3 – In Memory of Insurrection

Read the previous post in this series.

Among the defining events of the 60’s were Kennedy’s election, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, the Beatles, Barry Goldwater’s GOP nomination, the emergence of Ronald Reagan as a political actor, the Pill, the Gulf of Tonkin and the Viet Nam War, Goldwater’s landslide loss, Civil Rights and Voting Rights, the anti-war movement, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luthor King, the Hippie movement, the War on Poverty and the return of Richard Nixon.

JFK’s election sparked renewed optimism domestically and internationally. The feeling was much the same as the jolt of elation the nation experienced when Barack Obama won. At first, Kennedy’s approach was cautious. He did not run as a change agent as much as he did to reinforce the idea of American Exceptionalism. The Bay of Pigs went ahead because he heeded his security specialists’ recommendations. He quickly learned the lesson of listening to them. Kennedy resisted their advice during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the early 60’s there was little to no mass resistance to international actions. The government repelled Fascists and stands as the premier world defender against socialists. After JFK’s assassination, that changed. Other factors played into the emergence of cynicism in our culture and public discourse. People believe that Kennedy’s evolution into today’s progressive prototype was the motivation for the still totally unclear plot that killed him. People could fairly call his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King just prior to his assassination, the founders of today’s Progressives. Still, it took Lyndon Johnson to implement the emerging progressive platform. LBJ’s move to escalate the Vietnam War after the Gulf of Tonkin (staged) attack may very well have given him the cover to avoid a similar fate. But the nascent Progressive movement was by the end of the 60’s pushed to the sidelines. Nixon won the presidency after engaging in treason as the decade petered out. The Hippie movement had run its course, and Boomers had taken up careers. Belief in future prosperity for America and the planet waned. The Civil Rights movement continued to scratch at old wounds, still unhealed after the Civil War.

The nation, and indeed the world, had changed; the brief Kennedy Camelot ended with unrest in the streets, a growing distrust of government, and the specter of Socialism had not abated. The light at the end of the tunnel did not get any brighter, and the Vietnam War dragged on. With the Seventies on the horizon, there was little hope, less optimism. Racial Justice even after Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation, was still a distant dream. Unbeknownst to everyone then, The Beatles were breaking up. Their wake left an unfulfilled musical and cultural revolution. The seventies just ahead would lay the groundwork for insurrection. A last triumph was still to be commemorated.