As soon as the 60s ended, it seems many things began to change. In 1970 alone, the Beatles broke up, Jimi Hendrix died, Janis Joplin died as did Jim Morrison of the Doors. Things seemed to be going downhill.
The first Earth Day was in 1970, but beyond that, we Americans were still tearing up the environment left and right. Our cars were bigger than ever and they used more gas the ever – but no one cared, because the supply seemed unlimited and cheap. So what if a river in Cleveland started on fire because it was so badly polluted. Cleveland was in Ohio somewhere wasn’t it?, and, anyway, it was only one river.
On one of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” shows, a Sunday evening TV program that habitually had controversial guests and aired controversial opinions, the members of the cast in a skit about road building declared the entire nation, finally, “paved,” meaning one could now drive anywhere in one’s automobile. It was humorous but it actually seemed like we were getting to that point.
Tricky Dick Nixon was in the White House, having been elected after whipping up the “silent majority” in 1968. He easily beat the milk-toast Hubert Humphrey – after an assassin killed Bobby Kennedy and the electorate decided Eugene McCarthy was too liberal, and after Lyndon Johnson decided, probably out of shame, he would not run again after 57,000 Americans died in Vietnam and millions of Vietnamese were killed.
In some respects, it seemed people had given up. The newness and hope of the 1960s suddenly left us and we were back where we started from – back to the future, as it were – with Nixon, his buddies, and their 1950s mentality. (I think this was borne out because in the 1980s after a trial balloon with Jimmy Carter, the nation elected Ronald Reagan who deepened the 1950s mentality during his two terms as president.)
The first Earth Day was in 1970, but beyond that, we Americans were still tearing up the environment left and right. Our cars were bigger than ever and they used more gas the ever – but no one cared, because the supply seemed unlimited and cheap. So what if a river in Cleveland started on fire because it was so badly polluted. Cleveland was in Ohio somewhere wasn’t it?, and, anyway, it was only one river.
On one of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” shows, a Sunday evening TV program that habitually had controversial guests and aired controversial opinions, the members of the cast in a skit about road building declared the entire nation, finally, “paved,” meaning one could now drive anywhere in one’s automobile. It was humorous but it actually seemed like we were getting to that point.
Tricky Dick Nixon was in the White House, having been elected after whipping up the “silent majority” in 1968. He easily beat the milk-toast Hubert Humphrey – after an assassin killed Bobby Kennedy and the electorate decided Eugene McCarthy was too liberal, and after Lyndon Johnson decided, probably out of shame, he would not run again after 57,000 Americans died in Vietnam and millions of Vietnamese were killed.
In some respects, it seemed people had given up. The newness and hope of the 1960s suddenly left us and we were back where we started from – back to the future, as it were – with Nixon, his buddies, and their 1950s mentality. (I think this was borne out because in the 1980s after a trial balloon with Jimmy Carter, the nation elected Ronald Reagan who deepened the 1950s mentality during his two terms as president.)
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