There are graphics simulating push notifications of 1968 news every few paragraphs, captioned "Photo: Associated Press". They animate only once, so try reloading? I agree that it animates a tad too quickly, and that the animation really isn't needed.
I think figgis may be responding in a sarcastic way and trying to point out that those are not animated gifs, but are actual HTML page elements, animated with CSS. If you view on desktop and use a browser DOM inspector (like Chrome Dev Tools) you can verify that this is the case. To be honest I'm quite impressed that NYTimes went this length to create these technical widgets. Do they have software engineers or web de…
> I think figgis may be responding in a sarcastic way
Was not intended, just curious. But that would be why I couldn't find it.
I'm seeing a body of growing evidence that the long-term fracture was due to the War in Vietnam: * it created anti-government groups like the Weathermen * it spurred activist groups on campuses around the country to stage admin building take-overs, sit-ins, and attempts to disruption to the war draft * it created a group of Veterans-- like John Kerry-- who came back and described for the general public horrific war c…
> it created an even larger group of veterans who came back and described a war which-- even if the serviceperson believed in the aims of the U.S. gov't-- was clearly unwinnable Was it really "unwinnable"? I watched "Vietnam in HD" which is a fantastic series if you're into that kind of thing. It is a difficult watch at times. What I gathered from that is most people seemed to blame the "seek and destroy" tactic. Thi…
Correct, if crushing the enemy was the goal, the only way to win was to take over cities, land and controlling as an occupying force. The military had oppressive and crippling rules of engagement put on them when fighting a guerrilla style war.
The alternative with political pressure would have been to work with China and Russia which at the time, communism was the biggest threat, so that wasn't an option.
I'm seeing a body of growing evidence that the long-term fracture was due to the War in Vietnam: * it created anti-government groups like the Weathermen * it spurred activist groups on campuses around the country to stage admin building take-overs, sit-ins, and attempts to disruption to the war draft * it created a group of Veterans-- like John Kerry-- who came back and described for the general public horrific war c…
> it created an even larger group of veterans who came back and described a war which-- even if the serviceperson believed in the aims of the U.S. gov't-- was clearly unwinnable Was it really "unwinnable"? I watched "Vietnam in HD" which is a fantastic series if you're into that kind of thing. It is a difficult watch at times. What I gathered from that is most people seemed to blame the "seek and destroy" tactic. Thi…
It was unwinnable not because of the tactics used but because the war was a hollow gesture: we weren't supporting a viable, legitimate RVN, but rather a corrupt government that lacked the support of its people (and, at times, actively persecuted important factions of its people).
I've recently read an account of that time by UC Berkeley professor and it was terrifying: young men terrorizing and using violence towards students and professors during classes, setting fire and planting bombs/dynamite on university buildings, openly calling to killing policemen on radio stations. It seemed like their program was pure anarchy and destruction.
Why not link that account? Mentioned in another comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program > Military intelligence officer K. Barton Osborne reports that he witnessed the following use of torture: > > The use of the insertion of the 6-inch dowel into the canal of one of my detainee's ears, and the tapping through the brain until dead. The starvation to death (in a cage), of a Vietnamese woman who was susp…
> That professor may never know even just one first-hand account of a person murdered as they looked away, and in turn may never know the life they actually lived. People don't like to hear that, but sometimes, who you think you are is just a shiny consolation price for being distracted from what you're actually serving.
The professor was a declared lefist since the 30ties, but, having witnessed Stalinism first-hand, he was very opposed to blind and brutal use of "revolutionary" force. Actually, by his account, most of the other professors were very conforimist in caving in to the anarchists' violence and appeasing their demands.
I'm seeing a body of growing evidence that the long-term fracture was due to the War in Vietnam: * it created anti-government groups like the Weathermen * it spurred activist groups on campuses around the country to stage admin building take-overs, sit-ins, and attempts to disruption to the war draft * it created a group of Veterans-- like John Kerry-- who came back and described for the general public horrific war c…
> it created an even larger group of veterans who came back and described a war which-- even if the serviceperson believed in the aims of the U.S. gov't-- was clearly unwinnable Was it really "unwinnable"? I watched "Vietnam in HD" which is a fantastic series if you're into that kind of thing. It is a difficult watch at times. What I gathered from that is most people seemed to blame the "seek and destroy" tactic. Thi…
I don't think it was winnable.
Based off of experience in Korea, US didn't want China to enter the war. To avoid this, the US couldn't commit to full-scale of invasion of North Vietnam, which I believe would have been necessary for victory. Without a full scale invasion, they thought that they could 'tickle' the enemy into submission by aerial bombing of the North combined with ground-army defense of the south. I believe they were over optimistic.
