60s Counter-Culture without Vietnam

Is fun.
I have a good collection of magazine of 50s,Italians and Americans (thanks Ebay :rolleyes:).
Many articles speak to as are uninhibited the costumes,and to as the times are free.
Many talks about "corruption" and "decadence".
The homosexuality,male and female,is considered "rampant".
I understand that United States were a bit more bigoted compared to Europe (and Catholics countries are specialized in sin without sense of guilt thanks to the confession)...but... i not see this dark Middle Ages (maybe in Suburbia USA..maybe).
 
Really sad that this didn't have a better ending, that you didn't just leave your husband and go try to find a better life. But of course this is a time before the internet or any way to connect or really be aware of how to find whatever underground gay culture existed at the time. Really sad and hit me emotionally. Some things do indeed get better.

Where is Joanne Shith going to go? She has n oreal skills, she has no real work history, and she has no idea how to live without her husband and familiy, that and in that day and age as you said what does she know about her feelings and what they mean.

All she knows is that to herself she is a nonperson. someone without any real sense of self.

Wife to a man she doesn't love, mother to children that don't need her any more, Daughter to parents she has grown apart from.

Outside of that she has no self, no real personality.

Of course I am sure Athelstane and fellah's like that see no real problem with that.

She killed herself because to her at that point she really didn't have an existance anyway, so what was the point?
 

JoeMulk

Banned
Of course I am sure Athelstane and fellah's like that see no real problem with that.

I guess that its easy for someone to just be kind of heartless and coldly analytical and subscribe to some "duty" based philosophy when it's not there own life and happiness that they're talking about.
 
This just in: the 50s were racist, sexist, and homophobic. SergeantHeretic in particular would have had to put up with a lot of crap back then. So she really really hates the 50s. And we all should too.

So--what would the 60s counterculture have been like without Vietnam?

In short: in the US, fewer young people involved, and those not as militant. A lot of the same causes are still there, but everything probably happens a little more slowly and with less heat. It's still pretty tumultuous.

Also Vietnam goes Communist a lot quicker, with who knows what effect. Especially with who knows what effect on Soviet and Chinese foreign policy. It's just possible that an easy win in Vietnam makes them more ambitious, and we get a *Vietnam War in the mid-70s in Mexico or something. That wouldn't be nice at all.
 

RousseauX

Donor
With all due respect, Snake, I can't accept your premise. I really don't think most African-Americans are in jail on a race-decided basis, and I say that as an attorney with some experience in this area. If it's lack of access to quality counsel you mean, that's certainly a valid concern, but that's a class issue, not a race issue now. I *do* think that too many people are incarcerated, mainly for non-violent offenses - on that much, I suspect we all agree - but that's a problem that transcends racial boundaries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_War_on_Drugs
In 1998 there were wide racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and deaths. African-Americans, who only comprised 13% of regular drug users, made up for 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes.[1] Nationwide African-Americans sent to state prisons for drug offenses 13 times more often than white men[8], even though they only comprise 13% of regular drug users.[1]
 
What is the background behind this statement?
I don't know, but I sure would like to.

Honestly the feminist movement in America was a direct backlash to by American women who realized that we could be more and that we very much WANTED to be more than just empty vessels for a man's ambitions and needs.

We want to be people. We want to have our own minds and our own personalities.

We want to be able to look into a mirror and know who we are seeing their.

We want to be people. with minds and personalities and senses of humor and all the things men want and take for granted.

Even if we ARE someone's wife or mother, we don't JUST want to be that with that as the only thing defining us.

We want to be people, is that so much to ask?
 
Telling off the Old Man.

The cultural revolutions of the 1960's were inevitable. the Racial civil rights struggle, the Womans liberation movement, the Youth movement, all of them were GOING to happen due simly to the difference between the Basic American sense of right and wrong and basic fairness and what we were all expected to put up with from an enchreched wealthy white male dominating class.

All the rest of us wanted was a fair shake and when push came to shove we were going to call the old man out and get it.

The war in Vietnam and the way it was fought, (Open conscription of the largly non white and or poor white lower classes and mass defferments for the children of the entrenched upper class.) and what AMerica knew to be fundamentally right.

Even without that, you still have the manifest injustices and ineqities of racism, sexism youth marginalisation and elder hypocrasy.

(How long did they really think (Do as we say, not as we do) was going to fly?)

It was going to happen, it was just a matter of time.
 
