Vietnam War and President Lyndon B. Johnson

After World War II, the Vietnamese fought for and won their independence from France. Starting in 1964 and finished in 1975, Vietnam war was held between communist North Vietnam, usually called Viet Cong, and capitalist South Vietnam. The South Vietnam was supported by troops from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea while the North Vietnam was assisted by the USSR. Although not as well equipped as South Vietnam, North Vietnam had advantage of large numbers of soldiers.

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At that time, American President Eisenhower sent foreign aid and military advisors to South Vietnam because according to domino theory, he was afraid that if Vietnam fell to communism, all of Southeast Asia would also fall. However, the U.S. troops were defeated because they underestimated the tenacity of Viet Cong and his skilled jungle fighters. Moreover, the war reached its climax during President Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency in the 1960s. He was attempting to operate the war for his own purpose of gaining more votes through a series of actions like the bombing of North Vietnam, sending U.S. troops into Vietnam and so on.  

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In March 1965, President Johnson took an action of attacking North Vietnam and launched Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing raid. America thought North Vietnam was weak enough to be easily defeated and scheduled to bomb eights weeks but it lasted for three years because they miscalculated Viet Cong’s power. At first, the bombing raids gave not only the South Vietnamese support and relief, but also the will to fight the Viet Cong. In the Operation Rolling Thunder and other bombing raids, the Americans bombed various targets, including main transporting trails, major fuel depots, and important factories, trying to decrease the infiltration of Communist troops, but it was useless and attracted much opposition. Ho Chi Minh trail is the main transporting system for manpower and supplies; thus, it was heavily bombed throughout the war.

Making poor decisions and unable to achieve American’s expectations, President Lyndon B. Johnson became one of the most unpopular presidents. During 1960s, he bombed North Vietnamese, thinking it would do good to the South Vietnamese and America, sent numerous of soldiers into Vietnam, hoping they could defeat the North Vietnamese, and promote the Great Society Program, wishing to improve all American’s life; however, none of his proposals came true. In March 1968, President Johnson decided not to seek re-election since he was doing badly during his administration by announcing, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” At the same time, he began to bring soldiers back from Vietnam, wishing everything could end peacefully. 

The unseen positive effects of the Cold War

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The Cold War is a term used to describe the war that had never been directly fought between the U.S and the Soviet Union from the mid 1940s to the early 1990s. The traumatized Europe had become unprecedentedly weak due to the post World War II effects. The Soviet Union saw this as an opportunity to advocate and expand communism in Europe. Determined to stop Stalin’s rapidly expanding empire, U.S.President Harry Truman issued the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey in order to prevent them from falling to the Soviet Union. After fifty years of indirectly engaging each other politically and militarily, the Soviet Union finally fell apart and the U.S. became the single dominant power in the world. While the Cold War led to massive military spending and brought catastrophic events to Vietnam and Korea, the positive effects can not be forgotten. 

The speed of technological development during the Cold War was unprecedented. Both sides utilized thousands of scientists and spent millions of dollars developing new technologies. The development of nuclear power and microchips were the most significant developments of the time.

Ironically, nuclear power was the number one clean source energy on earth, but was also used for destruction. The first nuclear plant was built during the Cold War in Soviet Union, called the Obninsk Atomic Energy Station. Though it was too small to have any commercial value, it became the prototype of more powerful reactors. There are 435 nuclear power plants throughout the word, providing 14% of the world’s electricity. 

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Just a few days ago, Apple announced its next generation iPad, the iPad mini. People are amazed by its size and all the apps it can process. However, they do not realize that if it weren’t for the development of microchips during the Cold War, we wouldn’t be able to carry any electronics around. These microchips were developed solely for the purpose of military use. Missiles were less expensive, while being able to aim more accurately. Only after Harvey Cragon built the first computer made entirely from integrated circuits combined by numerous microchips did people began to realize the potential of these little silicon chips. By the first year of the twenty-first century, new memory chips were able to store 256 million bits of information. The average personal computers that are seen on the market today are armed with memory cards that can store 34,359,738,368 bits of information but cost less than 40 dollars. 

Besides the development of technologies, the Cold War also had a significant influence on advancing the Civil Rights Movement. Even though slavery was long gone after, blacks were still facing social discrimination and suffered from racial injustice. Politicians used the Cold War as the perfect medium to promote civil rights because they wanted the US to look good in front of the whole world. President Truman said, “If the United States were to offer the ‘people of the world’ a ‘choice of freedom or enslavement’ it must ‘correct remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy”. Richard Nixon also endorsed Civil Rights in one of his ads when he was still an Republican candidate. 

In 1964, president Johnson put an end to the discrimination in public and many private places by helping pass The Civil Rights Act. 

The rivalry between Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War forced both sides to advance and progress in every field possible in order to establish their role as supreme power. Without their aggressive competition, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy, compact electronics, and other commodities that we rely on today. 