It's easy to say "yeah, if the US had more manpower and/or crossed into North Vietnam and/or used different tactics we could have won!" and maybe that's true, but proponents of this view often fail to consider the entry of China as a possible outcome.
It says radio tv and papers were it, then. Having lived pre internet news days i am a minority that can truly describe how it was a different world back then. Our world is so much better because tv radio and newspapers matter so much less. We have to think for ourselves and decide which topics are newsworthy:not have others coax and decide what is important. Long live the internet
I graduated from high school in 1968 and I find that media and its contents including the internet are more centralized and homogeneous now than they were then. The internet did not not just add to the mainstream media, it replaced some of its most interesting parts and replaced much the underground media that existed alongside it. In those days it was not just Time/Life/Newsweek/ABC/NBC/CBS,
you could also find on the newstand left- and dissident
journals like Ramparts and Evergreen Review, and their right wing counterparts. And, some of the contents of the mainstream media itself were higher quality and more varied.
Compare a current issue of Esquire or Rolling Stone - now mostly entertainment industry promotion and fluff - with a 1968 issue, where they had very long articles by authors like Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Oriana Fallaci, and many more. Beyond that there was a thriving world of underground papers and newsletters with contents ranging from sharp and pertinent to crackpot, with odd and sometimes wonderful DIY production and design. Not just print media - the FM radio station I listened to was literaly underground, their studio was in a church basement. People organized huge demostrations using these DIY media.
Yes, it is probably easier now for a random person to get their opinions in front of a lot of eyes, but most of these carry little information, they mostly just repeat what the writer has seen/read elsewhere - and it appears on the same homogeneous platform with everything else. It takes a bit more energy and ingenuity to express your opinions or self-expression in a self-published mimeographed or xeroxed newsletter, but it contributes more variety and might even make a bigger impression.
> it created an even larger group of veterans who came back and described a war which-- even if the serviceperson believed in the aims of the U.S. gov't-- was clearly unwinnable Was it really "unwinnable"? I watched "Vietnam in HD" which is a fantastic series if you're into that kind of thing. It is a difficult watch at times. What I gathered from that is most people seemed to blame the "seek and destroy" tactic. Thi…
I don't think it was winnable. Based off of experience in Korea, US didn't want China to enter the war. To avoid this, the US couldn't commit to full-scale of invasion of North Vietnam, which I believe would have been necessary for victory. Without a full scale invasion, they thought that they could 'tickle' the enemy into submission by aerial bombing of the North combined with ground-army defense of the south. I bel…
That's certainly true. It was definitely a proxy war and iirc the North definitely received, at a minimum, support from China. I'm not incredibly well versed on the subject, especially the geopolitics at the time. Perhaps with all of that considered, the US was hamstrung a bit.
I'm seeing a body of growing evidence that the long-term fracture was due to the War in Vietnam: * it created anti-government groups like the Weathermen * it spurred activist groups on campuses around the country to stage admin building take-overs, sit-ins, and attempts to disruption to the war draft * it created a group of Veterans-- like John Kerry-- who came back and described for the general public horrific war c…
> it created an even larger group of veterans who came back and described a war which-- even if the serviceperson believed in the aims of the U.S. gov't-- was clearly unwinnable Was it really "unwinnable"? I watched "Vietnam in HD" which is a fantastic series if you're into that kind of thing. It is a difficult watch at times. What I gathered from that is most people seemed to blame the "seek and destroy" tactic. Thi…
The Pentagon Papers were originally commissioned as a way of reinforcing the war effort and tuning it to find a way to win. They ended up being, among other things, a compendium of the reasons why that outcome was very unlikely.
The US has always been fractured, the country wasn't even created by choice as much as necessity. The whole Electoral College system is in place to keep it politically unified.
There comes a point were States like New York and California are better off alone. As it stands today large parts of the US are underrepresented. A suburb in Miami is more important for the presidential election than all the votes in NYC.
I'm seeing a body of growing evidence that the long-term fracture was due to the War in Vietnam: * it created anti-government groups like the Weathermen * it spurred activist groups on campuses around the country to stage admin building take-overs, sit-ins, and attempts to disruption to the war draft * it created a group of Veterans-- like John Kerry-- who came back and described for the general public horrific war c…
> There is just no other way the national guard would be deployed and end up firing on students without the war. Oh? The Michigan National Guard did quite a bit of shooting during the Detroit riots of 1967.
Looters versus unarmed peaceful protest in broad daylight?
And I think it was even common sense back then that breaking curfew was dangerous.