Democracy was saved the last time
It points to several ways we can save the US from extinction again
In 1905, his paternal grandparents fled from Odessa, Ukraine to Duluth, Minnesota as Jewish refugees from Russian persecution. Ukraine wasn’t independent then, so they considered themselves Russian. His maternal grandparents were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants.
The 21 year old Dylan’s song, Masters of War, was released in 1963, protesting the nuclear arms buildup of the Cold War. It was far more intense than folk musicians were accustomed to.
On January 20, 1971, Marvin Gaye released a single that asked What’s Going On:
Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today - yeah
Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, oh (Oh)
Picket lines (Sister) and picket signs (Sister)
Don't punish me (Sister) with brutality (Sister)
Talk to me (Sister), so you can see (Sister)
Oh, what's going on (What's going on)
What's going on (What's going on)
Yeah, what's going on (What's going on)
Oh, what's going on
Despite the overtones about the ongoing and highly unpopular Vietnam War, his song was about police brutality. Brutality against Blacks, other political activists, anti-war demonstrators and young people with long hair.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono released ‘Power To The People’ two days later which encouraged political protest, fair treatment of workers and fair treatment of women.
1971 also saw:
The first Black man inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame.
Army Lieutenant William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai Massacre. He would ultimately serve less than 4 years of that sentence.
The US Supreme Court unanimously upheld busing to achieve racial desegregation in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.Â
Half a million anti-war protesters marched in DC while hundreds of thousands marched in other cities. 60% of the country opposed the war by that point. In June, excerpts from the Pentagon Papers were being published.
President Nixon declared a War On Drugs, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18, and Washington state became the first to ban sex discrimination.
Nixon reached a detente in the Cold War with China and opened the way to trade negotiations. He also instituted a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents in the US.
A team of political operatives began illegal break-ins into offices of Nixon’s critics and political opponents. KKK members were arrested for 10 school bus bombings. On October 8th, John Lennon released ‘Imagine.’
Troop withdrawals from Vietnam dropped troop strength below 200,000 from its high of 543,000 two years earlier. But Nixon secretly had US troops invade Laos, where they were decisively repelled. The last troops would leave Vietnam in 1973.
From 1967-1974, it was a time of extreme turmoil domestically, due to the war, but that was preceded by the extreme brutality and murders launched against Blacks and Civil Rights workers in mostly southern US states in the early 1950s. Desegregation efforts triggered organized responses that included beatings, jailings, murders and the bombings of homes and churches by domestic terrorists. Nobody used that accurate term back then. Most were exonerated or never faced trial because racism was that accepted in parts of the country.
Simultaneously, folk and rock music was increasing, drawing a response from US churches where ministers claimed the tunes and the accompanying dances were spawned by the devil. Sex outside of marriage was increasing after WWII and when the contraceptive pill became available in 1960, the response from religions was equally intense. The women’s liberation movement began gaining prominence in the years that followed, with ministers decrying women who were enjoying sex with lesser risks of pregnancy.
Gay rights groups began forming in the 1950s and 1960s, too.
The 1960s through the mid 1970s also saw the rise of the United Farm Workers, a labor organization led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta that fought for fair pay, decent housing and safety from pesticides for migrant agriculture workers. Boycotts against grapes and lettuce successfully pushed farm owners into agreements with the group who they bashed as ‘Communist subversives’.
It was a common tactic of business owners, ministers and politicians to blame all these economic, social and human rights advocates as Commies under Russian control.
A revolution occurred in nearby Cuba that deposed its leader, Fulgencio Batista, in 1959 who had ruled there for most of two decades, the latter part after he threw out its leader in a 1952 military coup. He was assisted in his rule by the US government, the US sugar industry and the American mafia. Terrible income disparity occurred, triggering a popular uprising that led to his overthrow and replacement by Fidel Castro. Batista’s secret police tried to quell the rising resistance using torture, violence and public executions. As many as 20,000 Cubans were murdered before he was deposed by Che Guevara and Castro early in 1959 and fled to exile.
A year later, President Eisenhower directed the CIA to develop a strategy to overthrow Castro. Eight months later, JFK inherited the plan, and 3 months into his presidency, the Bay of Pigs invasion was launched. Poorly designed, it was defeated in 2 days. The impetus for this and subsequent planning to overthrow Castro was his reliance on Russian aid, but the US policies had the unintended effect of driving Castro further into reliance on the Soviets to counter the power the US held.
