After finishing the excellent Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam, I really only have one question:

[redgreenandblue]

How come are there right-wing boomers?

After 50k dead Americans, over a million dead Vietnamese, My Lai, Napalm, LBJ, Nixon, the cultural revolution and Woodstock, Kent State, the civil rights movement and MLK, can any person who lived through all of that as a young person go "meh, I'm a right-wing nationalist"?

In a sane world that wouldn't be possible. And yet, older white people are the GOPs most reliable voting block.

[kentuck]

1. They were taught to hate Jane Fonda.

It was all part of their grooming.

[Walleye]

2. They were that way back then. There is a great divide in that generation, born and raised

[bucolic_frolic]

3. GOP is tapping into their paranoia filter, flipping it from left to right

Both mistrusted government. They haven't changed, their focus on specific issues have.

Democrats need to turn voters' paranoia and mistrust against the GOP by focusing on the hateful policy agenda of the GOP.

[JT45242]

4. Fear of the browning of America

It's the racism. It's the demonization of 'welfare cheats' who were always portrayed as black or Hispanic women getting pregnant to make more money.

It's Faux news.

It's lazy reporting.

It's not realizing that the biggest welfare cheats in the country are the Fortune 100 and real estate investors who have made bribery legal and written tax codes to benefit the wealthy donor class of fortune 100 c suites and real estate investors.

But mostly...it's the racism .

[brooklynite]

5. A big aspect of nationalism is "America First"

. eg: Why are we getting involved in wars for people we don't care about?

[OldBaldy1701E]

12. Greed. (I know you know this already, but I had to say it.) (n/t)

[MarineCombatEngineer]

6. ....

In a sane world that wouldn't be possible. And yet, older white people are the GOPs most reliable voting block.

Not this older white dude, I went to Vietnam a repub. and came home a Democrat and have voted Dem. since then except for 1980 when I voted for Reagan, but then voted for Mondale in '83 and have voted straight Dem since then.

[Solomon]

16. Excellent

I grew up during that era as well. People like you give me hope. Always enjoy your posts.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

17. +100. nt

[Mad_Machine76]

35. What made you decide to vote for Reagan in 1980?

Out of sheer curiosity

[MarineCombatEngineer]

37. I was in still in the military and felt Reagan was the best choice

at the time for us, as a combat engineer, our equipment was old and out of date and he promised more funds for the military, but I quickly learned that what is promised and what is delivered are 2 different things.

I learned my lesson and the next election I voted for Mondale and haven't looked back since.

[albacore]

40. I voted for LBJ in 1964....and he was trying to get me killed. Reagan? Never! nt

[MarineCombatEngineer]

41. I had just enlisted in the Marines in '64, was still to young to vote,

but I did vote for Humphrey in '68.

Believe me, I learned my lesson with my wrongheaded vote for Reagan and have never voted for a Repig since.

[lastlib]

7. Many of that generation (older than me*) served in the military.

Where it was pounded into them to "luv 'Murica". The military turned them into rabid AmericaFirsters, and they stayed that way.


(*but not by much--I'm 65, missed draft eligibility for Nam by a couple years.)

[rampartc]

8. what went wrong with the 60s?

lbj and his "best and brightest " advisors were democrats and liberals. it was necessary to protest their policy in vietnam which led to the return of nixon.

nixon's solution to student protests was to degrade the value of education, with predictable results.

jimmy carter was blamed for nixon's bad economic decisions, leading to the reactionary administration of reagan.

but back to vietnam. my generation was bred and raised to fight a massive land war in asia. we were propagandized with patriotism and violence. the commies were atheist subhumans. the "common sense" at the vfw and legion halls (where the wwii veterans drank) was that "those liberals would not let our boys win the war. "

and inflation, the inevitable result of trying to fight poverty and the war by massive borrowing, was blamed on democrats and on the unions.

and don't forget civil rights was NOT seen as a positive among southern democrats. those democrats became republicans and abortion .......

[elocs]

9. From the time I was 11 until I graduated college, all I heard about every day was Vietnam.

In fact, I can remember when the country was Viet Nam, 2 words. Two of my childhood buddies went to Vietnam, neither were wounded, but one came back and was never the same again. Myself, I had a college deferment which kept me out and in the 2nd draft lottery my number was almost 360, so I was never going to be drafted.

I have not seen the Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam, but have enjoyed his others. But as a retired old duffer, I'm really still Vietnamed out. I do remember hearing a radio documentary some years ago and heard LBJ in a private phone conversation say that he did not want to be involved in the war because he thought it was a trap. At that time he had serious reservations about it. But now we know the rest of the story.

[Lovie777]

10. RWers "groomed" them to hate Liberals......

[fightforfreedom]

11. John McCain was a Republican.

He believed the Vietnam War was just his entire life. Hard to figure.

[spanone]

13. I lived through it all and have no idea how anyone could come out of it being a goper

[Duppers]

21. They were dumb & brainwashed even then.

[markie]

14. Country Music in the 60's, 70's

too many took this song literally.

[Zorro]

15. There were College Republicans and YAF dipshits back then

Few changed their stripes.

[H2O Man]

20. +1

[edhopper]

18. There were just as many in our generation

who hated us Hippies, and really hated MLK and the Civil Rights movement. Vietnam did not change the minds of the bigots of our generation. They embraced Reagan, who made it okay to hate black people.