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It sounds like SergeantHeretic and I are in basic agreement on what the 60s counterculture would have been like with no Vietnam War. That is, that given the other issues of the time, most of it would have happened anyway.

Only she wishes to emphasise more that the 50s were bad. And I emphasised more that without one of the major issues, the movement would probably have been a bit less militant and a bit less widespread.

However--even in the 1960s, the US was not the only country on earth, nor was US domestic policy the only issue that affected people. Presumably a US refusal to get involved in Vietnam would have meant a quicker Communist takeover. And no matter how much one wishes to concentrate on denouncing the 1950s in the US or praising the 60s reaction to it, early victory in Vietnam will affect Soviet and PRC foreign policy--most likely making them bolder. And this WILL sooner or later affect the US, probably negatively. Affecting the US negatively was kind of the point of Soviet and PRC foreign policy at the time.

Note that this applies even if Hanoi is a bit, or a lot, less hardline in TTL, what with much less war to deal with. The USSR was still taking world revolution a bit seriously then--and Mao was hardcore about it. A hypothetical lukewarm "Communism with a human face" in Hanoi wouldn't have stopped that.

By the way, if there are boat people leaving Vietnam like there were after the reunification in OTL (ie, if Hanoi is still hardline), the US nonintervention is going to be rather embarrassing. More so even than the boat people were OTL. Damn right the US opposition party is going to blame the sitting administration for being "soft on Communism", with a nasty refugee problem live on TV and no war weariness to make Americans not want to think about Vietnam.

NOTE: Whichever the opposition party is at the time. Without the Vietnam War, "soft on Communism" won't be an exclusively Republican talking point! Remember the "missile gap"? In 1960, Kennedy got elected in part on a platform of accusing Eisenhower and Nixon of being "soft on Communism." (And given their records in office, I think I would agree that JFK was honestly more anticommunist than Nixon.)

It was the Vietnam War, and counterculture opposition to it, that polarised the parties on hawk/dove grounds. No Vietnam War (and therefore military policy not being of top importance to the counterculture), this probably won't happen.

(Huh--I looped right back into US domestic politics again.)
 
This just in: the 50s were racist, sexist, and homophobic. SergeantHeretic in particular would have had to put up with a lot of crap back then. So she really really hates the 50s. And we all should too.

In 50s were many peoples racist,sexist and homophobic.
But in 50s were a thing that now,in USA,there is no longer:
A large,prosperous,dominant middle class.
Today we have many peoples racist,sexist and homophobic hidden by politically correct hypocrisy,but not more a middle class,
only a bunch of super richs that pay few taxes,and a large majority of impoverished citzens.

P.S.
You forget that between the 50s and the late 60s are another era,the bright JFK era,the early 60s.
even early 60s were the "kingdom of evil"?

So--what would the 60s counterculture have been like without Vietnam?

The Beatniks part II.



The cultural revolutions of the 1960's were inevitable. the Racial civil rights struggle, the Womans liberation movement

Absolutly,but without Vietnam war the process would be more slow and quiet,and probably more shared by all.
 
Personally, I think it would have been a good thing if the American war effort in Vietnam had either been a great deal less involved, or even had not happened at all.

After all, the Pentagon at the time and the civilian political aparatus in Washington demonstrably had no idea what they were doing or who they were fighting and the result of heavy AMerican involvement in Vietnam was in geopolitical terms indistinguisable from the results of us NOT getting into it. South Vietnam was conquered by the COmmunist North and we got exactly nothing for the buttload of blood toil sweat and tears we spent on that debacle.
 
What is the background behind this statement?

What do you mean, what is the background?

I explained up above in my response to Snake.

There are many reasons why minorities, especially African-Americans, are disproportionately incarcerated, and only one of them (and not the most important) is racial bias in the criminal justice system.

Even The Sentencing Project - not exactly the most right-wing groups one can find on this subject - essentially said as much. They identify some of the causes I'm talking about - decisions about allocation of police resources, previous criminal history combined with tougher anti-recidivist sentencing requirements ("Three Strikes, etc.), inadequate public defense resources, and so on. All of which has more to do with socioeconomic class than it does race. That's not to say there is not a relationship between the two - obviously the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow has something to do with why blacks make up a disproportionate share of the underclass. But what it does mean is that more efforts to try to strip out the remaining residue of racial bias in policing, prosecution, sentencing statutes, etc., is not going to solve much of the problem at this point.

