Not all liberals are "woke" radical "trans" activists.
Not all Christians are fundamentalist bigots.
And so on.
But yes the tendency is to see groups as represented by their loudest and most extreme members, and this tendency is easily and routinely exploited. Probably one of the best things anyone could do to reduce tensions in our society is to increase awareness of this tendency.
Not all liberals are "woke" radical "trans" activists.
Not all Christians are fundamentalist bigots.
And so on.
But yes the tendency is to see groups as represented by their loudest and most extreme members, and this tendency is easily and routinely exploited. Probably one of the best things anyone could do to reduce tensions in our society is to increase awareness of this tendency.
The period of the great divide of the 60s was the time of my formative years. There was more than one kind of war protestor. There were those who sincerely opposed war and wanted it stopped, and those who hated the warriors and gave veterans their warm welcome home. That's what demonization of your "enemy" does. Today there is hate of political enemies the varying depths.
When we went thru the process of adopting our niece we had to deal with various agencies. Quite painful for my wife dredging up her truly horrible childhood. Interviews that actually made her cry. Less painful for me but one unnecessary thing happened. One woman in the process who had our histories on paper and knew that I was a veteran of the war in Vietnam smugly told me that she had been an active war protestor. There was no need for her to put that into the interviews, she was a hater. I felt like I was in the presence of a venomous snake. As is typical for me, I tried to befriend her and get passed it, but it was there.
The haters were a minority of the political left, but they were the face of the political left. On an intellectual level I understand that vocal extremists are not what most of their tribe is like, but on an emotional level they are like a Viet Cong in a friendly village. They make the village suspect, and that is one of their goals. I try my best to not be blindly partisan in politics, but the people who arrogantly speak of my conservative kin as "uneducated" (stupid) bumpkins and racists prevent me from ever seeing the group they make themselves the face of favorably. Demonization is about making members other tribes enemies, rather than rational discussion of ideas. Time tested; it works.
I was in my mid-teens at the peak of the protests. I wore the armbands, marched in the marches, attracted frowns from my high school teachers. Even at that age I had my doubts about the real reasons for the war; the domino theory sounded as plausible as any slippery slope argument. And I will admit that not wanting to get shot at figured in there somewhere. A few of my classmates a year older than me died over there, er, here.
But at no time then nor for years later did I ever hear anything about protestors "spitting on" or otherwise attacking returning soldiers. Not once that I can recall did I ever hear anything but that the Americans engaged in that awful war were just as much victims of anticommunist paranoia as the Vietnamese people. I would have spoken up as shrilly as I could manage had I ever heard anything like that. I've heard from people I have no reason to doubt that such things did happen, but not even hanging out with beret-wearing Galois-smoking protesters did I ever hear such things.
That was my point about small minorities giving us our impressions. Nobody spit on me; I was mostly seen with indifference. It did happen to people I know, but certainly not all returning veterans.
Marines are very tribal. It's not just what we did, but who we are. I'm certain that you've noticed. It does not define us politically. I am a member of several Marine and Vietnam Veteran groups. Some are, "What's this political shit doing here?" and others are as toxically politically divided as the rest of America. We have an image and people have assumptions about us, often not helpful. By the end of my time in Vietnam we were actively asking each other, "Why are we here?" I am as anti-war as you ever were.
The animosity toward veterans was not aimed at you so it was less likely to get your attention. That goes to the heart of my thoughts on the extremists. The negative impressions that they create are largely upon their targets.
Oh I know it wasn't aimed at me, and when my year came the draft had been ended. My lottery number was 13.
I do as always appreciate your candor.
At the remove of all these decades, and knowing so much more than we did in our innocent days about the kind of thinking behind "bear any burden, pay any price," what do you think was the real reason we went over to Vietnam?
I could only speculate about "the" reason, but I think that there were enough ideas floated that people latched onto one, or more. The cold war was in full bloom and the military thinkers didn't want Russia to have access to a year-round fair weather navel port on the coast of Vietnam. America was not a pre-WW2 colonialist in Southeast Asea, that was America's friends, the French and British. We had no historical attachment to the region or the fate of its inhabitants.
It is easy to get people to go fight in them. I came from a long line of military veterans on my mother's side of the family going back to a roster of privates in the Revolutionary War. There was a war going on and young men like me didn't want to miss it. Interestingly I am the last in that long line, there are none in my extended family who followed suit.
If there is a root cause reason, Old Gimlet Eye probably put his finger on it. https://papersourceonline.com/war-is-just-a-racket/ In the longer version of this he described war as something where profits are in dollars and losses are in lives.
Of course were told that opposition to communism has always been about their lack of reverence for freedom but at the same time we've cozied up to the worst totalitarian governments as long as they let our corporations loot their resources, so the freedom thing doesn't wash.
