DAMN! I MISS THE COLD WAR!
By: Mike Marino
By:
- Mike Marino
Damn! I miss The Cold War!
Life was good in the "good old days". The cold sterility of the Berlin Wall generated megatons of political heat and yet, was nothing more than a concrete barrier, keeping the coarse fabric of Communism a safe distance from the ideological stains of Capitalistic encroachment, and not just some arbitrary, invisible line in the sand dividing East from West. It was the personification, in concrete and barbed wire of course, of a political prophylactic, and if either side was going to get oral, it was simply in the form of rhetoric.
The now out-of-step goosestepping facism of Nazi Germany had been snapped in two, and now the city-state of the 1,000 year Reich was split in two like a ripe cantalope. The Americanski Eagle knew who the Sovietski Bear was, and both knew they could keep the peace with the threat of a nuclear billyclub, and realized that the mere pounding of shoe on a podium could cause political pandemonium.
We knew who the enemy was, and they knew who we were. Godlike vs. godless. Dogmatic dogfights for the hearts, minds and souls of the masses. Stars and Stripes vs. Hammer and Sickle. The soft, sexy silk of red, white and blue democracy trying to shred the Reds, and their burlap fabric of the Iron Curtain.
The German and the Japanese bully had been beaten to a pulp in the school yard by the other kids and went home with black eyes, bloody noses and untold numbers of dead. Firebombs and atomic energy did what they were designed to do, unapologetically, and now Korea and Vietnam were emerging as the the inbred offspring of so much whitetrash. They were destined to be the bastard children of earlier wars to end all wars, and now the were the inheritance of what today is referred to as...The Boomer Generation.
Boomers refer to the 1950's and the 1960's as the "good old days". Cars had big fins and lots o' chrome. Bill Haley was rockin' around the clock, carhops were rollerblading royalty and the suburbs were squeeky clean and so damn bland. Boomer kids said things like "gosh" and "gee" and "thank you ma'am/sir". Guys opened the door for girls and never called them broads or chicks. Everybody's mom was June Cleaver in disguise and Ozzie Nelson was everyone's dad.
The 1960's were peace and love and all was groovy. The gentle smoke of marijuana wafted, and it was a time of free love and make peace not war. Surfers ruled the beach, V-dubs plyed the tie-dyed highways and by-ways, and life was bitchin'. Today, planes are used as destroyers of buildings, armies are small cells and secretive and one fanatic can bring down a plane of innocent people with a shoulder rocket missle. Damn! I Miss The Cold War!
After the first geiger counters went ballistic in the aftermath of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the war ended and stopped dead in it's tracks. Victory in Europe, and Victory in Japan led to victorious romps under the bedsheets in the Levittown bedrooms of America. Rosie was ready to put down her riveter and have at it, as the GI's discarded khaki in favor of civies, glad to be alive and ready to rock n' roll and sweat up the sheets. One year after America lowered the boom and dropped the bomb, the sperm and egg launched their own sexual version of D-day, landing on the bedsheet beaches, and Operation Baby Boom was underway. The year was 1946. The first year of the Cold War that would lead to the first two decades of the newly emerged Boomer Generation, the teen-angst laden 1950's and the rock n' roll harmony of dissent that typifies the 1960's. Two decades that were as different from one another as Abbott and Costello.
Europe, in her post-war makeup was a twisted art gallery of broken metal and architectural ruin. Her once striking beauty, now faded like an aging stripper who had listened to one too many rimshots and far too many bad burlesque jokes. Japan, Germany's samurai accomplice and partner in crime, lay still and quiet as a dormant possum, being eaten alive by a flesh eating irradiated beast of victory that spew hellfire from the sky.
Cordons of colonial possessions fell from the centuries old grip of wizened old Empires, who lost their hold, and grip on the new realities, as old men will do as age and times move on well beyond them.
Got Ghandi? India did, and tossed off the British yoke and won her independance in the bargain. Israelis rolled up their sleeves, and using shovel in one hand and a fully loaded carbine in the other, managed to carved out a place in the desert, and established an oy vay kosher kibutz of a society smack dab in the middle of the Promised Land of Milk and Honey.
The French too, tried to hold on to Empire and colonial rule with an antiquated Devils Island attitude, but by 1954, that would too would go up in Napoleonic smoke, when in a modern day version of Waterloo, they would get souffled in battle at a place called Dien Bien Phu. The times they were a changin', and although the flames of the conflagration of the big war were still smoldering, there was just enough political spark left to ignite the fuse that would lead to the powderkegs that would be the defining flashpoints of the next two decades. Democracy and Dictatorship were about to put on the ideological boxing gloves and go at it ... again!
