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Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
I remember it. I also remember one of the prime objectives was to get the gumint off our backs and out of our private lives. Guess that failed.
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Wrong objective. Remember the attitude back then as the 60s started. Government could be trusted. Those born in the seventies will never know such a concept. Government, and especially the president, did tell the truth for the most part.
For example, Kennedy admitted his mistake in Bay of Pigs. Eisenhower's big lie was that Francis Gary Powers was not a spy pilot. Eisenhower eventually admitted otherwise. This honesty sharply changed with Johnson - Gulf of Tonkin. Gulf of Tonkin was an outright government lie that even decieved all but one member of Congress.
Nixon took lying to an all time record level that had never been seen in the 1900. His lie during the campaign that he had a secret plan to end the war. His treasonist backchannel communicaton with N Viet Nam to not make peace because Nixon, if elected, would offer a better deal. Nixon was lying so drastically that mail (and newspapers) both from and to the troops had to be censored. That's right. Americans in VietNam had their mail censored so that they did not get a full story from home. Even the troops in Nam universally knew their own brass could not be trusted. The 5 o'clock follies. That was when the older generation still maintained the President would not lie. So much so that Dean (President's personal lawyer) was universally demeaned by those over 30 for only saying what we now know to be the truth.
That was when a vocal minority of under 30 somethings said leadership could not be trusted. And so the younger generation discovered more lies from the 'establishment'. Mariguana was everywhere, in part, because the government even lied about that. Conflict even between age groups that did and did not smoke grass was quite explicit. Outright confrontation would occur between Sophmores who openly advocated mariguana verses Juniors who still believed mariguana was a 1st degree felonious crime. The breakdown in trust was that sharp and sudden. In reality, the vocal minority were problaby more correct they they really knew. But the majority of 30 somethings fully or mostly disagreed with those over 30 because the under 30 group had discovered that government lies - especially about VietNam, Watergate, drugs, and even the murder of students at Kent State.
We now know that minority was correct. Lying was so blatant that the public could not even be trusted with facts from the Pentagon Papers. It would have been business as usual if military troops would have stormed the NY Time and Washington Post offices because of the truth being exposed in those Pentagon Papers. Many actually made preparations at one time or another for a military coup. That really was the attitude created by lies from the Nixon administration. One reason why the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court wanted a unanimous verdict against the President on the tapes - he feared a military occupation of Washington. Times were that hot because government lied that much.
It was government attitude that the public could not handle the truth. Historical facts demonstrated the war and bombing were waged for reasons that did not exist. But the public could not be trusted. Outright government lying or deception was mostly a weekly occurance. That was the attitude of the 60s.
Most newspaper of that time would not report what Woodward and Bernstein were reporting. Back then, many over 30 editors could not believe that those Watergate stories were even possible. Too many over 30s still believed in a government before the 1960s - where such lying was not business as usual.
It had nothing to do with getting government out of our lives. That became the roll call of the 80s. The 60s were when America woke up to discover that even and especially the president was a crook. A man who would break into anyone's home or office - including Ellsberg's pyschiatrist and Dan Rather's. Watergate was but the tip of an iceberg that included VietNam, J Edgar Hoover, and some say even the murder of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. BTW even LBJ did not believe Oswald was the only shooter.
The 60s were when America learned how corrupt the government could really become. Nixon clearly the star crook. Getting government out of our lives was not a concept back then. The 60s were when Americans learned how much political leaders would lie to advance their own personal agenda - America be damned. Lying on this scale did not occur before the 60s.