The shadow of the '60s
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/16/AR2011011603148.html
By Robert J. Samuelson
Sunday, January 16, 2011
"The period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received . . . in the
superlative degree of comparison only."
- Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"
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We are, it's said, living through the most wrenching period since the
end of World War II. Unemployment has exceeded 9 percent for 20
months, and it's unclear when it will decisively decline. Americans'
faith in the future has been shaken; a recent Gallup poll finds that
only one in seven thinks it "very likely" that today's children will
"have a better life than their parents." The feelings and facts are
genuine, but the conclusion amounts to historical amnesia. At least
one other period rivals the present for its disillusion and
contentiousness - the 1960s.
At first blush, the comparison seems absurd. The '60s were nothing if
not prosperous. The economy expanded for a then-record 106 months; by
1969, the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent. For job seekers, it was
paradise. "I didn't look for a job, the job looked for me," recalls
political scientist Alan Wolfe of Boston College, who received his
Ph.D. in 1967. That applied to almost anyone wanting work. Now,
graduating Ph.D.'s face "horrendous" prospects, notes Wolfe, as do
most job seekers.
But a strictly economic focus misses broader political and
psychological parallels. What frightens people today is that we've
experienced setbacks that were so completely unpredicted and
unimagined (financial panic, major bank failures, General Motors'
bankruptcy, huge budget deficits, collapsed housing values) that they
raise dark doubts about our institutions and leaders. The political
order seems unequal to the challenges. The stridency of debate
reflects fears that one political crowd or the other will yank the
country in a disastrous direction.
Precisely the same sort of breakdown occurred in the '60s, and
although the causes were very different, the consequences as measured
by public divisiveness and anxieties were as great or greater. "The
country was more divided than at any time since 1861, just before the
Civil War," says historian Allen Matusow of Rice University, author
of an acclaimed history of the '60s, "The Unraveling of America."
About two-thirds of Americans, born in 1960 or later, are too young
to have a firsthand memory of the convulsions of the '60s. Even for
many who lived it, the '60s have become a historical cartoon -
hippies, drugs and antiwar protests. What's forgotten is the era's
deep public and private acrimony.
Conflict isn't always bad. The civil rights protests early in the
decade produced the most significant legislation of the post-World
War II era: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination in
employment and public accommodations. But beginning with President
John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 and ending with
Richard Nixon's resignation in August 1974 - the real bookends for
the historical '60s - Americans were increasingly traumatized by
events that, at the time, were unthinkable.
No one thought that Kennedy's assassination would be followed by
others: Martin Luther King Jr.'s and Robert Kennedy's in 1968. No one
thought that urban riots, starting with the Watts section of Los
Angeles, would become a recurring summer threat. No one thought that
anti-Vietnam War protests (partially driven by students' fears of
being drafted) would mushroom into a major political movement. No one
thought that one president (Lyndon Johnson) would not run for
reelection and that another (Nixon) would face impeachment and
resign. No one thought that the economic boom would spawn ever-rising
inflation.
The toll on the national psyche was profound. Democrats, more than
Republicans, became bitterly divided. People felt threatened. Law and
order became a popular cause - from 1963 to 1973, the homicide rate
doubled, from 4.6 to 9.4 per 100,000 - and was sometimes code for
racism. In the 1968 presidential election, Gov. George Wallace of
Alabama campaigned on the backlash and received 13.5 percent of the vote.
Polarization was not just public. Families often split angrily. Some
early baby boomers, reared in affluence and largely ignorant of the
Depression and World War II, adopted political views and
counterculture lifestyles that infuriated their parents, who had
lived through the hard times and thought they knew better.
Activists were always a minority. A 1969 Gallup poll found that 72
percent of college students had never demonstrated against the war.
But the minority's high visibility fed the perception that America
was coming apart, with its privileged youth rejecting "conventional
middle-class styles of life" and impugning "the symbols of American
patriotism," Brown University historian James Patterson writes in
"Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974."
It was a wrenching era. Although dramatic differences separate then
and now, the history reminds us that we've been through this before.
It also allows for modest optimism. With time, luck and leadership,
America has the capacity for self-repair.
.
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