As we mentioned last episode, public opinion was turning strongly against the Vietnam war by the late 1960’s. President Johnson’s administration was coming under more and more criticism for how it had handled the war, and for the first time in US history, people are going to turn against the soldiers themselves. For most of US history, soldiers returning from war were treated as heroes. Soldiers returning from Vietnam were often treated like criminals. This was a new, horrible thing for the soldiers, coming back to a country that regarded them with suspicion and even hatred.

And on top of that, the experience of the soldiers while in battle was horrific.

Much of the fighting was at night, at close range, in dense jungle, in horrible weather.

Well, last episode was kind of depressing, talking about JFK being assassinated and the end of American innocence. And this episode, well, I guess it’s in the same theme, kinda.

We’re talking about the Vietnam war, which is not the best period of American history. Divisive, unpleasant, and another turning point in the way America was seen by the world, and how it sees itself. This was originally going to be just one episode, but it was getting pretty long, so I’ve split it into two. I guess that makes some sense anyway, since the Vietnam war lasted almost as long as World War 1 and 2 combined, and I did a total of 22 episodes on those two wars. Kinda hard to condense Vietnam into one 20 minute episode.

In the last couple of episodes, we talked about the birth and rise of rock n roll, and how it shaped the modern world. The birth of Rock n Roll coincided with a kind of golden age for the United States. The US emerged from WWII with a booming economy, the most powerful military in the world, and a manufacturing sector that had been kicked into high gear by the war. So the 1950’s and the early 1960’s were a time of growth and prosperity for the US.

And of course, after the war, as one of the two world superpowers, the US took a leading role in the politics of the western world, and the politics of containing the other superpower, namely, the Soviet Union.