In 1970, the University of Texas was squared off against itself. The frats, the student government, the sororities, the administration, the ROTC department, and the cops on the one side, and us on the other.
The Vets against the Vietnam War, the Wobblies (IWW), the Panthers, the Young Socialistist Alliance (Trotskyite), the RYM2 (Revolutionary Youth Movement faction of the Students for a Democratic Society), Weathermen (the other, more interesting side of the SDS), and hundreds of other splinter groups were taking a fair beating, though we had the numbers.
I was in the middle of all that, writing for the alternative newspaper, the RAG, and trying to get an education dovetailed with sex, drugs and Rock and Roll with helping organize an occasional riot, march or rally thrown in for good measure.
That’s when we invented the Yin Yang Conspiracy. An ad hoc political party. We ran a longhair named Jeff Jones for student body president, and we threw the bastards out, lock stock and fraternity pin. Lordee we thought we’d done something fierce, beating the system that way. Hot diggedy-damn.
Anyway, this blog entry is in memory of that microscopic triumph among people who had in common only that they opposed the War.
The Yin Yang Conspiracy. A tiny piece of winning the Vietnam War by bringing the troops home. Winning the easy way. Coming out in the open, looking those cops, those stay-at-home flag-waving patriots in the eye through their riot masks, and saying, “Enough is enough!”
We learned a lot. Surveillance, provocateurs, intimidations probably weren’t so pervasive in those days. No yes-man Congress had passed a Patriot Act, so we still had some rights and protections under the US Constitution. It would be a tougher gig today.
But, if that was now we’d be doing it again. We’d be working in both, subtle and overt ways to bring those boys home.
Trying to get them out of there before too many more get all shot up and crippled up and be completely forgotten by the patriots who are waving flags back home.
Old Jules
Country Joe McDonald – I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag http://youtu.be/3W7-ngmO_p8
So Far From Heaven 
I think we should bring them ALL home and let those other b——s kill each other off. They’re going to do it anyway. We need to start taking care of ourselves.
Hi Momlady: Thanks for stopping in and commenting. I’d observe that Vietnam’s a lot healthier place for Vietnamese beginning the day the last US troops skedaddled out of there hanging off the outsides of helicopters. It became a lot cheaper, healthier place in the overall scheme of US economics the same day, even though the US left behind more billions of dollars worth of equipment, supplies, and moral certitude than anyone was able to count.
The consequences of getting out weren’t what was portrayed by the US government when it was getting into it. But if Asian lives had been the concern the US government would probably have noticed what the US military adventure in Vietnam was doing to destabilize a government we approved next door in Cambodia. The consequences there were measurable in body counts when the Khymers used the opportunity we created for them to depopulate the region they controlled.
An argument can be made by hindsight, based on our current relationship with China and the dissolution of the USSR, that every US military death in Asia after the end of WWII was wasted, was the result of tragic, ironic falsehood and miscalculation.
Gracias, J
I remember those days when I thought I could make a difference. I’ve lived long enough now to see the same wrongs done over and the same words spewed about it to know that I made no difference except to myself. That is good enough I guess.
Oldfool: Thanks for the visit and comment. You and I are in agreement. The activities of single individuals didn’t have any outcome worth mentioning, except in their own invididual lives and how they viewed themselves. Probably subtracting any thousand of them would have left the aftermath exactly as it came to be. Maybe any 10,000.
But if it weren’t for the composite of flawed, egoistic, self-righteous mobs of protesters I’d guess that war would have gone on one hell of a lot longer than it did. Jules
Today’s post meshes well with yours, Jules. Watch the video if you have a few minutes. http://thebookofcletis.blogspot.com/2011/09/honor-by-harold-trainer.html
Cletis: Thanks again for coming by and commenting. My reply is my next post. Gracias, J
Thanks for stopping in Cletis: Interesting paradox in all that. All of us who, as younger men, volunteered to serve in the military did so with the full awareness that we were abdicating our own intelligence and judgement to the hands of politicians. When the took our military oaths we were saying, “If you think someone needs killing and tell me to kill them, I will kill them, whether my intelligence, my reasoning powers, my ethics, my judgement, agrees with your reasons for telling me to do it, or otherwise.”
Although I handed over the responsibility for such decisions over to military leaders and politicians once, I have no admiration for anyone for having done it. I consider the fact I did it to be a testimonial to my own shallow minded, irresponsible approach to my life and everything important in it at the time.
Thanks for the reply. Jack