I maintain the Vietnam erasure has a lot to do with it going directly going against the story, or if you like the myth, of America which is so incredibly deeply entrenched in both right and left.
I agree that's part of it: it was a war that did no credit to its country, accomplished nothing of value in another, and conspicuously abandoned its veterans when they came home (a tradition that continued with Iraq and Afghanistan). It could not be made to fit any kind of heroic narrative and it was eventually, uncomfortably edged as far as possible under the carpet, although I agree with Mike Dawson and Chris Hayes that the major shift occurred post-9/11; the War on Terror needed a mythos to fuel its saber-rattling and it had one ready to hand which has come to dominate American consciousness ever since. I think poliphilo is also right that there's an element of generational uncoolness in play and there's something about the demonization of the counterculture especially that feels in tune with Reagan's '80's, that conservative backswing we have not yet gotten out of. 45 is not unprecedented in his coarsening of public manners. Empathy in the Reagan era was at such a state-sponsored low that the White House Press Secretary made homophobic jokes about the nascent AIDS crisis. Reagan himself popularized the racialized slur of the "welfare queen." Of course we are instructed to remember the counterculture with all its potential for social sea-change as a combination of irresponsible agitators and navel-gazing parasites; that is the best way the right wing has always characterized its opponents, everything that is wrong with America that will cause it to rot from within unless some real man steps in to save the day.
Facing the complicitness of such a large part of the population, from the generals down to the average soldier, in the wrongs before a right could be achieved isn't something the US was/is used to.
Generally, no. But it has beeen better at it than it is now. We would not have Vietnam-set movies with any nuance otherwise, and they absolutely and acclaimedly exist. This was not just a head-in-sand refusal to acknowledge the reality from the start. It was a regression and it has happened since protest songs of the late '60's were common currency among kids in my high school graduating class of 1999. I think that's why it makes me angrier.
[edit] It's like pre-Code movies. They're not perfect, but they can feel like a gift from another universe just because they admit the existence of heroes with drug habits or heroines who survived sexual assault or openly queer protagonists or non-tragic Jewish families or Black people with any agency at all. And then the Production Code did its best to scrub any traces of that world—the real world—away in favor of pure hegemony, white straight Christian heteronormativity with a chaser of sugared misogyny and American exceptionalism on top. And we have still not gotten out of its censoring shadow.
no subject
I agree that's part of it: it was a war that did no credit to its country, accomplished nothing of value in another, and conspicuously abandoned its veterans when they came home (a tradition that continued with Iraq and Afghanistan). It could not be made to fit any kind of heroic narrative and it was eventually, uncomfortably edged as far as possible under the carpet, although I agree with Mike Dawson and Chris Hayes that the major shift occurred post-9/11; the War on Terror needed a mythos to fuel its saber-rattling and it had one ready to hand which has come to dominate American consciousness ever since. I think
Facing the complicitness of such a large part of the population, from the generals down to the average soldier, in the wrongs before a right could be achieved isn't something the US was/is used to.
Generally, no. But it has beeen better at it than it is now. We would not have Vietnam-set movies with any nuance otherwise, and they absolutely and acclaimedly exist. This was not just a head-in-sand refusal to acknowledge the reality from the start. It was a regression and it has happened since protest songs of the late '60's were common currency among kids in my high school graduating class of 1999. I think that's why it makes me angrier.
[edit] It's like pre-Code movies. They're not perfect, but they can feel like a gift from another universe just because they admit the existence of heroes with drug habits or heroines who survived sexual assault or openly queer protagonists or non-tragic Jewish families or Black people with any agency at all. And then the Production Code did its best to scrub any traces of that world—the real world—away in favor of pure hegemony, white straight Christian heteronormativity with a chaser of sugared misogyny and American exceptionalism on top. And we have still not gotten out of its censoring shadow.