What years did you feel that our collective innocence was lost?

[coloradodem2005]

1968-Vietnam really spun out of control. Riots at the Democratic convention. Nixon elected.

1980-Reagan elected. John Lennon shot.

2001-Bush 43 inagurated, starting one of the most evil presidencies in history. 9/11 and perpetual war from that.

[Dookus]

1. I don't buy the argument

that we ever HAD collective innocence.

The country that endured slavery, a brutal civil war, never-ending political intrigue since the very first days of the republic, segregation, and a host of other ills was never "innocent".

BUT.... if you want to point to the origins of modern-day political cynicism, I'd start with Nixon.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Perhaps you are too young to remember the innocence

of the 50's and 60's. JFK's death caused a big change in us.

[Aidoneus]

12. What about that do you consider "innocence"?

[Dookus]

14. I'm sure it did

but I'll be 43 years old next week. Granted, I was only 2 when Kennedy was killed.

My point was that any "innocence" was an illusion, probably a willful one. Middle-class white Americans perhaps were "innocent", but everybody else was aware that America had always fallen short of the promises it made to all its citizens.

I believe that after WWII, and the relative peace and prosperity of the 50's (Korea being the big exception) that middle-class Americans might've gotten complacent. But if they were innocent, it was because they simply refused to look around.

[DemBones DemBones]

21. Happy birthday in advance. I take your point that our innocence

was an illusion but I was really thinking of our innocence that thought nothing of the sort would happen here in modern times.

I was a junior in high school in 1963 and not unaware of the things the US had done wrong in the world, particularly as I had always been very concerned about the treatment of American Indians. I'd also lived in the Philippines and learned something of other cultures, and I read "The Ugly American" while living there, though I was only ten. My father had the book, which naturally interested him as he always tried to get to know the people of different cultures whom he met.

At the same time, I was aware of wrongdoing by other countries as well. The brutality of the German and Japanese enemies we faced was understood to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the internment camps here. We liberated the Philippines, we liberated France, Germany, Italy; we were the heroes, the good guys. We are STILL the heroes in other countries, to those old enough to remember. I saw and heard the gratitude in the Philippines in the 50's, heard it again in the UK and in Italy in the 90's. I suspect that even though Bush* is wildly unpopular in the rest of the world, there is still gratitude to us among Italians, Brits, Filipinos, and others who are old enough to remember being liberated by the US in WW II. People resent Americans sometimes but they also appreciate that we have helped them and that we seem to be a people of good intentions. Our former enemies, Japan and Germany, are doing well today so we must have done something right in the years we occupied those countries (not that we don't have bases there still, but they were once Occupied.)

I suppose that a part of our innocence was and is that we have never been an occupied country, never had to fight invaders. (Unless, of course, you count the South being occupied by the North, which Southerners do and which Northerners never understand. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.)

[PROGRESSIVE1]

44. I must agree. "Collective Innocence" NEVER existed.

[mirandaod]

2. JFK assassination

I think that really started it. 1968 was a disasterous year for lost innocence - losing MLK and Bobby Kennedy, as well as what you mentioned above.
1973 - watergate.
My first son was born 18 Jan 1981, and we watched Reagan take office on the 20th from our hospital bed. I cried for my son.
2000 - the stolen election, and all that has happened since.

[shraby]

3. I agree that it was the JFK

assassination. That was devastating and the beginning of extreme distrust of the government exacerbated by Nixon and it's been pretty much downhill from JFK.

[JohnnyRingo]

5. Kennedy

I think that was the first time they sneered at the public and told us ...Case closed, get over it.
It worked ....that time, the next time, and every time.

[lapfog_1]

13. Nov 22, 1963

So many things would have been different if Kennedy lived.

Maybe not all of them good, but I think on the whole, the children
of the sixties lost their "innocence" in the killing of JFK.

Even then, people thought the government was not telling all that
it knew, and LBJ really was talked into escalating Vietnam, and
all that followed.

JFK was a rare individual that could bridge between the WWII
generation and their children, after he was gone, the younger
generation lost ALL trust in their parents... maybe that would
have happened anyway, but we'll never know. After 8 years
of JFK, we might well have had 8 years of RFK...

