Word: vietnamization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age - say, 80 - all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver's licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic...
...most successful in Columbia Records' history; 7 of its tracks became Top 10 singles. Released at the height of Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign, the song "Born in the USA" itself was widely seen as a jingoistic anthem, despite lyrics expressing anger and frustration over the treatment of Vietnam veterans...
Every successful social movement has its defining images. Think of the civil rights movement, and the photos of protesters being attacked by police dogs and pummeled by high-pressure fire hoses. Or the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the video of body bags being beamed back to America's living rooms. Even environmentalism has its iconic images, like Cleveland's heavily polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in the 1960s, smog wreathing Los Angeles's skyline during the next decade and even the stark hole in the ozone over Antarctica. To help galvanize public support - especially around a complex issue...
...touching just about every corner of the world and every aspect of our lives, encapsulating it in a single image has proven elusive. You can't connect climate change to a natural disaster as simply as you can connect a napalm bomb, a running child and the war in Vietnam. That's made building and sustaining a movement against global warming so challenging. We can't see it yet, not quite - and we can't see its victims. But by the time we can, it will be too late...
...baby boomers were historically fortunate: they missed the Great Depression and World War II, and though they grew up with the hideous ambient hum of potential nuclear Armageddon, until they reached middle age, the only great national trauma was the one - the '60s and Vietnam - in which they were the self-regarding stars. The so-called millennials, on the other hand, have come of age during a period defined by the digital revolution, 9/11, financial bubbles bursting, a possible depression and the election - possibly their election - of an African-American President: the makings, frankly, of a healthier, more useful generational...