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PBS documentary looks back on protesting and its impact on the Vietnam War
abqjournal ^ | 03/24/2023 | ADRIAN GOMEZ

Posted on 03/24/2023 10:52:53 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27

Stephen Talbot knew that taking on a project about the Vietnam War was going to be an incredible task.

There were going to be hours of research, as well as dozens of interviews planned.

Then the pandemic hit in March 2020 and it looked like the project wasn’t going to move forward.

Then Talbot got an idea.

“I thought, what if I did all of the interviews audio only,” he says. “This made sure everyone was safe and I had the information that I needed.”

Flash forward a few years and Talbot’s “The Movement and the ‘Madman’ ” will premiere on New Mexico PBS, at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 28.

The documentary is presented under the American Experience series and it will also stream online on the PBS app.

“The Movement and the ‘Madman’ ” shows how two antiwar protests in the fall of 1969 – the largest the country had ever seen – pressured President Nixon to cancel what he called his “madman” plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam, including a threat to use nuclear weapons.

At the time, protesters had no idea how influential they could be and how many lives they may have saved.

(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: documentary; pbs; protesting; vietman
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To: Robwin

I lived around DC, that was a bit young for protesting but I had cousins that came down from Chicago and they would come over to the house grab a meal shoot the breeze and they were basically there to meet chicks. There was some real radicals but they were the born in the 40s crowd.

I read recently that my age group being one of the younger first cousins of the Boomers is now called generation Jones. I think we used to be called Boomers II.


21 posted on 03/24/2023 12:29:47 PM PDT by Clutch Martin ("The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." )
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To: ChicagoConservative27
I sure would have liked to have been interviewed for that.

Maybe they could tell me why people I never knew said those crappy things to me at the airport, just because I was wearing the uniform of my country.

22 posted on 03/24/2023 1:33:49 PM PDT by pfflier
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To: ChicagoConservative27
Ho and Giap understood what Von Clausewitz wrote: "War is an extension of politics by other means".
23 posted on 03/24/2023 3:27:04 PM PDT by Republican in occupied CA (I will not give up on my native State! Here I was born, here I fight and die!!)
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To: Clutch Martin

If you were born between 1946 to 1964 then you are a boomer.


24 posted on 03/24/2023 4:42:40 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: cowboyusa

Russia was pumping billions of aid, money, and weapons into North Vietnam and Russians were killing Americans and conducting military operations.


25 posted on 03/24/2023 4:49:30 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

The Whiz Kids, the technocrats ran the war. They followed the Kissinger stratgy: Don’t try to win the ware. Just try to not lose the war. Kissiger set this general strategy in 1959, not just for Vietnam, but for all cold war conflicts that got hot.

The Whizkids did not know how to implement this stratgy. They agreed with the LBJ philosphy which as the same for Vietnam and the War on the Poor: Throw enough money and enough bodies at the problem and the problem is bound to disappear.

I and 550,000 others were in Vietname in 66-67. I was mostly in Pleiku as a personnel clerk. My co-workers and I entered the duty-to-dead records. We were the ones who wrote to the loved ones “Your loved one died a hero for his country.”

Baloney, they were bored stiff sitting around doing nothing. They went into town, got drunk and flipped their jeep into the rice paddy beside the new asphalt highway with narrow shoulders. Guys drowned in 14” of water in the rice paddy, landing softly in the mud but too drunk to raise their head out of the mud. (No seatbelts back then.)

Two best friends got into a drunken argument in the pool room. One guy skewered his friend. Died in the hospital of injuries.

We sent them home: Your loved one died a hero,,.. baloney.

#1 cause of death: Drunken traffic crashes.


26 posted on 03/24/2023 4:53:51 PM PDT by spintreebob (ki .h )
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To: ansel12

soviets ...


27 posted on 03/24/2023 4:57:15 PM PDT by bankwalker (Repeal the 19th ...)
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To: bankwalker

The USSR was the Russian empire, not a voluntary group of nations.


28 posted on 03/24/2023 5:01:50 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: ansel12
Yes, and they were building up there Nuclear capability. We had great Superiority in the early 60’s, but they caught us, and went ahead.
29 posted on 03/24/2023 5:08:27 PM PDT by cowboyusa (There is no co- existence with Pinks and Reds)
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To: cowboyusa

No they didn’t, America has by far the superior nuclear threat.


30 posted on 03/24/2023 5:10:37 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: ansel12

Not by 1980.


