I was for it.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, we were America, the superpower, and if the President said we had to fight inconsequential people in a faraway land to stop Communism, we needed to do it.\u00c2\u00a0 Who knew better than the government?<\/p>\n
That was back in ’65.\u00c2\u00a0 Or ’66.\u00c2\u00a0 When a military career was still an option.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember visiting the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and my dad saying he had a connection, maybe he could get me in.\u00c2\u00a0 My dad always said he knew someone.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was rarely the right person.<\/p>\n
But by time I was ready to go to college, my parents had done a 180.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t want their little boy’s ass shot off.\u00c2\u00a0 They certainly didn’t want him to be the only Jew in a Christian school, although the truth of the Air Force Academy didn’t come out for decades.<\/p>\n
You see it suddenly appeared the war wasn’t winnable.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe the Domino Theory was wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe we could leave Vietnam, stop killing innocent people, and Khrushchev’s descendants would not only not bang their shoes on desks, they wouldn’t take over the world.<\/p>\n
I can’t tell you when it happened.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometime in ’66 or ’67.\u00c2\u00a0 But I became against the war.<\/p>\n
At first it was peer pressure.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, those kids in school who you think you’re friends with who suddenly have a contrary opinion? And then my mother…\u00c2\u00a0 She was always a liberal.<\/p>\n
But everybody else came later.<\/p>\n
It was such a confusing time.\u00c2\u00a0 With school protests.\u00c2\u00a0 Bombings even.\u00c2\u00a0 But all we knew is more and more people died and we were no closer to victory.<\/p>\n
If you think there’s political chaos today, you didn’t live through the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 It was generational then, the youngsters against the oldsters.\u00c2\u00a0 Today it’s about the haves versus the have-nots.<\/p>\n
Don’t tell me protest has no power, that the youth don’t count, that musicians are purely entertainers.\u00c2\u00a0 All three persuaded Johnson not to run for President in ’68.\u00c2\u00a0 All three helped stop the war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
My point is we started out a divided country, and as time went by the movement became a conflagration.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, as Laura Nyro sang, we had to save the country, we couldn’t study war no more.<\/p>\n
Income inequality is today’s Vietnam.\u00c2\u00a0 There are very few rich people.\u00c2\u00a0 But there are so many who believe one day they too will be rich. They don’t want to believe the opposite, because then how do they soldier on?\u00c2\u00a0 All they’ve got is their faith, give that up and they’ve got no hope.<\/p>\n
But the way you create change is not by pandering to the scared and the ignorant.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s by standing up and educating them on the issues.\u00c2\u00a0 By time we hit 1970, everybody grew their hair long, when that was a political statement, war protests drew Woodstock numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, if you wanted to win the Presidency in the 70’s, you had to align with rock stars.<\/p>\n
I can handle the hate.\u00c2\u00a0 Because statistics don’t lie.\u00c2\u00a0 And the mark of a smart man is someone who weighs the evidence and changes his mind when he’s wrong.<\/p>\n
I was wrong about Vietnam.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of fighting ad infinitum, I advocated bringing the boys back home.<\/p>\n
I’m advocating a social safety net.\u00c2\u00a0 If we don’t take care of the poor, what kind of society do we have?<\/p>\n
But I’m also advocating the American Dream.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to believe if you work hard you can be as rich as anybody, that you can live the same lifestyle.\u00c2\u00a0 This was true in the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, a star might be able to stay in that hotel for a week instead of a night, but no one flew private and no one lived in a gated community, we were all in it together.<\/p>\n
We’re still all in it together.\u00c2\u00a0 We live in a society.\u00c2\u00a0 And we won’t have a productive society if the best and the brightest all go into finance, a sphere that ruined the world economy and was bailed out by the government and rewarded itself with bonuses.<\/p>\n
I can understand you disagreeing with me if you got that bonus.<\/p>\n
But if you have no health care, if you have trouble making ends meet, maybe it’s time to realize it may not be your fault.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the game is rigged against you.<\/p>\n
I’m not saying we should cast aside personal initiative, that we should all be compensated equally, I’m just saying that no one makes billions without having customers.\u00c2\u00a0 If the public is paying your bills, don’t you have a responsibility to the public?<\/p>\n
Maybe you agree with me, maybe you don’t.<\/p>\n
But pay attention to this issue.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the defining question of our generation.<\/p>\n
And you can read the "Vanity Fair" article here: <\/p>\n
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