Martin Luther King and the End of Innocence

Yesterday marked the 44th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and with it, the end of the age of innocence in America.

Two months later after this horrific event, Robert F Kennedy was assassinated as well. Five years earlier, his brother, President John F Kennedy, had been murdered in Dallas.  The first Kennedy assassination shocked our nation; by the end of 1968, we had become numb and cynical about everything.

Our leaders were dying, our soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and our respect for authority and the elderly and religious institutions was dying as well.

In 1968, with the Vietnam war at its peak, the Tet offensive occurred and Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek reelection. Two years later, we had Kent State. Three years after that, we had Watergate. The next year, there was no turning back.

Imagine what the world may have been like if all three assassination attempts had been thwarted. Dr. King, alive at 83, in a position to influence two generations directly. The Vietnam war, never escalating as it did, and never becoming the passionate cause for a generation to rally around. And maybe no Watergate to be ashamed of as well.

When I see teenagers and twenty-somethings today, I see an arrogance and a lack of respect for authority that the young people of 40 years ago did not have (at least on the surface). Humility is harder to find than it used to be. And when Bernie Madoff and so many others do the things they do, we're no longer surprised. (This isn't to say that people used to be more moral in the past than they are now--far from it. I am only commenting on society's level of cynicism, not whether that level of cynicism is justified.)

 
  1. Wasting your time thinking how great things would be had Kennedy not been assasinated, or ML for that matter, is exactly that: a waste of time. Their hypocrisy and philandering would have become a public issue and they would have been humiliated and deposed: they have more power as martyrs. EVERYONE was fucked up at that time.

  2. I do agree that there is an ambivalence, if not outright disregard, for authority in America. The overarching theme is that people don't trust and don't respect the traditional authorities. I can't say I blame them.

  3. This trend should rapidly reverse itself after the next election. Why? Because the generation of retards that currently manage things are retiring, dying, or getting jailed....and the next generation is stepping forward

Get busy living
 

"For those of you who are black and are tempted to ... be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling," he said. "I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times."

-RFK

 

I'm assuming you were born in the 50s/60s era:

On authority: There is no completely respectable governmental authority in this country. There are some good cops. There are some good politicians. Some, not all, not even close. How the hell do you expect me (mid-20s) to respect a bunch of fuck-ups? If you're talking respecting authority as in parents or boss at work, let me introduce you to the authority fallacy. Just because you are in a position of authority does not mean you are always correct. The place I see those in authority most often getting pissed off about "kids these days" is when they don't kowtow to everything that person says. Yea, there are a lot of punk douchebags running around. That does not mean every kid is a punk. Final thought: "because that's the way it is" is not a reasonable response." Either learn to explain your positions or keep your mouth shut. Unless you're signing my paycheck, then you can do whatever the hell you want.

On Kennedy: Not meaning to be callous, but if he had stuck around for a second term (or even finished his first), his image would have gotten ravaged (Vietnam, for one, if you think he would have gotten us out of there, you're kidding yourself and putting his memory on the pedestal. He got lucky on the Cuban Missile Crisis, wasn't going to happen with Vietnam). He would have been the disappointment Obama is to real Democrats today.

On King: I'm torn on this one. As a martyr, he took us pretty far. We already knew his position, his death made it that much more visible. I do think we would have learned much more from him had he stuck around. Much respect for this man, more than I can put into words.

And our response to shit like Madoff isn't cynicism; it's realism. There are douchebags everywhere in the world. It might be some guy lobbying the government to push X's religion on everyone else. Or it might be some punk trader who "crashes the markets" because he's figured out how to work the system. Or it could be some politician trying to tell us what we need (surprise here, once again, thanks to your generation). We acknowledge this, and then we move the fuck on. We no longer have time to sit around and worry about every little fucking thing that goes on in this world. We have your generation to thank for that.

We have your generation to thank for nearly $16t in debt.

We have your generation to thank for sky-high oil prices.

We have your generation to thank for climate change (if it's happening, I'm a skeptic).

We have your generation to thank for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have your generation to thank for a failure of a public education system.

We have your generation to thank for the economic bust.

We have your generation to thank for sky-high college prices.

We have your generation to thank for the polarization of politics (you all are a bunch of stubborn, whiny bitches. How's that for respecting authority?).

We have your generation to thank for the entitlement class.

And lastly, we have your generation to thank for a world that is in chaos. Come at me bro.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 
Best Response
D M:
We have your generation to thank for nearly $16t in debt.
And we're still racking it up at $1 Trillion/year. Only a portion of that is debt service.
We have your generation to thank for sky-high oil prices.
We also drive.
We have your generation to thank for climate change (if it's happening, I'm a skeptic).
We also drive.
We have your generation to thank for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Voted for by a bunch of security moms which they believed was largely for our benefit.
We have your generation to thank for a failure of a public education system.
That's also our failure. They spent more on us per capita than was spent on them.
We have your generation to thank for the economic bust.
Paying for our college educations meant it was harder to pay for the house.
We have your generation to thank for sky-high college prices.
Which they often paid out of their OWN pockets.
We have your generation to thank for the polarization of politics (you all are a bunch of stubborn, whiny bitches. How's that for respecting authority?).
Maybe. If our grandparents hadn't started vietnam and if we had WWIII against Germany instead, there would be a lot less polarization.
We have your generation to thank for the entitlement class.
LBJ was not a baby boomer.
And lastly, we have your generation to thank for a world that is in chaos. Come at me bro.
Maybe. A lot of that is the fact that poor people have lots of kids and population and poverty tends to drive chaos.