Therapeutic Poetry

Confessional poetry is often associated with intimate autobiographical matters and boldly discusses sensitive topics such as suicide, depression, childhood trauma, drug use, and alcoholism. This type of poetry was unrecognized until the work of Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Most confessional poets have experienced mental breakdowns and have attempted suicide. Both Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at early ages. 

Confessional poetry was used to treat psychological illnesses. The essence of psychotherapy is disclosing the clandestine through writing. Confessional poets write about themselves because it allows them to discover and express their true feelings in a safe place. Thus, their poems often show their most cryptic and dark thoughts.  

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Before committing suicide, Sylvia Plath wrote: 
“Dying is an art.

Like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I have a call.”

Her obsession with death can be traced back to her father’s passing when she was eight years old. In her poem “Daddy”, which she wrote on October 12, 1962, shortly before her death, she described her father as a “black shoe, In which I have lived like a foot”, a "Nazi" (her father was German), and "a vampire who drank her blood for seven years". In the poem, she claimed that she had killed both her father and the symbol of him created in the text, thus successfully getting revenge.  She struggled to forgive him in the end, crying “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”. 

One possible explanation for such feelings towards her father is that he had low tolerance for his children. Their relationship was based on academic performance. Sylvia tried to exact his love and recognition by excelling in school; however, her father’s death ultimately rendered such efforts futile. 

Many readers are unprepared when they first encounter confessional poetry and are embarrassed or uncomfortable due to its largely outrageous content. Many find Charles Bukowuski’s “The Girl on the Bus Stop Bench” obscene and offensive (warning: this poem is sexually explicit in nature):

“the wind flipped her skirt

high along her thighs

and I began rubbing myself.

just before her bus came

I climaxed.

I smelled my sperm

felt it wet against my shorts

and pants.”

Don’t be embarrassed; confessional poetry is all about honest confession. The old adage “words are therapeutic” might sound cliche, but putting one's words to paper can be a relief to their conscience. Try writing your own confessional poems; you may uncover some of your own hidden thoughts, bringing you closer to making sense of your feelings.

The GI Bill of Rights and Its Impacts

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The GI Bill of Rights, officially known as The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is the 32nd president of America, in order to provide a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans. Benefits included low-cost mortgages, small-business loans, school and college tuition, job training, and unemployment payments. Within a few years, the GI Bill became a powerful stimulus for social and economic change of United States.

            Most essential, the GI Bill was one force leading to enormous social change on race.  As Hilary Herbold writes, “Clearly, the G.I. Bill was a crack in the wall of racism that had surrounded the American university system. It forced predominantly white colleges to allow a larger number of blacks to enroll, contributed to a more diverse curriculum at many HBCUs, and helped provide a foundation for the gradual growth of the black middle class." The bill greatly expanded the population of African Americans attending colleges and graduate schools. In northern urban areas, black veterans of the war attended formerly all-white institutions. Besides from blacks, Jewish veterans could also enter into many schools that had, in the past, rejected or applied harsh rules for Jewish applicants. Furthermore, due to the GI Bill, minorities like blacks or Jews were able to benefit from the growth of public institutions in urban areas.

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            The GI Bill significantly addressed issues of education for different colors or people by providing them with home, farm, and business loans that helped them out of the financial dilemma. These loans contributed to their ability to purchase homes and farmlands with farming equipment. Moreover, all veterans were able to get $20 a week for 52 weeks while they looked for work, which contributed a lot to their living expenses in that period. What the GI Bill helped was to enable the nation to overcome years of instability, restored the nation’s economy, and helped promote the United States to the leading position in the world’s stage.

Confessional Poet Robert Lowell with His Poem Skunk Hour

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From the late 1950’s to 1960’s, poems were more likely to be autobiographical and personal, majorly addressing poets’ personal feelings about a lot of shameful and negative matters, known as the confessional style. Meanwhile, poetic themes were more special, such as abortion, suicide, alcoholism, etc. There were several prominent confessional poets, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and W.D. Snodgrass. All of the confessional poets stayed out of the standards for socially accepted topics. 

Among them, Robert Lowell is the most successful poet, not only leading the new ways in autobiography but also representing the sensibility in American poetry. For instance, Lowell’s Life Studies made a significant breakthrough to a new style in poetry realm which M.L Rosenthal called “confessional”. Moreover, “Skunk Hour”, the final poem in Life Studies, is one of the most famous poems that shows what confessional poetry is like.

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In the Skunk Hour, “the confessional mirroring of public and private is expressed formally in the poem's symmetrical division into four stanzas about the social environment and four about the poet's "dark night" of voyeurism and incipient madness.” The poem begins with the speaker reflecting on a coastal town in Maine and later describes a wealthy woman who seems to own a lot of money, but is alone “in her dotage”. Moreover, he depicts many things that are going wrong with the place. Through saying, “we’ve lost our summer millionaire” and “a cobbler’s bench and awl”, Lowell is illustrating a pretty sad scene for the whole place. In the next four stanzas, the attention is shifted to the poet himself. He remembers the drive he took through the town was gloomy and he admits to being depressed and feeling crazy. The emotional effects and mental illustrations he has are expressed deeper and deeper as the poem progresses. I feel like the poet is very frustrated of the emptiness and futility of the American civilization and of what he sees around his society. Nevertheless, the poem moves from the frustration to the individual revitalization when he sees the mother skunk and its kittens rummaging the garbage for the leftover in order for survival.

