Americans aren't taught much about their own history anymore because all that stuff is old, you know, and of little use since society seems perfectly happy to keep making and then enduring the consequences of the same mistakes over and over and over again, And over.
And, as everyone knows, all the knowledge necessary for life is available 24-7 simply by asking Alexa or Siri or Google. Assuming you know the exact information you want to know.
Accordingly, one of the obligations of growing old, I've discovered growing old, is acting as a living resource for people seeking, accidentally, some historical perspective.
I have lost track of the number of times someone has asked me if today's contemporary political, economic, and social turmoil is as bad as it was during the Vietnam War, which they heard was a tumultuous time.
Truth be told, they're not really asking the question. With the limited life experience that may go all the way back to Ronald Reagan or even — Wow! — a president named Jim Carter, they think they are seeking confirmation of the answer they already think they know:
That today's turmoil is the worst ever.
Well, it isn't. Not even close. I was in university at that time. Universities were the hotbeds of war opposition. Not without reason. Those schools were packed with young, idealistic, and very naive people, whose male members faced the harsh, potentially lethal reality of the military draft the minute that their school's library card expired.
The era had demonstrations, sometimes peaceful, unless the instigators wanted to get their antiwar message on the evening news. It had kidnappings, bombings, assassinations, shootouts, urban riots. There was a palpable aura of unease, fear, and anger for years.
As a young reporter, I was covering a routine luncheon speech in New York City by a former Supreme Court justice. Suddenly, a sizable number of shouting war protesters burst into the ballroom wearing masks and swinging sharpened car antennas like rapiers.
They ran atop the head table, kicking off dishes and spewing vials of what looked like blood on anyone within reach. They threw pig heads at attendees. This sort of disruption became so relatively routine that it often barely became news
It was not a happy decade or so to endure, even for civilians. Just under three million Americans served in that theater, a half million of them at one time. Fifty-eight-thousand-two-hundred did not come alive. Some 1,562 remain unaccounted for.
The communists won anyway.
Now, we're a half-century out from the official end of that war. And Emerson College/NewsNation conducted a poll on whether it was all worth it.
That's the subject of this week's audio commentary. Click here to listen. Then please leave your own commentary in the Comments.
This week's Sunday column was another in the continuing series of Malcolm Memories, now numbering 30.
It recounts my experience of literally wearing $15,000 in $5's, $10's, and $20's into the war zones of Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975 to facilitate the lives of my fellow newspaper correspondents covering the chaotic end of those wars.
