Vietnam war effects

I do wonder if a couple of
influences on our society might have been:
1) light-weight, high-endurance materials (fabrics like rip-stop
nylon for clothes and tents and ballistic nylon for footwear, for
example, or titanium pack frames that began to appear around that
time as outdoor gear for the newly popular sports such as hiking);
and
2) the "team" framework, now so common in business, complete with
team leader, that is described as developing in the ranger units
in Vietnam.


It's hard to tell because nobody wanted to say "this is a spin-off
from the war." That would have just gotten everybody upset.


There are a lot of people here who are much more qualified to
discuss the war; since you ask about society,




operating TV station went on the air in 1944; it was also a little
over eight years after the end of World War II and also after the
death of the second American casualty in Indochina (Lt. Col. A.
Peter Dewey, who was shot and killed at a roadblock by the Viet
Minh on September 26, 1945 -- the first American casualty in
Indochina that I know of was one of the Flying Tigers, shot down
over Hanoi by the Japanese during WWII); and my birth date was a
little over three years before the Politburo in Hanoi issued a
directive in June 1956, restructuring revolutionary cells that had
been illegally left behind in South Vietnam.


In other words, there was so much already going on before I even
got here, all of which had repercussions down through the decades,
it's a little difficult to neatly describe the influence of that
war on American society.


I mentioned TV first because that is what all kids like me grew up
with, and I think that strongly influenced both society and the
war.


I don't mean the "news bringing the war into everybody's homes"
thing; I mean just the medium itself. It really raised your
expectations and sense of self-importance. You really learned to
be aware of your sense of self, because there were people who
wanted to cater to your needs...for a price; the price usually was
worth it because "you" were at the focus of it all. That's not
how it is in the military, and I've wondered if the development of
that conflict in some people between newly raised expectations and
hard reality was part of the difference between general viewpoints
in the early and later stages of the American military involvement
in Vietnam.


Anyway, there was quite a lot going on in addition to TV. It's
hard to describe what it was like to grow up in America after
World War II: we had so much, and we took so much for granted.
A lot of that is gone now, or changed; that's why it's hard to
describe. And much of the upheaval occurred around the time of
the US involvement in Vietnam, so people associate "Vietnam" with
that. But that doesn't mean the war itself was the influence. It
was the people here at home that influenced the home society; the
soldiers were out there doing their thing, just as they have
always done.


"Vietnam" was just the hinge of the door we opened as we passed
from the "golden age" to the leaner and meaner times of today.
Had it not been there, likely something else would have served the
same purpose.


The polarization and bitterness of those years, and the subsequent
desire of many people my age not to talk about it at all, is what
one first thinks of in looking around for effects on society, but
I think one of the biggest influences on America to come of it all
is the influx of new immigrants that the troubles in Vietnam sent
to us and continue to send to us even today. Politics come(s) and
go(es) [is "politics" single or plural?], but people make a real
difference, especially in America. Many of the children of those
first immigrants, both Vietnamese and minorities, are now
energetic American professionals and entrepreneurs. Our group
base has been widened considerably and we're all better off for
it.




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thnx for the info