Through the poem Skunk Hour, we can see the confessional poetry is basically writing memoirs about overcoming traumatic experiences and mental illnesses. In essence, Robert Lowell is the leading figure of confessional poetry, later followed by poets like Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and so on. 

Voice of an Angel

Joan Baez was born in Staten Island, New York on January 9, 1941. She began her singing career in some of the local coffeehouses and clubs after she attended Boston University. 

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In 1959, Bob Gibson invited her to the Newport Folk Festival. She quickly became well known because of her distinctive voice. I’ve never heard any female singer with a stronger and more consistent vibrato than hers. 

Baez began recording her songs and published her fist self-titled album, Joan Baez, in 1960. The album featured thirteen traditional folk songs including “Silver Dagger”, “Fare Thee Well”, and made the Billboard 200 in 1962. She later added three bonus tracks to this album including “Girl of Constant Sorrow”, “I Know You Rider” and “John Riley”. 

When people talk about folk music, the first person that likely comes to their mind is Bob Dylan. However, the “king” of folk music was just an unknown 19-year-old kid while Joan Baez was already the “Queen of Folk”. 

They officially met at Boston’s Club 47 in April 1963 and Baez was throughly impressed by Dylan’s talents in both singing and composing. She began performing with Dylan onstage, forming one of the most legendary stage partnerships. 

Their favorite duets included “Never Let Me Go”, “It Ain’t Me Babe” and the famous duet “With God On Our side”. I still don’t understand how Baez’s beautiful soprano voice fits so perfectly with Dylan’s sloppy and scratchy voice. 

As a hardcore civil rights supporter, most of Baez’s songs were about social and political issues.Part of the reason was probably because of her Mexican heritage (her father was Mexican and her mother was Scottish) and the racial discrimination she endured during her childhood. She sang “We Shall Overcome” at the March in 1963 organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in Washington, DC. 

In 1967, she sat in front of an empty military bus in Oakland, California and due to her “outrageous” act, she was arrested and had to stay in jail 82 days. During the jail time, she played guitar to comfort the scared kids who were also involved in the incident. Her jail mate described her as “wonderfully sensible and reassuring in what were essentially insane surroundings”. 

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Baez is 71 years old now and has been making music for more than 50 years. After Wednesday's Dr. Pepper Festival (an outdoor concert in Central Park), the New York Times admired her voice as “After two decades of public singing, Miss Baez’s soprano is as strong and distinctive as it ever was. Her chest tones are, if anything, richer and darker than a decade ago”. 

Advertising strategies of the mid 20th century

“May I have an old-fashioned please?” says Don Draper, the Creative Director 

of Manhattan advertising firm Sterling Cooper. Meanwhile, he reaches into his pocket 

and takes out a pack of Lucky Strike, forming new strategies to razzle-dazzle his clients. 

You are probably familiar with this scene if you consider yourself a Netflix junkie. Mad Men is a new TV series about how 1960s advertising companies operated and how did advertisements affect people's everyday life 

At the end of the war, thousands of young men and women returned home and many of them got married. The direct outcome was increased demand for housing and its related products. Manufacturers quickly switched from producing weapons to producing consumer products. By using newspapers, magazines, radio and television as mediums, advertising companies were able to make advertisements prevalent in people's lives. 

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This ad is one of the most famous Volkswagen ads during the 60s. Without these ads, Volkswagen was destined to fail because selling Hitler’s favorite car to American people after just a decade and a half was just as hard as winning the war. 

The ad featured a monochrome Volkswagen Beetle with the word “Lemon”. Different from the outrageous ads from other car companies, DDB adopted a minimalistic design for its ads. Those condensed words underneath did not go on to exaggerate Beetle’s performance. Instead, they focused on the laborious inspection process stating,  “Every shock absorber is tested (spot checking won’t do), every windshield is scanned. VW’s have been rejected for surface scratches barely visible to the eye.” and concluding with “We pluck the lemons; you get the plums,” to give consumers a feeling of security, therefore successfully selling the Beetle. 

Television advertising was also heavily exploited by the ad companies starting in 1950s. Moving images and sound effects replaced the frozen images and words of printed pages. Audiences were able to experience more directly because they could simply see more of the products. When you are annoyed by the pervasive ads that continuously cut through your TV shows, you are probably wishing that TV advertising was never adopted. However, during the postwar era, some of the advertisements looked like short clips from a movie and they were actually entertaining, often accompanied by humorous lines and a 1930s pitch, such as this classic Buick ad. 

There are thousands of ways to advertise a product, but they are all based on happiness. Just as Don Draper said, “Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are OK. “