My own belief has been for most of my life that we didn't want to see an ideology that didn't coddle the wealthy gain any prominence. Since then of course we've gotten all those "Russian oligarchs" but they weren't a thing under Khrushchev and Brezhnev that I know of.
Not all liberals are "woke" radical "trans" activists.
Not all Christians are fundamentalist bigots.
And so on.
But yes the tendency is to see groups as represented by their loudest and most extreme members, and this tendency is easily and routinely exploited. Probably one of the best things anyone could do to reduce tensions in our society is to increase awareness of this tendency.
The period of the great divide of the 60s was the time of my formative years. There was more than one kind of war protestor. There were those who sincerely opposed war and wanted it stopped, and those who hated the warriors and gave veterans their warm welcome home. That's what demonization of your "enemy" does. Today there is hate of political enemies the varying depths.
When we went thru the process of adopting our niece we had to deal with various agencies. Quite painful for my wife dredging up her truly horrible childhood. Interviews that actually made her cry. Less painful for me but one unnecessary thing happened. One woman in the process who had our histories on paper and knew that I was a veteran of the war in Vietnam smugly told me that she had been an active war protestor. There was no need for her to put that into the interviews, she was a hater. I felt like I was in the presence of a venomous snake. As is typical for me, I tried to befriend her and get passed it, but it was there.
The haters were a minority of the political left, but they were the face of the political left. On an intellectual level I understand that vocal extremists are not what most of their tribe is like, but on an emotional level they are like a Viet Cong in a friendly village. They make the village suspect, and that is one of their goals. I try my best to not be blindly partisan in politics, but the people who arrogantly speak of my conservative kin as "uneducated" (stupid) bumpkins and racists prevent me from ever seeing the group they make themselves the face of favorably. Demonization is about making members other tribes enemies, rather than rational discussion of ideas. Time tested; it works.
I was in my mid-teens at the peak of the protests. I wore the armbands, marched in the marches, attracted frowns from my high school teachers. Even at that age I had my doubts about the real reasons for the war; the domino theory sounded as plausible as any slippery slope argument. And I will admit that not wanting to get shot at figured in there somewhere. A few of my classmates a year older than me died over there, er, here.
But at no time then nor for years later did I ever hear anything about protestors "spitting on" or otherwise attacking returning soldiers. Not once that I can recall did I ever hear anything but that the Americans engaged in that awful war were just as much victims of anticommunist paranoia as the Vietnamese people. I would have spoken up as shrilly as I could manage had I ever heard anything like that. I've heard from people I have no reason to doubt that such things did happen, but not even hanging out with beret-wearing Galois-smoking protesters did I ever hear such things.
That was my point about small minorities giving us our impressions. Nobody spit on me; I was mostly seen with indifference. It did happen to people I know, but certainly not all returning veterans.
Marines are very tribal. It's not just what we did, but who we are. I'm certain that you've noticed. It does not define us politically. I am a member of several Marine and Vietnam Veteran groups. Some are, "What's this political shit doing here?" and others are as toxically politically divided as the rest of America. We have an image and people have assumptions about us, often not helpful. By the end of my time in Vietnam we were actively asking each other, "Why are we here?" I am as anti-war as you ever were.
The animosity toward veterans was not aimed at you so it was less likely to get your attention. That goes to the heart of my thoughts on the extremists. The negative impressions that they create are largely upon their targets.
Oh I know it wasn't aimed at me, and when my year came the draft had been ended. My lottery number was 13.
I do as always appreciate your candor.
At the remove of all these decades, and knowing so much more than we did in our innocent days about the kind of thinking behind "bear any burden, pay any price," what do you think was the real reason we went over to Vietnam?
I could only speculate about "the" reason, but I think that there were enough ideas floated that people latched onto one, or more. The cold war was in full bloom and the military thinkers didn't want Russia to have access to a year-round fair weather navel port on the coast of Vietnam. America was not a pre-WW2 colonialist in Southeast Asea, that was America's friends, the French and British. We had no historical attachment to the region or the fate of its inhabitants.
It is easy to get people to go fight in them. I came from a long line of military veterans on my mother's side of the family going back to a roster of privates in the Revolutionary War. There was a war going on and young men like me didn't want to miss it. Interestingly I am the last in that long line, there are none in my extended family who followed suit.
If there is a root cause reason, Old Gimlet Eye probably put his finger on it. https://papersourceonline.com/war-is-just-a-racket/ In the longer version of this he described war as something where profits are in dollars and losses are in lives.
Of course were told that opposition to communism has always been about their lack of reverence for freedom but at the same time we've cozied up to the worst totalitarian governments as long as they let our corporations loot their resources, so the freedom thing doesn't wash.
My own belief has been for most of my life that we didn't want to see an ideology that didn't coddle the wealthy gain any prominence. Since then of course we've gotten all those "Russian oligarchs" but they weren't a thing under Khrushchev and Brezhnev that I know of.