This ultimately led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Russia was trying to install its nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy spent 5 weeks preventing that, but it was the closest to a full nuclear war that occurred in the Cold War period. At the time, Russia possessed no more than 75 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with nuclear warheads. The US possessed 170 ICBMS. But counting shorter range nukes, The US held a wider advantage: 26,400 versus 3,300. It would be many years later before the American public was aware of these disparities and why they influenced the decisions of the badly overmatched Russian government.
But during the crisis, JFK - who was increasingly distrustful of the hawkish military advice he was getting - began secret backdoor negotiations with Krushchev that led to the removal of most of the Cuban missiles along with the removal of US nukes near the USSR in Turkey and Italy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had previously decided on and recommended a full scale invasion of Cuba which could have triggered a global nuclear war. JFK was also consulting with former President Eisenhower and NATO allies. His strategic alerts and deployments of offensive nukes in the early days of the crisis convinced Krushchev they’d badly underestimated JFK’s response.
It’s believed that both leaders assessed a nuclear war would see a third of the people in the world perish, mostly in Russia, China, the US and Europe. Castro was urging Krushchev to go nuclear even though he understood it would kill everyone in Cuba.
JFK (with LBJ’s support) and Krushchev acted independently. JFK went against the advice of most of his senior advisors and Krushchev bypassed his Politburo. It would be 40 years later before the US public learned how close we came to a nuclear war. US intelligence had missed the presence of dozens of missiles already installed on Cuba that Castro could have used, and he sought full control of them after the USSR had agreed to pull the known ones. A shrewd Russian diplomat convinced Castro to relent. And there was a Russian sub the US didn’t realize was armed with a nuke. Its commander gave orders to make it ready for use. It’s believed a subordinate commander subsequently convinced him not to use it.
That’s how close we came to losing an estimated 100 million Americans.
Following that, Bob Dylan wrote Masters of War over the winter of 1962-63 and it was released in the spring. It was inspired by Eisenhower’s warning of the threat of the military-industrial complex and the Cuban missile crisis likely strengthened his choice of words.
JFK was assassinated a year after the missile crisis. Krushchev was pushed into retirement a year after that as the Russian government felt the crisis weakened Russia and killed its chances to take control of West Berlin.
Nearly 60% of US troop losses in Vietnam occurred in 1967-69, contributing to the domestic upheaval and the election of Nixon. Of course, the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Bobby Kennedy plus riots in more than 100 US cities in the wake of King’s murder also played a decisive role in that outcome.
In May 1970, 4 students were shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State, Ohio. Within 11 days, students at Jackson State, Mississippi protested racism and the Kent State killings. State and local police responded with a fusillade that had 460 shots hitting a student dormitory. Two people - one an uninvolved bystander - were killed. More than a dozen students were injured. No police faced charges for the attacks on the unarmed students.
Another major event in the 1960s was the advent of LBJ’s War on Poverty. Building on the success of FDR’s New Deal 28 years earlier, when LBJ was a supportive Congressman, in 1964-65, the new President launched the Community Action Program, the Job Corps and VISTA, Food Stamps, Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid. These plus his notable wins for the two major Civil Rights bills of the 1960s have no other domestic parallel besides the New Deal.
But this also would set the stage for another big point of contention between the two major political parties that has continued to this day.
The point of revisiting so much history between 1950 and 1975 is not just about Bob Dylan. It was tumultuous, chaotic, frightening, dangerous, yet also a time of expansive opportunity and major human rights advances.
It’s a reminder that all we’ve witnessed in the past 22 years and especially in the last 6 have some parallels that many retired Baby Boomers fully understand.
Past history isn’t just a reminder that people who fail to learn it will repeat certain mistakes. Past history also provides useful guides of successful approaches to resolve contentious issues and most Americans can at least agree that successful solutions are badly needed now.
Which is where I’ll point you next: beyond hope into practical approaches to end the deep divisions in the country and world today.
Another unintended consequence of the Kent shootings (which I only learned about this year) was the formation of DEVO by some guys who were friends with some of the victims.