At the very least, you have to be consistent here. We can blame baby boomers for stuff done in the '60s for THEIR benefit or we can blame baby boomers for stuff done in the '90s and this century for OUR benefit. And by the time we are done, our kids will blame us for the consequences of natgas fracking, probably Fukushima and maybe one or two more accidents, along with overpopulation and/or any more Machiavellian attempts to deal with it. They'll have forgotten everything we blame our parents for and moved on.

I do think we're a lot less rebellious than our parents were, or at the very least that our rebellion is a lot more pragmatic. Baby boomers protested for the sake of something they believed in; Generation Y tends to do a lot more looking out for #1. We were born in the '80s and we were raised with those ethics in mind. Our parents played a boxing match against their parents when they were growing up; we played a chess game.

Pot, meet kettle. Every generation is just as bad, and for thousands of years- at least ever since the book of Jeremiah was written, parents have always thought that the kids' generation was more wicked than theirs'. In reality, I suspect it's a game of rock paper scissors on a three generation cycle and we've got a lot in common with our great grandparents.

If you hate your parents, you deserve to have kids who hate you. So it's good to try and empathize with and respect your parents.

 

I don't care for any of those people. It's in the past. We have Jamie Dimon now.

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

I absolutely empathize with and respect my parents. That doesn't mean that everything they've done is right, but so often they act like it. Many of your responses were, "they did it for us". That's great, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I appreciate that they tried to do right by us, but they failed in some respects. Just like their parents did, and their parents before them.

The point here is not that they don't deserve respect, rather that they don't deserve (NOBODY deserves) our unconditional respect. While most in the older generation will say they don't want unconditional respect, in practice, that is what they expect.

One last thing: how is the public education system our failure? They were the ones that created it and gave us the tools we'd need to be "successful" in it. Many were successful going through it, but many weren't as well. I don't know about you, but when I was 5-18 years old I wasn't usually putting a lot of thought into why I should be in school and how to restructure the education system so it would work for me. Even if I had, it's not like I could have changed it as a kid, and you wouldn't have been able to either.

Our education system failed for one simple reason: they tried to homogenize it, just like they're trying to do with everything else. There are issues with health care in this country? We MUST need ONE healthcare system that encompasses everyone. There are issues with education? We MUST need ONE education system that everyone can use. This is what the last generation pulled us into. Trying to make everything work together instead of letting people make services that work for them.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 
IlliniProgrammer:
I do think we're a lot less rebellious than our parents were, or at the very least that our rebellion is a lot more pragmatic. Baby boomers protested for the sake of something they believed in; Generation Y tends to do a lot more looking out for #1. We were born in the '80s and we were raised with those ethics in mind. Our parents played a boxing match against their parents when they were growing up; we played a chess game.

PS- Your counterpoints were great, especially the above. Thank ya sir.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

Thank you for all the thought-provoking responses to my article. DM's comments were of particular interest to me. When you write about how difficult it is to respect authority figures, aren't you supporting my point? Even cynical people have insightful comments to make. I wasn't saying that the earlier generation was wiser or nicer or better than today's twenty-somethings. That is certainly not the case. What I am saying, and what I had alluded to before, is that if an authority figure walked into a room and was worthy of respect and admiration, today's youth would be less inclined to give it to him.

Howard Schwartz See my WSO blog
 
hdavid57:
Thank you for all the thought-provoking responses to my article. DM's comments were of particular interest to me. When you write about how difficult it is to respect authority figures, aren't you supporting my point? Even cynical people have insightful comments to make. I wasn't saying that the earlier generation was wiser or nicer or better than today's twenty-somethings. That is certainly not the case. What I am saying, and what I had alluded to before, is that if an authority figure walked into a room and was worthy of respect and admiration, today's youth would be less inclined to give it to him.
Maybe. I think part of that is the training you guys gave us. Once we hit 16, people were no longer Mr. Smith. They were "George". Our bosses go by their first names. Baby boomers and Generation X gave us a much more relaxed and informal culture, and I think a lot of that was planted by the '60s. Is there anything wrong with that?
 

I think that a relaxed and informal culture is wonderful. And I agree the the Sixties planted the seeds for how young people behave today. All I'm saying is that there are trade-offs. Sometimes when you gain a lot, you lose a little in another way. For example, when I wrote that young people behave differently from how they behaved forty years ago, did any of the young people reading this post, none of whom were around forty years ago, ask your parents or other responsible adults for their feedback on this issue? And if not, why not?

Howard Schwartz See my WSO blog
 
hdavid57:
I think that a relaxed and informal culture is wonderful. And I agree the the Sixties planted the seeds for how young people behave today. All I'm saying is that there are trade-offs. Sometimes when you gain a lot, you lose a little in another way. For example, when I wrote that young people behave differently from how they behaved forty years ago, did any of the young people reading this post, none of whom were around forty years ago, ask your parents or other responsible adults for their feedback on this issue? And if not, why not?
Because we have the internet, the history channel, and dozens and dozens of stories of walking uphill both ways to school through the snow.
 
hdavid57:
When I see teenagers and twenty-somethings today, I see an arrogance and a lack of respect for authority that the young people of 40 years ago did not have (at least on the surface). Humility is harder to find than it used to be.
You mean the same boomer generation that will fuck ARE generation with crazy taxes and/or inflation? Lol! Fuck them brother!

edit: shit. D M beat me to it above.

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