaos, I don't think I'd want to live through it. I yearn for the relatively placid, subdued years of the 1990s.

drills" has to have had some affect on our little psyches. There was a reason we all became stoned out hippies. We didn't just wake up one day and decide we'd try marijuana and acid, etc. It was anything but placid.

Some of it however, like the marches to burn our bras, were fun. And there was a feeling of love and camaraderie that none of us have felt since then. It was a true turning point for young people and race relations.

and now realize why no history teacher, either in high school or college, ever covered this. What an absolute clusterfuck. The 1965 memo that flat-out said that 70% of the reason we remained in Vietnam was to "avoid humiliation" reminded me so much of the reasons many wanted to remain in Iraq. We never seem to learn.

When I saw that I went fucken nuts.. From 1965 to 1973 thousands of Americans died so we don't loose face??? Really? These politicians are criminals....
What I want to know is, who was making all the money on this "anti humiliation" war..
grrrrrr....
m

Classmates of mine on the streets with copies of the Bill Of Rights being cursed out by ignorant Americans for spreading "Communist Propaganda," etc etc. When the extremist right yells "LIBERAL!" these days, it was "COMMIE!" back then. Same lame product, different label.

What was different was the counter-culture. No internet, so it was all local. Greenwich Village in New York really WAS a village. "Head shops," music everywhere, hand-painted signs, well-attended meetings. In Georgetown in DC to a lesser extent. I never spent time on the West Coast in those days, but the scene in San Francisco, while no doubt romanticized to an unrealistic degree, was legendary. Just listen to the music that came out of there. So many of those songs remain iconic today, FIFTY years later.

Another thing that was different was the courage shown in Congress to step up and say something is wrong here. Democrats were standing up to LBJ on Vietnam, even while supporting him on civil rights and voting rights. Republicans (some, anyway) were standing up to Nixon, and telling him to resign or get removed--even 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater--and he DID resign. Corruption and misuse of office were considered impeachable offenses in those days. Today, it seems, it gets you the support of 90% of the Republican Party, and unlimited financial support, courtesy of John Roberts, Nino Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Sam Alito. It's no stretch to surmise that Gorsuch would have voted the same way.

But while it WAS emotionally exhausting, and with the advent of Nixon, frustrating to the point of howling at the moon at night, it also brought many of us together, and for a brief time, with the election of Jimmy Carter, we thought we had finally turned a corner. Like an insidious cancer, Republicanitis seems to always crop back up again, and we haven't yet found the national antibiotic that cures it once and for all. Clinton couldn't cure it. Obama couldn't cure it. But we DID have those 16 years when they were in office. We have to continue to work toward more such interludes of (comparatively) stable leadership to compensate for the ever darker periods in between.

Would love to watch...