[ElsewheresDaughter]

34. mirandaod I AGREE! ...JFK, MLK and Bobby &Vietnam killed innocence

2000 selection pissed on its grave

[marzipanni]

45. That feeling that an event holds some portent

happened to me when, on December 8, 1980, I was in my friends' car to go to dinner to celebrate my 30th birthday and we heard on the radio that John Lennon had been killed.
It happened again on my 50th birthday (December 9, 2000) when the Supreme(ly political) Court voted to stay the Florida vote count.
Of course 1963, 1968, and other horrible times added to the realization that our world was not as good as it had appeared to us as children, but people joke about 30 and 50 as being difficult birthdays to go through, and mine had their onuses alright!

[Aidoneus]

4. Jamestown, 1607

Nothing to lose.

[kodi]

15. close, that first winter at valley forge, 1776

the bloom was off the rose by then about "freedom"

[Zinfandel]

6. 1963!

[DemBones DemBones]

7. November 22, 1963, was the day I felt we lost our innocence.

We thought we had progressed beyond that sort of thing, were more civilized than that.

December 12, 2000, had the same effect on me: again, I kept thinking, "This can't be happening in the United States." In a way, it was much worse than JFK's murder, being, in my view, the death of our democracy. And the Selection has been the gift that keeps on giving.

After JFK's death, when LBJ ratcheted up the war in Viet Nam, there was a lot to be upset about but we never feared the Viet Cong showing up in our cities to kill us. I find these days much more frightening. Mornings, I turn on the television news to see if the rest of the world still exists. I would like to move to another planet, away from the wars on Earth. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a child today.

[King_Crimson]

33. And I just cannot help but feel....

that in some way, a Bush was involved with the death of JFK. Can't prove it, obviously...but you know how you get those "gut feelings." After all, the old man was in the employ of the CIA back then and has admitted that "he doen't remember where he was or what he was doing on that day." I certainly have my suspicions.

[eileen from OH]

8. I can point to not just the year

but the day. June 5, 1968. I really admired JFK, but it was the assassination of RFK that was, for me, the day that "the music died" It was the culmination of so many shattered dreams. I remember when JFK was assassinated, and the horror of a nation. And MLK. But when Bobby died, I was plunged into a deep depression and political apathy that has only been awakened this year.

Both brothers had warts and foibles, and faults, but RFK had such HEART. I still remember the photos of his face as he toured Appalachia, when he discovered the poverty in which so much of America lived. Such devastation, and sorrow, and anger, written on one man's face.

I felt his death even more than his brother's for some reason and, though in many ways it is heresy, I think that it was his murder that killed innocence and "the dream" more than any other.

eileen from OH

[neebob]

9. You mean the kind of innocence

where the government can round up all the Japanese Americans and put them in camps and then vaporize two Japanese cities as a show of force to the Russians but say it's all to save American lives and most people not only believe that but think it's OK? That kind of innocence, if you want to call it that, is still going strong.

[Jim Warren]

11. Quite a run '63 to '68

JFK, X, MLK, RFK, and ending with Nixon in the WH

[LSatyl]

16. Um, what innocence?

The U.S. were founded on lands which were ethnically cleansed. The foundation of the country is genocide. There never was innocence to begin with.

[cyclezealot]

17. JFK was false hope after Eleanor's Roosevelts' legacy died.

We all must live through the cylces of our own lives..When growing up the aspirations of the likes of Sojouner Truth, Dorothy Day, or DuBois are forgotten for the drives of positive forces in each generation...The saint of our era, I consider to be Eleanor Roosevelt..Eleanor made way to the inspiration of Joe McCarthy..
We had thought the work of the Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King, or Robert Kennedy would bring on a new age..Only to see that new age in shatters by the likes of Attorney Generals John Mitchell or John Ashcroft.
The cycles of repression are spun throughout American history from Bacon's Rebellion, to the Haymarket Riot,to the Ludlow Massacre, to the Triangle Fire, to the Palmer raids..,McCarthy witch hunts.
Sojourner Truth's and Eleanor Roosevelts and Granny D's come along.But the struggle seems uphill.
THose living in innocence have not yet read of our history.
To keep our sanity we must find our heros...
Does not the AFL-CIO maintain a museum to the legacy of real American heros...Labor is really only a part of that legacy.....
We need maintain a museum dedicated to the hero figures of all our struggles,- labor, civil rights, civil liberties, women's rights. Is there such a place where we can learn of struggles of our freedom fighters from Nathaniel Bacon, to Frederick Douglas,Soujouner Truth, to Paul Wellstone..All housed under one roof...
Keep hope alive.

