No topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

No topic - Essay Example For America, the 1960s was a year of assassinations. Really the only time since the 19th century that political assassinations had been successful, these assassinations made a scar on the American psyche. Two of the most important of these assassinations occurred in the year 1968, very close to each other. The first was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the bold civil rights leader who had inspired millions of black Americans and help end segregation and vicious Jim Crowe laws in the south, especially with the passing of civil rights legislation in 1964. Shortly following Mr. King’s assassination, Robert Kennedy, then presidential candidate, was also shot dead. These assassinations changed the way public figures had to interact with the public, and, along with president Kennedy’s assassination earlier in the decade, caused a shift in which much greater barriers were put up between public figures and the general population, out of necessity. These assassinatio ns were indicative of the social upheaval that climaxed in the year 1968. Many of the best known protest movements of the 1960s had major expressions in this year. For one thing, the year saw protest movements and civil disturbances at a number of universities, including â€Å"one of the largest† at Howard university, which built up to the eventual protest and massacre at Kent State two years later (Forner 884). These were based around a number of issues, but the biggest was the growing opposition to the Vietnam war. Vietnam War opposition may have peaked several years after 1968, but this was probably the year that shifted public perception to being almost entirely negative. Many factors caused this shift, including growing American casualties. Some of the most culturally important, however, may have been the massacres that occurred and became public knowledge over the course of 1968. The most famous of these may have been the My Lai massacre, in which American forces killed somewhere in the order of 500 civilian Vietnamese, while South Korean forces were also accused of massacres elsewhere in the country. These massacres were recorded and broadcast to America through photography at a rate unprecedented in former wars – photographs of these sorts would be essential at turning public opinion against wars in general, and against Vietnam in particular. Question 2: How did Vietnam and the Watergate Scandal effect trust in the government? Vietnam and the Watergate scandal were both devastating to public trust in government offices. Vietnam was a long and slow erosion whereas the Watergate scandal was something of an immediate drop in public perception of the government. Vietnam, over the long term, was probably the more damaging (from the government’s perspective) of the two. The fact is that the Vietnam war was seen as a debacle in nearly every front. It was expensive both monetarily in terms of lives lost, while providing almost no benefit. Worse, it made the United States seem like butchers and villains both on the international stage and to civilians back home – people saw the â€Å"realities of warfare† (991), which, especially with a conscripted force, involve things like massacres, rapes, and other brutalities that people were not able to handle. This war made Americans suspect of