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.

The election of JFK signaled a new optimism in America and the world.  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. He followed the advice of his security specialists and allowed the Bay of Pigs to go on. He learned quickly 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. After all, our government beat back the Fascists and is the most powerful protector in world against the Socialists. After JFK’s assassination that began to change. Other factors played into the emergence of cynicism in our culture and public discourse.  It is believed that one of the motivations for the still totally unclear plot that killed him was Kennedy’s evolution into the prototype of today’s Progressive. His brother, Robert, by the time he was assassinated as well as Martin Luthor King just prior to his assassination can fairly be called the founding fathers of the Progressives in the 21^st Century. Still, it took Lyndon Johnson to implement the emerging Progressive platform. LBJ’s move to escalate the Viet Nam 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.  As the decade petered out, Nixon had been elected president after engaging in act of treason in order to win. The Hippie movement had run its course, and Boomers had begun taking up careers. The enthusiasm for the future of America and the world was petering out. 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 tunnel never got any brighter and the Viet Nam 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. The Beatles, unknown to all at the time were disintegrating. In their wake, a musical and cultural revolution was left unfulfilled. The Seventies just ahead would lay the groundwork for Insurrection. But there was one last glory to be celebrated.