The Japanese, who had occupied the Korean penninsula for the duration of the war, saw the haiku handwriting on the wall and surrendered to American might and power in 1945 south of the 38th parallel. The forces north of that line surrendered to Stalin. The demonic forces of demarcation were already loosed from the genie's bottle and a new dawn was about to emerge. The soul searchers of Seoul worried heavily about the prognotications from Pyongyang. Tensions mounted as Asia began turning itself upside down and in 1948 the north declared the formation of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
Then the hammer and sickle came crashing down with a fury, causing Maoist mayhem on mainland China when communist forces dealt a fortune cookie of defeat to Chiang's Nationalist government, forcing them to flee to Formosa. The players were now on stage. Dress rehearsal was over, and now..it was showdown showtime. It was just a Manchurian Candidates matter of time before trouble would began to brew like an fully loaded semi-automatic teabag.
The unforgettable Forgotten War raged on from 1950 to 1953 when a tense truce forced the cessation of intrusions and the tug of war for geographic supremacy ended in a stillborn standoff. The push for Pusan and the inching towards Inchon was put on hold and the uneasy cease-fire let the battlefields clear and gave the dead respite and time to rest quietly.
In a similar and corresponding surreal turn of events, also in 1945, the occupying Japanese forces in Vietnam ended their 5 year occupation and surrendered in a to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils fashion, and as a result, the barndoor was left open and communist backed Ho Chi Minh assumed the power of the proletariat in the North. The French, were now trying desperately, and in vain vanity to retain the colonial control they had excercised since they assumed control of the rice paddy empire of Vietnam in 1861. Croissant politics weren't what they used to be, and the jaunty beret was knocked off their heads.
The French were dug in deep, deep in the mud at damnable Dien Bien Phu, engaged in a fierce tug of war over the Pastry Republic's struggle for life and death in southeast Asia, when they were ultimately dealt the dead man's poker hand of defeat by the forces of the Vietminh in 1954. They had suffered not just a Waterloo, but a varifiable junglesque version of Dunkirk. The forces of ideological darkness were afoot, Holmes, and the Bolshevik hounds of the Siberian Baskervilles were baying at the moon, fangs bared and howling with delight.
The traveling medicine show that would define the American period would open to standing room only crowds in Vietnam, and would usher in a new era for the nation. As the curtain rose, it signaled the beginning of the end of life for over 50,000 youth of the land of the free. Not just dead and dying, but the untold numbers of MIA's and POW's. Hellhole Hanoi and Sinister Saigon, unknown to most before the 1960's, were now part and parcel of every suppertime newscast in the country, and were more familiar to most Americans than Dubuque, Iowa.
Vietnam in the 1960's, unlike Korea in the 1950's, brought Hardhats and Hippies to the brink. Rednecks with red veins bulging righteously red, white and blue threatened the commie-pinko-fag-peaceniks with a new brand of black and blue patriotism. My Country, Right or Wrong. My Country, Right or Left. Love It or Leave It. Make Love, Not War. Peace in our Time.
Battlecry's of different sides of a divisional and generational line. Along with the acrid smell of a napalmed Nam, we had the homefires cranked up too. The Burn Baby Burn smoke of urban-ghetto fires of civil rights and civil disobiedience, wafted and joined forces with the defiant flames of dodging draftcards and the size 38D cups of liberated bra's. The John Birch Society was replaced by Black Panthers, and June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson were unceremoniously replaced by Gloria Steinham and Angela Davis.
Korea had quiet, head nodding in accension acceptance, if not clearly defined lines of support. You just kept your mouth shut in those days. Vietnam, on the other hand, had numerous and vociferously vocal voices of opposition. Jane Fonda went to Hanoi and did her impersonation of Tokyo Rose. The right sang "God Save America", while the bard of the Bay Area, Country Joe McDonald sang songs about the disastrous bodybag policies of the generals and the Washington politicos..."and it's one, two, three..what are we fighting for, don't ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!"
It was clear by now that the race for space and nuclear superiority here on Terra Firma, and the rush to stop any more dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia was coming to a confluence and creating a fissure in the divided camps of Them and Us, whoever Them and Us were. By the mid to late 1960's the lines that were once blurred were now clear and concise, and both sides were now ready to get down and dirty and downright bloody. This time the bloodshed wouldn't be confined in the faraway fields of Vietnam, but right here in the streets of America.