[progressoid]

19. Why are there right wing young people today?

[Aristus]

23. Grooming.

Parents passing their hate down to the next generation.

[mopinko]

22. they're the white guys who didnt go, or

who werent grunts in the mud. they got a technicolor demonstration of their white privilege, and they’re never gonna give it up.

[Johonny]

33. Yah, not everyone went. The 1980s and early 1990s saw the convergence of three movements

The expansion of hate radio (which exploded after the fairness doctrine went bye, bye), evangelical Christianity (Reagan was the product of 40-60 years off that movement, but cable TV really allowed it to expand into northern white suburbs at this time), and finally FOX news broke the back of the former power brokers in media news (News switch rapidly from print (when's the last time people read a local paper?) to easy to digest FOX-lite stories. And all of this was targeted at white males of the boomer generation. It's not a surprise the movements and their propaganda worked. Did anyone really openly fight against it?

You have a well-oiled machine designed to make these people feel superior, feel fearful, and vote loyally for the GOP while getting nothing in return (and I mean nothing.) Remember white America lost a lot during this time frame and have been told GOP is fighting for them and those loses are liberalism made. Why they buy it? They only have themselves to blame.

[Paladin]

24. I remain proud of every anti-war rally I ever participated in.

And I participated in a bunch of them. I wish I could have saved my cousin (PTSD suicide after he returned home from SE Asia), but I've never doubted that I was on the correct side as to that fucking war.

[SYFROYH]

25. 1970s were a tough time for a lot of boomers.

Mortgage rates were 11+%, competition from overseas grew and we lost jobs, diversifying communities and workforces made life more complicated for white males, and general malaise.

And then Ronald Reagan came along.

[Ptah]

26. Be the first one on your block

Be the first one on your block
to have you boy come home in a box

[Sibelius Fan]

27. My older brother drew a high draft number. Got our minister to write him a CO.

Said brother has been a raving born-again since his freshman year, and a raving R since his sophomore year in college. 🤬

[Voltaire2]

28. A lot of us lost our fucking minds.

But basically only the older cohort of the boomers were affected by the draft (the draft ended in 1973, boomers born after 1955 basically weren't affected.) Also, we weren't all that radical as a generation.

However, I know more than one of my boomer acquaintances who just plain lost their fucking minds and went full on fascist.

[UTUSN]

29. K&R

[treestar]

30. I recall reading that in the 60s, the activists made the news

and had a lot of effect. But most of the young people were going to college and preparing their careers and not doing all that stuff.

I had aunts and uncles in that age group and they met that description. Not hippies or war protesters. Yet not particularly opposed to them. So when they got older, the got conservative as older people will tend to do.

One uncle is very conservative, always quoted. "you get conservative when you have something to conserve."

Another uncle got drafted and went into the army and didn't have to go to Vietnam because he is a big hulk of a guy and got MP assignment.

Aunt who got married right after college and started having the babies. Never a hippie or protestor or anything.

So it was no surprise to read that when it came down to it, most of that generation was not involved.

[uponit7771]

31. THANK YOU !!! After benging that series I think I had PTSD and disliked conservatism even more

[redgreenandblue]

43. Yeah, it is really disturbing.

Napalm, sheesh...

I just told my german relatives that the USA was super nice to Germany, compared to what the unleashed in Vietnam.

[GoodRaisin]

32. They were conned by Murdoch and Limbaugh. nt

[uponit7771]

34. +1,

[Hekate]

36. Here's how it went: our country won WWII and we were the Good Guys. It was inconceivable...

… that the country of which we were so proud could ever fight a bad war — or lose a war. We were patriotic — our country was the Good Guys, who put down Hitler.

When you say “boomers,” you see your grandparents. But at the time we were “the Baby Boomers” and were in high school, junior high school, grade school. High schoolers were feeling ripples of the world outside our bubble, but the only boy I knew who gave voice to the threat against our age cohort was my 17 year old boyfriend, who occasionally made morbid jokes about being “the first on your block to step on a punji stick.”

Then we went to college, and a new world opened up to us. My male cohorts eagerly sought college deferments. Some still got drafted, some went to Vietnam. But a lot who remained and stayed in college got to see our country and its place in the world in a whole different way. They saw the wrongness of this war, they saw the injustice at home, and they ultimately took their protests to the streets.

A lot of others didn’t get to go to college, but followed their fathers into a factory, and did not get a college deferment. That’s a big split. It said right off the bat that some lives and some futures were more valuable than theirs. But what they had — aside from a completely understandable resentment — was patriotism, pride in being American, and a sense that if Uncle Sam called you it must be for a good reason, and that to be a man at all, you should go.

Then they got sent into the meat grinder and died by the thousands. They thought the protestors were unpatriotic — but Uncle Sam had betrayed his soldiers.

But still, when you come home, how do you process this? Some went right and some went left. Either way they had to find ways to deal with the PTSD. Generational cohorts are not monolithic.

In any kind of world, sane or not, human beings are not monolithic — keep reminding yourself of that.

.

[redgreenandblue]

42. Interesting perspective.

Thanks

[Hekate]

44. You are welcome. It was hard growing up then -- for all of us

[NutmegYankee]

38. Some of it may just be how the brain is wired.

Seriously, there seems to be some brain patterns that link one as either left or right-wing.

[Emile]

39. Most if not all of them claimed they were spit on,

called baby killers and they hate Jane Fonda. As a Vietnam vet, I never was spit on etc etc.