pynchon-l-digest V2 #548

[Peter Petto]

At 01:36 PM 12/7/98 -0500, FrodeauxB at aol.com wrote:
>Mr. Badger:
>   From someone at least a bit older than you, you raise an excellent
>question. No doubt, those decades were shaped by Nam, but would they have been
>so tumultuous (at least as I remember them)? I doubt it. As a male of draft
>age, and unlike my father/WWII vet, there was no reason to fight, or at least
>no reason to buy into among those given us. Nam made it more intense, and
>still is responsible for what I see as a love-hate of the Federal Government
>among many today. We're damn glad they seem to have done something in civil
>rights (please, no flames here. There's a long way to go, but anybody out
>there think we'd be where we are today w/out the Feds? Really!) but we live
>our lives knowing they lie and manipulate the truth (oh, sorry, spin the
>facts) to insure their own survival. The Nam made it different, more drugs,
>sex, and rock & roll. Maybe some things would have happened (Martin Luther
>King's crusade) but it would have been a lot slower and more bloody and
>violent. But, wadda I know. I was only one among many, even if I was at the
>front of the local vanguard. As Buffalo Springfield says, "For What It's
>Worth."