31 posted on 03/24/2023 5:23:53 PM PDT by cowboyusa (There is no co- existence with Pinks and Reds)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

The whole Anti-War movement was a fraud. It was planned by North Vietnam communists way ahead of any demonstrations. The NVC were in contact with VVAW’s leaders and would advise them to prepare for demonstrations on some date in the future. The NVC knew they were going to start a massive attack during that time period and that Nixon would increase bombing. So the left here in the US would have several months to plan and set up the demonstrations.

John Kerry was one of the leaders of the VVAW. I read the entire redacted FBI report on the VVAW and posted many excerpts on here during the election when Kerry ran for POTUS. There are still some links on my about me page.


32 posted on 03/24/2023 5:25:29 PM PDT by stockpirate (Where Justice Ends Tyranny Begins...Repression Breeds Violence)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Nixon and Mitchell
Better start shakin’
Today’s pig
Is tomorrow’s bacon

Those were the days.


33 posted on 03/24/2023 5:25:41 PM PDT by Jim Noble (You have sat too long for any good you have been doing)
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To: cowboyusa

The best balance of power that Russia had by my 1979 take, in other words, the best time to attack if they were ever going to I decided in 1979, was to attack in 1984.

By the time that window arrived, I was in a position to share my opinion with French and American intelligence people and found out that they had figured the same, 1984.

The Russians missed that window and never felt confident enough to attack NATO, and when that moment passed, they were heading for either finding another one at least a decade away or heading for the collapse that Reagan was driving them into.


34 posted on 03/24/2023 5:54:02 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: Jim Noble

Wow, I haven’t heard that in a long time.


35 posted on 03/24/2023 5:55:05 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: stockpirate

I used to spend a lot of time with the VVAW and their types at the famous “shelter half” in Tacoma, I used to watch the North Vietnamese films there and was exposing them to Ayn Rand and discussions on winning the war.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/22/archives/army-acts-to-close-coast-coffee-house-where-gis-relax-off-duty-and.html


36 posted on 03/24/2023 6:02:20 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: ansel12

Three great memories from November 15, 1969.

1) Riding all night on a bus, dropped off in front of the Capitol at 5:30 AM. 9 degrees. Fires in 55 gallon drums to get warm. Standing next to Benjamin Spock (yes, him). He was beaming: “These are my children!”

2) Walking into and through the open Capitol. Our House. No bollards, no fences, no police. Knocking on Mike Mansfield’s door and being invited in.

3) All the braless girls with wet rags wiping tear gas out of eyes in West Potomac Park.


37 posted on 03/24/2023 6:30:53 PM PDT by Jim Noble (You have sat too long for any good you have been doing)
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To: Jim Noble

Ahhh, Good Times.


38 posted on 03/24/2023 6:32:56 PM PDT by ansel12 (NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.)
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To: ansel12

I was reading about this the for a few months now and I think it’s been mentioned in Free Republic as well. It has also been called out in social commentary.

I’m glad that that has been recognized I have heard Boomer II in the past.

I can’t associate with Boomer philosophically because they are so much different than vintage 55-65 was.

What a difference 4 to 6 years makes!

There’s a lot of Boomers who I totally disagree with, mostly the 40s crowd, radicalized and leftist politics, Marxists. Their drug culture lit the fuse of we see today. The Democratic party was radicalized by those folks. There is a difference with the Boomer II/Jone’s and I think it’s about time it has been recognized as different and separate.

[WWW] “A subset of the Boomers, Generation Jones, was born in the later years of the Baby Boom, from 1954 to 1964.”

“Here is how large the two groups are in the Philadelphia area. Generation Jones makes up roughly 53 million of the boomer generation’s 76 million people.”

The draft ended, which has been defined as the end state of the Generation Jones. Years 54,55,had draft cards and were included in the last lottery. I was going in 2 years.

“The term Generation Jones was first coined by the American cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S., who were children during Watergate, the oil crisis, and stagflation rather than during the 1950s, but slightly before Gen X.”

I concur.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org› wiki
Generation Jones - Wikipedia


39 posted on 03/24/2023 6:48:47 PM PDT by Clutch Martin ("The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." )
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To: ChicagoConservative27

I have news for everyone:

Vietnam war is long, long, long gone (in Vietnam)

Vietnam is now a place whose people are now, almost completely pro-USA.

Vietnam is NOT about what happened 50 years ago.

Vietnam, is a bit, booming now. And perhaps more than anywhere in the entire globe, is NOT aligned with China.

Forget the war.

Really.

Forget it. People here all have.

Work with Vietnam. And if you happen to have served here (I didn’t. Just...) think about visiting.

North. South. Middle. People here are very nice.

This is not the Vietnam we learned about so long ago.

It isn’t.


40 posted on 03/24/2023 6:54:11 PM PDT by cba123 (Tôi là người Mỹ. Hiện tôi đang ở Việt Nam)
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