What happened to us?

The generation that grew up with Camelot and football on the South Lawn; that took over from the Greatest Generation and put a man in space, came up with the transistor radio and color TV; took JFK to heart and energized the country with music, art and science.  Our biggest worry was the bomb and Kruschev's shoe.  We laughed off his threat of "We will bury you.", and were standing as proud Americans after the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What happened to us?

I remember my 8th grade American History class when a hall monitor came in and handed Mr Likens a note, he sat up straight in his chair, removed his glasses, and told us "The President has been shot."   The world changed on that day.  Camelot died with John F. Kennedy.  The idea of `containing' Communism in Indochina and liberating Cuba from it died with him.  The war in Viet Nam changed, Cuba was abandoned, and the Soviets went unchallenged in Eastern Europe.  

What happened to us?

As Lyndon Johnson cranked up the war in Viet Nam; usurping the powers of Congress in the process; and rolled out his Great Society and War on Poverty, the Soviets subjugated Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary.  The draft was cranked up, and most teenage boys were now worried about their lottery number rather than their grades or girls.  We turned our attention from what was happening outside the U.S., to what was happening within our own government.  The youth of the nation divided itself into two camps, those that believed in American `right', and those that didn't.  Muhamed Ali and Jane Fonda saw the mistakes made in Viet Nam, and chose to publicly oppose the war in their own ways.  Young men burned draft cards and fled their own country in opposition, and the term `conscientious objector' became common in our language.

Peaceniks, Daniel Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers, SDS, and Timothy Leary dominated the news as our generation challenged the power of Washington elitism, until Kent State.  The obvious waste of American youth in Viet Nam was tearing the nation apart in a generational way, and it finally got through to the President's conscience.  Lyndon Johnson, ultimately responsible for over 58,000 lost Americans; and the destruction of the lives of untold numbers more; disappeared from the public stage.

What happened to us?

Viet Nam changed America permanently.  Forcing young Americans to fight in a war with no intention of winning it ripped the country apart.  The military highway from Da Nang to LA became a pipeline for drugs from Southeast Asia's `Golden Triangle' to the U.S., and the American military became the country's first drug cartel.  Seabags of opium, hashish, heroin and marijuana came back to the country right alongside the body bags of young American GI's.  Viet Nam was a business, plain and simple; for both the government defense contractors making millions equipping two armies, and the smugglers getting rich from the drug traffic.  To this day, the words "Peace with Honor" uttered by Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State under Nixon create the same visceral reaction in me that Neville Chamberlain's "Peace in our time." must have given those paying attention prior to WWII.

What happened to us?

What happened to us was a major `hangover' from the war.  I do not believe the country has shaken it off, and today's political environment supports my theory.  The anti-war crowd of the `60s now runs our universities, the Socialist/Communist peaceniks of the `60s now work for, or run, our government at all levels.  While the rest of us were trying to forget the impact of Viet Nam on our lives, making a living and raising families; these folks set about to `change' America...and have succeeded.

The majority of our generation wants to forget what happened, the minority seized the campuses and the government while we weren't paying attention for nearly 40 years.  Now, the reality of that inattention is pounding on our doors.  The `boomers' are now in their sixties, and our legacy to our children is staring us in our `collective' faces.  THAT is what happened to us!  We have precious little time to make amends, our America is simply another casualty of the war in Viet Nam.  The cancer planted some 50 years ago is now 4th stage and terminal.