[murielm99]

20. Some here are calling it innocence, and others are saying that we

never really had any innocence.

I think what you are saying - hope - is what we actually mean.

The end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties brought about a period of great hope for many Americans. Those of us who are baby boomers remember it as a period of rebirth for the American dream.

We baby boomers were young, there were lots of us, and we, in our innocence, thought that we were going to change the world, with little opposition.

We are talking about our own innoncence being shattered, not that of America. America has never been innocent.

We could be entering another period of remewed hope. The Democrats are united as never before. If we win, Kerry could be our hero. Or, he could be someone we have to push hard to fufill our dreams.

If he does not win, we will still have our unity. Maybe some new heroes will emerge from that struggle. And you know it will be a struggle. * will think he has a strong mandate for repression if he wins.

I would like to think that some new heroes will emerge from the left to bring about some positive social changes, like full marriage rights for gays, and universal health care.

But some new heroes will have to emerge on the right, as well, to stop the destruction of their party, the dreams of endless wars, and the destruction of our economy by the neocons.

Maybe we need a courageous religious leader, to stop the polarization, and to bring the fundy wingnuts back into the family of true Christianity.

We probably need a few crusading journalists, to bring the media to its senses.

Remember, the sixties were a time of great violence and upheaval. There was a war, and a great deal of civil disobedience. We were questioning everything. Even the people who were not questioning everything were paying attention, wondering why we were doing so much questioning.

I think we will need some leaders to keep hope alive by taking us back into a period of civil disobedience. It will be harder this time, but it may be what we need. Yes, hope, not innocence.

[cyclezealot]

23. Muriel..

Just like my crusader, Dennis Kucinich was cut down by a cynical mediamedia fighting for its own monopoly; this media will do all it can to have new progressive leaders ignored by the body politic.
Look what Granny D did and end up arrested in the US Capitol.How well known do you think Granny D is after her walk across the country.
New civil rights leaders can't emerge when they can't be heard.?
The only way to get your message heard is possibly( except during the Superbowl) buy an ad and that takes speacial intersest money.Anyone here have enough.

[DemBones DemBones]

27. I haven't heard Dennis Kucinich give up.

I often feel there's no hope but I also know we never will get anywhere if we give up.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. I think you're right, Muriel

I was born in 1950, and I remember the feeling through the 1950s and early 1960s that the U.S. was on a roll and that things could only get better and better. Yes, there was that nasty spectre of nuclear war, but domestically, we were moving toward racial justice, alleviation of poverty, and awareness of the environment. I NEVER once heard my fellow young people talk about moving to Canada, because what was happening here was so positive.

JFK's assassination was a blow, of course, but it seemed like a horrible anomaly. What really made it clear that substantial change would never be permitted was 1968, when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated within two months of each other. It is no accident that both men were killed just after coming out as strong advocates of economic justice.

Ever since then, discussion of economic justice has been so taboo in the mainstream media that the Democrats have concentrated almost entirely on social issues. When Dennis Kucinich dared to put economic justice in his platform last year, he was subjected to a near-blackout of press and media coverage and dismissed as a "minor candidate" before a single primary vote had been cast. (I guess that's a "kinder, gentler" form of assassination.)

Our only hope is for activists to take over the Democratic party from the bottom up and refocus our efforts on using the tremendous wealth of this country for improving the lives of our people instead of on imperialistic adventures abroad.

[DemBones DemBones]

25. Wise words, cyclezealot.

Thank you.

I hope that children today still read biographies of Americans like those you mentioned (and many others.) I know that many of us have been influenced by biographies we read as kids, choosing to emulate some and not others we'd read about.

[demconfive]

18. I'd say 1968.

I remember seeing it in 1967 on top of our collective dresser.I remember looking for it in '69 and I couldn't find it.Have you looked under our collective couch?

