Actually, I never thought I would be posting on this particular blog again and though it has been more than four years, here I am. The main reason why I haven't posted here was that the subjects I was covering had little to do with my book, "Rock and Roll Children," which I was trying to plug at the time. However, recently I read an article that pricked my attention and the more I have thought about it, the more I wanted to say something and after giving it some thought, I figured that the Real 80s would be the best place to post it.
In my previous posts, I have talked about the transparent successes of the Regan years. How all his economic "miracle" was that he brought back the same jobs that went away in the opening years of his presidency except only they now paid minimum wage. And because it was my big political hang up back in the 1980s, I wrote a post about his Contra war in Nicaragua. This time, I am going to talk about Regan's one big success that very few people know about, his vilification of the 1960s.
It was a journalist/writer named David, (I can't remember his last name) who first talked about how Ronald Regan vilified the 1960s. That was four years ago and this thought has lingered in the back of my mind ever since. About a month ago, I read an article that explained that the Regan believed the reason the US lost the Vietnam War was down to its lack of commitment to it. He hinted that liberal attitudes and the anti-war protesters contributed to this lack of commitment. The article reminded me of an occurrence back in college in the 1980s when a friend of mine, who was in a political group which embraced far left ideology. Like all college clubs, the group had its own little cubicle where things about the club were hanging all around its walls. One day, my friend was sitting inside the cubicle when a touring group of high school students happened by. Some of them took a look at the cubicle and seeing all of the ant-Regan cartoons and articles prompted one student to remark, "It's because of people like you we lost Vietnam." When my friend questioned "People like who?" the student retorted, "You liberals."
Looking back to the 1980s, I realize that those years were indeed spent vilifying the 1960s or at the very least, making the things which occurred in that decade some sort of fashion trend. As an anti- Contra aid protester, I and my like minded colleagues were often told that the 1960s were over. In the 1980s, it was believed that anyone carrying a sign was in a time warp and living two decades earlier. In my case, it was even more so because I dressed like I was in the 1960s with my long hair and Native American moccasin boots. What made it worse is that the words coming out of the White House back than made many Americans, especially impressionable younger ones, think that the 1960s were bad times. That free love, drugs and protest were all evil things that made America lose its way and that conservative Regan political leadership was going to be the only thing that would save the country. That is why the Regan administration was so keen to vilify the 1960s.
Did Regan's attempt to vilify the sixties actually work? For most of what I can remember back in the eighties, the answer was yes. Many people back then thought that protest, liberal attitudes and hippies lost the Vietnam War for America and set the stage for the moral rot many people associate with the 1970s. Furthermore, there was the added belief, aided by fading memories of the time, that if the US hadn't been swamped with the liberal attitudes of the sixties, it would have won the Vietnam War because the US had won every major battle in the war. This was further exacerbated by films in the late 1980s such as "Platoon," "Full Metal Jacket" and "Hamburger Hill." These films all gave the impression that America could have won Vietnam if it hadn't been for the opposition at home. Therefore, I take my hat off to President Regan's greatest achievement while he was in office, the vilification of the 1960s.
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