PART ONE
From Heroes to Zeros
-America goes from the Heroism of WWII, to the ambiguity of the Cold
War but optimism for the future, to the fear of "the bomb" and
Carter's "malaise"
I missed the righteous cause of World War Two. I was not around when Truman
girded us to defeat communism. Fortunately, I missed McCarthy's day
in the sun. I had yet to cry my first cry when MacArthur made such a mush
of his war in Korea after which that old soldier just faded away.
I didn't get to hear JFK extol us to ask not what your country can
do for you (and later, I wasn't even paying attention when LBJ reversed
that question). I also wasn't there when JFK excited the minds of
the country into joining the space race against the communists in Russia.
I was but a babe clutching at my bottle, mewling to my Mother when he
was assassinated… but at least I had made the scene at last.
By the time I was in short pants and crew cut and sent off to school,
"duck and cover"2 had
gone by the wayside. MAD (mutually assured destruction) had long since
destroyed any sense that a nuclear bomb attack was survivable. The Cold
War had been raging for so long that we all assumed it wasn't a matter
of "if", but one of "when" the Russians would attack.
From before I was born into this world until the day Moscow fell (or was
it pushed?) away from communism, Americans lived under a constant threat.
That threat was simply called "the bomb". Our best face on the
situation consisted of being satisfied that if they tried to start a war,
we would obliterate their entire country in retaliation and perhaps, just
perhaps, that threat was enough to keep them from starting it in the first
place. But it was little consolation what with the radiation poisoning
and nuclear winter that was in store for those who made it through the
initial blasts. And we were pretty sure there wouldn't be too many
of us that made it through that first blast, in any case. The media gave us "doomsday
clocks"3 and constant polls
about how much schoolchildren worried about "the bomb" year
in and year out.
But, we tried to push that into the backs of our minds. A nagging worry that was always present but one turned away from as too horrible upon which to dwell. Instead of films on "the bomb" in my school in the late 60s and early 70s we were warned about the evils of "Mary Jane" and LSD in our educational films. I remember seeing the film of birth defects from Mothers who were junkies. One poor baby born with just a button of flesh where its nose should be and no other features art all. No mouth, no eyes, no ears, nothing. It was quite a grotesque image for a 14 -year-old boy to see, really.
I remember a small bit of the counter culture but Woodstock was not in
my day. Oh, I still remember kids being called "hippies" by
my elders, but then, I was in the Midwest and we all know the Midwest
is often 5 years behind the coasts and the genesis of pop culture and trend.
And the only reason that I remember the riots of the 60s was because my
Father was a big city policeman and he was in the midst of them more than
once.
Home|Prelude|Part
1|Part
2|Part
3|Book
1|Book
2|Book
3|Book
4|Book
5|Book
6
Book
7|Book
8|Book
9|Book
10|Book
11|Book
12|Epilogue|Footnotes