[demconfive]

19. I'd say 1968.

I remember seeing it on our collective dresser in 1967.I remember looking for it in '69, and not being able to find it.

[DemBones DemBones]

22. I think posters are answering two different questions.

Some are taking the question the way I did, saying that November 22, 1963 was when we lost our innocence. Others are saying no, America was never innocent, it did all these evil things.

Well, yes, Americans ran the Indians off to reservations and Americans, like many others, owned slaves. All of us knew those historical facts on November 22, 1963. We might not have known all the ugly facts about this country's past that we know today but few of us thought our country was perfect. It was the innocence of the post-WW II years that we lost, the innocence of thinking that political assassinations in our country were things that happened in the past, that we had progressed beyond them.

[cyclezealot]

24. Innocence lost when not warranted.

Did we have our heads in the sand when Emmit Till,Viola Luizzo,the bus burings of the VOting rights movement..Those happened before Nov. 22, 1963. Innocence should not be lost, when not earned.
I remember the week JFK died..Recall, Adlai Stevenson went to Dallas one week before JFK's murder. Stevenson told JFK, don't go.Dallas is loaded with repugs..Adlai was hit on the head with a sign.
I recall the week of JFK's funeral..Blaming Dallas for its rightwing wacko's, the murder of JFK and the assault of Adlai Stevenson.
What innocence.?

[DemBones DemBones]

26. Were you not shocked by JFK's killing? n/t

[cyclezealot]

28. I was only like 14.

I was politically aware at 7..Remember watching Eisenhower/Stevenson debates when most kids were out trick or treating. Never a kid...But, I was a kid.
I recall Adlai Stevenson being hit on the head when JFK died..My grandfather adored Adlai Stevenson..So did I..
I recalled the hatred towards Eleanor Roosevelt,as told by my grandfather, by the hated nasty Republicans. I was aware of the deaths of the Civil Rights workers in the South. The legacy of Joe McCarthy..The Red baiting of Nixon in California when he ran for Congress...The reb baiting of organizations such as the Christain Anti Communist League.. The death of Medgar Evers.
Surprised when JFK shot..Depressed yes. Surprised. No.
Recall my mom got off work early.Thinking I was sobbing.
More dazed.She was surprised.
Other martyred progressives we need remember..Late Congressman Allard Lowenstein,(NY), an early Paul Wellstone. ANd a surprise.
Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme..A real peace maker.
DemBones..Good to have a conversation with you..
Is a difference between innocence and hope..
Listning to our hero figures, gives us inspiration..reason to contine the struggle.
THink Howard ZInn gave a similar reply when one high school student- lucky enough to have access to "The People's History" asked why hope when being cynical seems the order of the day...

[Strive to be Dust]

29. As in shattered illusions?

I suppose that it has to be different for every generation. I'd agree with the thought that the assassinations of the 60's were the most traumatic in recent history.
For me though, it was the failure of the Iran-contra hearings. A candidate had succeeded in illegally interfering sufficiently in foreign policy to throw the result of the presidential election and was not punished for it. And this a mere six years after Nixon's resignation. So much for a nation of laws and not men.
:cry:

[cyclezealot]

30. Strive.

yes, but we have Alzheimer's to the rescue..RR was lucky. "I do not remember." I blame a lot of the cowardess on Indiana U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton...Don't understand him..In the Contra hearings he cut Reagan some real slack..Said pursueing Reagan not good for the country..? BS!
I agree with the importance of the failure to pursue IRan-Contra and the BCCI scandal.. And a Democratic Congress!
ANd now we have to use Reagan AIrport( which I will not ! ) and eventually see Reagan replace Roosevelt on the dime.! Thanks. Lee Hamilton.

[Strive to be Dust]

32. I'd forgotten that.

Now he's on the 9/11 panel doing his level best to cover up still more GOP crimes. We should kick him and Lieberman out of the party so hard they bounce twice! I wonder what kind of payback he got last time that he was so eager to be the GOP's lap dog again.

[newyawker99]

35. Hi Strive to be Dust!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[spooked]

31. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it best...