The Democratic Un-Convention in Mayor Daley's Chicago in 1968. A police riot and rampage of pissed off proportions, of such billyclub violence and teargas intensity, it could only be measured on a Richter scale, went unabashedly unabated for hours. Provacateur provocation was a possibility, though not proven, but the end result was an inevitable headbangers ball that left the Left dazed, pulp beaten and left to bleed on the proletarian pavement.
The PTA seemed meaningless anymore, as the schoolbell rang and announced to all that it was now time for class to commence in the school of the streets, and the Parent Teachers Association was surreptiously replaced by the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse rode off into the sunset, disappearing into the ghost mists of the past, and on their hooves, emerged the Chicago Seven. In the words of the protest parlance of the day, "you don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 and the United States gave up the battle in 1973, and, define irony, as America was celebrating it's 200th Anniversay, a unified Vietnam was also declared. I did see a bumper sticker recently that said, "My Dad Beat Up Your Dad in Chicago in '68." A sign of the times.
It was twenty years ago today, but long before Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, and well before Lucy launched herself into the sky with her diamond powered rocket, the Cold War Warriors were already altering the states of mind of the unsuspecting in uniform in 1953. The US ARMY was experimenting with LSD, a drug originally developed as a blood stimulant in 1936 in Basel, Switzerland. The mindset of the military saw it as a mind control drug for use on the enemy, any enemy, at any cost in a covert CIA project codenamed MK-Ultra.
Forgettabout NASA, Albert Hoffman is credited with being the first psychedelic astronaut to be put into tie-dyed orbit in inner space in 1943. Writer Aldous Huxley earned his chemical wings in 1955, and by 1960 Dr. Timothy Leary doned his spaced suit and became the equivalent of the first man on the moon with sustained flights over a long period of time.
If the 1950's gave us Disneyland in Anaheim, then the 1960's made it's contribution in the form of the Haight Ashbury amusement park of acid in San Francisco. The dialated denizens in denim migrated to the new drug in synthesized form in 1965 and by 1967 the Fed's got fed up and declared war on the un-Fed meds. The White Rabbit had met it's share of plasticine porters with looking glass ties.
The Music too. It changed, thanks in large part to the choreography of Cold War politics waving it's conductors baton of social change. The brilliance of the Brill Building bards of the late 1950's soon lost it's shine and pop luster, and made way for a crowd of coffee house poets and songwriters trying to wake up the sleeping giant of social conscience. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, along with the New Christy Minstrels and Phil Ochs revitalized the Woody Gutherian spirit and made us all agree that it was ok to disagree, but in fact, this land was our land, America that is, and not Vietnam.
The bugle sounded, and we took our ragtag army of lost souls into the streets, street fighting men and women under a rock n' roll banner. So you say you want a revolution? Yes we did say that. Che, Ho and Mao, had taken the place of Larry, Moe and Curly, and Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin became the concrete court jesters of political change, and the decade gave us something else. Another McCarthy, Eugene was his name. Two decades had produced three prominent McCarthys just as the 1940's gave us Edgar Bergen's southern pine alter ego, Charlie McCarthy, proving without a doubt, that America was truly the greatest of all super powers. In what other country could a ventriloquist gain fame on radio!
Reagan asked Mr. Gorbachev to tear the wall down, he did. Sgt. Pepper was shot down in cold blood on a grey New York City street in a psychotic grab for eternal fame, and people now book vacations to Vietnam. The "enemy" can bring down twin towers with flying jet-fueled projectiles and blend into the national fabric and remain unnoticed and anonymous. The sand of the middle east has replaced the jungles of southeast Asia, and there's nothing to defoliate in the vast desert expanse.
Today the vision of direction may seem out of focus, cataracts obscuring the image, and a new catechism of catharsis has set and hardened like concrete in a driveway. Whirling dervish frenzies drive us damn near to madness as we try to pinpoint and figure out just who "they" are, and who "we" are anymore. Yes, it is difficult..like children playing pin the tail on the donkey, we have to be careful whose bottom we stick the pin in. It's a new era with new possibilities and new fears thrown in just for laughs.
Damn! I miss the Cold War!
THE ROADHEAD CHRONICLES BOOKSITE Where Pop Culture & Chrome Meet Asphalt & Art! By: Mike Marino