Sure -- you generalize, but it's an interesting view of things. When were you born?
I stood on the sidelines with Civil Rights, thinking mildly that it was a good thing. At that time, I somehow concluded thoughtlessly that "it wasn't my struggle". It should've been. Here and there, I demonstrated against the war, but mostly kept my head in the books. I didn't want to go to Vietnam, and people close to me didn't want me to go to Vietnam. I just wanted to get through college. Peace and love? I spent a week or two in Haight-Ashbury during the "Summer of Love", as if it were some sort of "spring vacation", sleeping in an old Pea-Coat in Golden Gate Park. Of course, after Love Canal, I supported environmental action. As for Women's Liberation, I was bewildered. It seemed to upend my "Field of Dreams" hopes and wishes.
I couldn't buy into Reagan-omics. I was struggling just to have a successful career with a modestly comfortable income. I wasn't going to be a hedge-fund manager. But put it another way. I was naive in the late 60s and 1970s. Someone had given me a copy of "Pentagon Papers", and I didn't get around to reading it for ten years! I came late to the Woke Parade. But it wasn't for influence from someone else: it was my observation about the world and what I thought was wrong with it. I had flirted with Republicanism based on naive thoughts and ideas, and started drifting to the other side as a logical process. I wanted to see Justice, and I didn't anymore believe that being an aggressive player in "free markets" would pay off. I began to see the wild lottery behind the facade.
I really came to an understanding about the Vietnam War through friends who returned with PTSD and shrapnel wounds, and particularly -- you can laugh -- a scholarly examination of the JFK murder. Learning the history of the Intelligence community beginning with it's precursor OSS and "Wild Bill" Donovan, or getting familiar with the history of the war brought me around.
I actually believe that I had discovered something nobody else had bothered to look at. Today, I think it was not too different than Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of the mythical city of Troy as a real historical place. Explaining it requires that I post some pages from books published by "persons of interest" and a third book author they had likely manipulated, moving his book into cinema when CIA was doing that sort of thing. I'm not going into further detail about this. Not here and now, anyway.
The matter of the war becomes clear reading declassified documents like the various versions of the McNamara-Taylor Vietnam Trip Report of October 1963. And of course Pentagon Papers, which included an edition of that document. Anybody know WHO established the Saigon Military Mission in 1953? WHO arranged the election of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1955? Or -- here's one -- who was Yuri Nosenko, and why was he held incommunicado at CIA's Camp Peary for three years? And WHO gave the order for his imprisonment?
SO!! WHEN WERE YOU BORN, IVWSHANE? This curious mind wants to know. I was born in 1947. My parents might as well have been characters in "The Best Years Of Our Lives".