One thing I think we're probably all agreed on is the need for more resort to alternatives to incarceration for most drug offenses. That's a starting point. But only a starting point. And it won't do much to accomplish the most important step in getting much of the African-American community access to the American dream, such as it is - rebuilding their families.
 
Hello DCC,

It sounds like SergeantHeretic and I are in basic agreement on what the 60s counterculture would have been like with no Vietnam War. That is, that given the other issues of the time, most of it would have happened anyway.

It certainly would have, in some form. By the time LBJ committed ground troops formally to South Vietnam in March, 1965, much of that was already underway. The Civil Rights Movement was already in full swing, and so much of the other countercultural movements were already well advanced.

What Vietnam did was to act as a fuel injection system for all of it.

By the way, if there are boat people leaving Vietnam like there were after the reunification in OTL (ie, if Hanoi is still hardline), the US nonintervention is going to be rather embarrassing. More so even than the boat people were OTL. Damn right the US opposition party is going to blame the sitting administration for being "soft on Communism", with a nasty refugee problem live on TV and no war weariness to make Americans not want to think about Vietnam.

If LBJ had not decided to intervene in '65, it's hard to think there would not have been a communist victory within the year. There had been a chance with Diem still power - not a big chance, but a chance...but once Kennedy removed him, there was no one else with even a pretence of popular support.

And if that happened, wed be faced with this dynamic you identify - a rightist "who lost Vietnam" dynamic. A dynamic which would probably work against what counterculture movement was still emerging. And it's harder to assess how that would have played out.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What do you mean, what is the background?

I explained up above in my response to Snake.

There are many reasons why minorities, especially African-Americans, are disproportionately incarcerated, and only one of them (and not the most important) is racial bias in the criminal justice system.

Even The Sentencing Project - not exactly the most right-wing groups one can find on this subject - essentially said as much. They identify some of the causes I'm talking about - decisions about allocation of police resources, previous criminal history combined with tougher anti-recidivist sentencing requirements ("Three Strikes, etc.), inadequate public defense resources, and so on. All of which has more to do with socioeconomic class than it does race. That's not to say there is not a relationship between the two - obviously the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow has something to do with why blacks make up a disproportionate share of the underclass. But what it does mean is that more efforts to try to strip out the remaining residue of racial bias in policing, prosecution, sentencing statutes, etc., is not going to solve much of the problem at this point.

One thing I think we're probably all agreed on is the need for more resort to alternatives to incarceration for most drug offenses. That's a starting point. But only a starting point. And it won't do much to accomplish the most important step in getting much of the African-American community access to the American dream, such as it is - rebuilding their families.
Are poorer whites of same income as average African-Americans sentenced at the same rate for the same crimes?
 
Are poorer whites of same income as average African-Americans sentenced at the same rate for the same crimes?
Thay is a good question, I want to know the answer as well are poor and or low income whites sentanced to the same or similar sentances as african Americans for the same crimes?
 
Rockefellers

I don't know, but I sure would like to.

Honestly the feminist movement in America was a direct backlash by American women who realized that we could be more and that we very much WANTED to be more than just empty vessels for a man's ambitions and needs.

We want to be people. We want to have our own minds and our own personalities.

We want to be able to look into a mirror and know who we are seeing their.

We want to be people. with minds and personalities and senses of humor and all the things men want and take for granted.

Even if we ARE someone's wife or mother, we don't JUST want to be that with that as the only thing defining us.

We want to be people, is that so much to ask?

Those are good points, although there are conspiracy nutters out there (like this Bill1224602 on You Tube who is the founder of the True Forced Loneliness movement) who say that the Feminist movement was funded by the Rockefellers to create division between men and women in America.

I agree more with what you said, though. A lot of the suppressing of blacks and women over the years was because of ignorance. Heck, I think some of it was from misinterpreting scripture in the Bible.
 
Those are good points, although there are conspiracy nutters out there (like this Bill1224602 on You Tube who is the founder of the True Forced Loneliness movement) who say that the Feminist movement was funded by the Rockefellers to create division between men and women in America.

I agree more with what you said, though. A lot of the suppressing of blacks and women over the years was because of ignorance. Heck, I think some of it was from misinterpreting scripture in the Bible.
That and many while males believingg that liberty is a zero sum game, to whit in order for them to have it non males and non whites must be denied it.
 
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