Earliest political memory ?

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Earliest political memory?

Thinking Kåre Willoch was cute! Even though he was an old man, and I was just a little kid! (early 80's)

Mid 80's: Debates on TV between Kåre Willoch and Gro Harlem Brundtland where he stayed calm and ticking her off to the point where she was almost jumping up and down in anger Didn't care about the politics or pay attention to it, but was pretty amused by how they acted.

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Fall of the Berlin wall in TV.
The the Balkan war, Bill Clinton, and the plot of "Wag the Dog".
When 9/11 happened, I understood that the patriot act was similar to the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (the emergency laws instated by the Nazis after the burning of the Reichstag (parliament)), and I understood that the 20th century was over, and that the story of America being a force for good in the world was over.

I feel like equating the Patriot Act with the Nazi laws after the Reichstag Fire is like equating a gnat with a lion.

Sure, the Patriot Act had its fascistic elements—but did it lead to a Holocaust?

I understand that the post above mine is a past impression, rather than a present-day opinion.

I might have known that it was 1967 when I was 6. I definitely knew it was 1968 when I was 7.

Politically, I remember the news coverage of the Vietnam War and the civil rights marches. Hippies and the people who wore hard hats who hated the hippies.

When Martin Luther King was shot, I felt really sad. I knew something about civil rights by that time.

I did not have to watch the news to find people who hated hippies. My dad would sometimes curse at the TV if they were showing an anti war demonstration. That said I never heard him say they should have shot them all as so many did after Kent State. There were a lot of “America Love It or Leave It” decals on cars in my neighborhood. I do remember seeing the anti hippie “hard hat riot” in downtown Manhattan on the news a few days after Kent State.

We had a in law who had the opposite opinion. One day for some reason we had to drive her van that had a peace sign on it. He did not like it, but did it despite fearing some sort of retaliation from the neighbors.

I remember the fear being palpable that blacks would come in and burn down the neighborhood the night MLK was assassinated.

In both instances the fears were unwarranted.

I learn a lot reading your posts.
Here, there were hippies but no "hard hats" (helmets?) fighting them.

I think hippies are not only remembered better because of losing the Vietnam War. They are remembered better because of their music. Ars longa, vita brevis.

Does my dad making jokes about George Bush count?

"Hard hats" were blue collar construction workers. Who were at odds with the upper middle class campus radicals -the latter of which were lumped with "hippies" even though they and hippies were not quite the same.

The adults in that era grew up during World War Two. There was little public opposition and much enthusiasm for that war. Young people went when drafted or volunteered.

During the Vietnam War if you had enough brains and money you could get a deferment from being drafted. If you were a son of a construction worker you got drafted and went.

Many of the WWII generation viewed all opposition to the Vietnam War as treason. Adding to the resentment of the blue collar people was that it was their children who were fighting and dying while the college students and hippies were getting all this education and criticizing the country that gave them that opportunity.

My earliest memory: the 2008 election. I don’t remember how this came to be, but I was pulling for Obama. I have a memory of being around a few of my 2nd grade classmates and one kid said “Obama’s winning”. I don’t remember watching TV about it, so I think I had heard from my parents that he won.

Yes, I saw things more black and white as a teenager, but the patriot act is still a worrying set of rules, particularly the rights regarding surveillance. - obviously I was a kid, for thinking of politics as some story about good guys vs. bad guys.

Richard Nixon's resignation.