Leaving Arlington Cemetary after the funeral of JFK, columnist Mary McGrory said to Senator Pat Moynihan: "We'll never laugh again..."

Moynihan replied: "Oh, we'll laugh again, but we'll never be young again."

[TX-RAT]

36. Fall of 69--- Stepped off the plane in Vietnam.

[starroute]

38. U2 incident, 1960 and Bay of Pigs, 1961

Kennedy's assassination was traumatic -- but it intially seemed to be "them," not "us." (Whoever "them" was -- early on, right-wing Texas oilmen seemed to be the likeliest culprits.) I certainly don't recall feeling any loss of collective innocence as a result. What was shaken was more the naive faith that America was invulnerable, similar to the disillusionment when the first Space Shuttle exploded.

On the other hand, the U2 incident was "us" from the start. I was 13, and for me, it was the first clear indication that the US wasn't necessarily the good guys.

Even before that, I'd known that much of the world seemed to be permanently pissed at us, but I put that down to Republican bumbling and heavy-handedness. The U2 incident ripped a veil away and exposed a lot of things about how the United States operated that were never meant to see the light of day.

Following U2, the Bay of Pigs was the nail in the coffin, which showed that things weren't necessarily going to be different even in a Democratic administration. The general cynicism level among people my age after that was amazingly high. By the spring of 1963, when my high school's advanced placement social studies classes visited Washington, we were astonished to discover that government officials and politicians weren't all blatant crooks and scoundrels but actually seemed to be well-intentioned.

When Kennedy was shot, I vowed to myself that I would *not* let this make me forget how disillusioned I'd become with his administration. But it seems like the nation as a whole really did undergo a collective forgetting.

[BringEmOn]

39. 1492 The day Columbus and his savages stepped ashore

But, if you're referring to the Leave It To Beaver, Donna Reed Show innocence of the 1950's and early 60's, I'd say 1963, the day JFK was killed and 1964, the day the Warren Commission Report was accepted as fact.

[ProfessorGAC]

40. During McCarthy

When the whole country was turned into one big witch hunt for the ideas people had when they were young, and the president(s) did nothing about it, the country was no longer innocent. After that, either you believed in McCarthy and couldn't trust the government, or you thought he was a charlatan given unchecked power, and couldn't trust the government.

It's been that way ever since.
The Professor

[troublemaker]

41. It depends on your age

My mother's big disillusionment was Eisenhower lying about Gary Powers. How quaint! Not really a scandal at all... why wouldn't the President deny a spy operation? But she was at the right age to be disillusioned.

[Petrodollar Warfare]

42. March 20, 2003

I'm 34, so JFK, Nixon et al was before my time. I think we have witnessed something remarkable in the past 3 years. We have gone from global sympathy on 9/12/2001 to global fear and loathing in 2003-2004. That epitomizes the "loss of innocence" from a truly macro perspective - and from a personal one as well. The reason the world community has turned against the US was in part due to the "America first" unilaterialism of the pre-9/11 Bush cabal. However, the unleashing of "Shock and Awe" via an unauthorized and illegal war of aggression in Iraq was the turning point for me.

March 20, 2003 - that is the day we forfeited our international stature.

That was the ugly day in which the US went from being a basically "covert" Empire to being an "overt" militant Empire, and is now regarded as a "rogue superpower" by the majority of world gov'ts and their citizens. This will likely have a very adverse impact on my life and my generation ("x"), as well as generation "Y"ers. I will be mid-life when the US loses its superpower status due to failed economics and a failed quest for global dominance. Indeed, this creates a bit of cognitive dissonance to realize that I will have a lower standard of living that my parents ("Baby Boomers"), but that generation lived in excess anyhow...but now Peak Oil is imminent, and 25 yrs of US administrations have failed to prepare us for that event.

Well, just like the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in Dec 1979 ultimately resulted in the collaspse of the USSR superpower, IMO, the US/UK 2003 invasion of Iraq will soon result in the economic collaspse of the other superpower (it won't take 10 yrs either). So, I guess I have lost some of innocence I once felt, but until the economic situation deteriorates here in the US, the "collective masses" will not see teh full damage of what we have done in a desperate attempt to prop-up our hegemonic status.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

43. We never had 'collective innocence'.