Reply #30: The political alignments were different ... [View All]

[TahitiNut]

... and the domestic economic conditions were far less severe.

In the 60's, there were "anti-war" constituencies of all partisan types: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. The congruency of "left" as Democrat and "right" as Republican was far, far less clear. There were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Viet Nam, rightly or wrongly, was largely seen as "Johnson's War" -- and was a huge, shadowy monster looming over any guy born between 1940 and 1952. The draft was almost universally seen as unfair and inequitable - highly variable from community to community, exempting women and favoring the sons of the well-connected and wealthy who could afford to get student ("professional students") deferments or occupational deferments. Even those medical conditions which might disqualify a guy from serving were far more likely to be detected in guys from families able to afford good care than guys from working class families. (It turns out that my congenital scoliosis of the lower lumbar would've probably gotten me a medical deferment - but I never knew I had it, other than by implication, until I was in my forties.)

Economic equity was approaching the best we had, it turns out, in the history of the country. The "War on Poverty" had a positive impact; the "middle class" was vigorous; and the progressive tax structure kept the obscenity of wealth in check. The federal minimum wage (see below) was higher in 1968 than it has ever been before or since, the income tax structure (see below) didn't favor capital gains and dividends while penalizing earned income to the obscene degree seen today, the federal debt as a percentage of GDP (see below) was at a post-WW2 low due to increased productivity and fiscal responsibility, and the Gini Coefficient (see below) was at 0.36 and getting better.

The concentration of media within heterogeneous global mega-corporations had yet to arrive and its regulation "in the public interest" was strong. There was a limit on the ratio of commercial/content time, a "fairness doctrine," and tight control on broadcast bandwidth.

Most significantly, the WW2 GI Bill was yielding massive returns. Prior to WW2, only the affluent upper class (and some maverick working class families) sent their kids to college - with the exception of "teachers colleges" which were actually regarded more like nursing schools: trade schools. The GI Bill made a college education (and a professional career) accessible to more than twice as many high school graduates. In less than ten years after WW2, the size of the college and university system in the US had more than doubled - a growth that continued into the 70's. Upward class mobility was the greatest in this nation's history! And the Baby Boomers were damned well going to take advantage of it! (An advantage that has been steadily eroded since 1972.) Viet Nam threatened this aspiration. Boom! The civil protest legacy of Civil Rights was in-place and ready to handle the activism. Campuses exploded in protest and it spilled into the streets.

It was successful. We abandoned Viet Nam. The "left" stopped speaking out and the "right" took over. We were fed a steady diet that associated the "left" with Bobby Seale, Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, and all manner of extremes. The moderate "leftists" never harvested the legitimate underlying issues and continued its efforts to make progress. After all, times were good, right?

That's when (1980 and later) the American body politic began to go under the knife and have a "leftectomy." We've been regressing ever since.