You might want to look at the editors of the Chicago Tribune’s account of 1968, shortly to be fifty years gone. They preface it with this admonition:
There’s a difference between nostalgia and sober reflection. The arrival of 2018 will bring an unusually powerful cocktail of both: It marks a half-century since 1968, one of the most consequential, dramatic years in American life.
No single event will drive the commemoration, such as Pearl Harbor in 1941 or 9/11 in 2001. What made 1968 significant was its nonstop, extraordinary tumult that resonates to this day — a riot of struggle and doubt, of assassination and rebellion, of outrage and paradox…
I can only hope that they’re wrong. I wouldn’t want to live anything like that year again. It was probably the most miserable year of my life.
What actually concerns me is that what is likely to defend us from such a “commemoration” is the incredible passivity of Americans in the 21st century.
I’d have to say the social troubles in 1968 came from a place we’ll never be again. The Vietnam war, and the draft. The two notable assassinations may not be connected to that, except that MLK’s death MAY have been because of his perceived communist beliefs, The official reason for the Vietnam war, (opposition to communism).
A very good question for those who believe Vietnam to have been a waste: Communism was being promoted around the world, insurrections supplied with arms. Cuba fell first. True communist believers thought they were fighting for a cause. Was our military intervention unnecessary to stop the spread of this totalitarianism?
For me, our effort in Vietnam should have ended better, but was no waste. For our sacrifice drained the resources of the C.C.C.P., and discouraged intervention elsewhere. Also hastened the demise of this bankrupt philosophy.
We’ve had 50 years of anyone stepping out of line being punished, so the passivity is to be expected.