Haight – Ashbury – the Summer Of Love was really over.
A day of many contrasts on October 7, 1967.
Starting with Vietnam. In less than a week President Johnson’s latest defense of his prosecution of the war in Vietnam has been thoroughly undermined. His San Antonio speech was followed by a week in which: -American casualties in Vietnam passed the 100,000 figure. The Vietnamese elections generated new opposition rather than new support for the Thieu-Ky government. Polls at home showed the war was supported by no more than 30 per cent of the American people and President Johnson’s popular support was at a low ebb. -The one strong voice support in the Congress for current policies came from Republican Senate Leader Dirksen, whose party was developing its own split over Vietnam.
Support for administration policy in Vietnam proved a serious embarrassment to Britain’s Labor government. – Demands for a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam continued to mount. This catalogue could be made longer. But just these half dozen items of the last few days revive the point raised by former Ambassador George F. Kennan months ago: The administration policy in Vietnam is extracting an ultimate cost out of all proportion to its potential accomplishments.
If the cost were simply a matter of the personal sacrifice that all wars involve, a majority of Americans might accept a Grant-like decision to fight it out on this line, come what may. But blood and cash are not the full price for Vietnam. There is as Kennan predicted a concurrent loss of influence in other areas. So, perhaps worst of all, there was the soul-sapping expense of carrying on without moral support or a sure sense that the effort was worth the candle. There was no question that this country has legitimate interests in Southeast Asia. But there were growing denials that those interests demand the day’s lonely struggle in Vietnam (in Dirksen’s words) to protect “the whole Pacific coast line of the United States” or even to keep the dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia. It would suit American ideals to create democracy in South Vietnam.
But as Mark Ethridge Jr.’s series of sober reports in The Observer had indicated, that project depended on the Vietnamese. And so far they have contributed little or nothing toward making South Vietnam an established national, democratic entity. In fact, with one or two exceptions, the non-Communist nations of Southeast Asia have shown no great eagerness to be protected from Communist or Chinese expansion in line with the Johnson administration’s policy in Vietnam. Saying that this policy is at odds with what the United States can and should do in Vietnam was not the same thing as saying what else could be done. Other alternative involved their own risks.
But other alternatives did exist. They need not involve the oversimplified prospects of total war or total surrender as President Johnson so often suggested. Faced with the mounting costs of his Vietnam policy at home and abroad, President Johnson needed to reappraise that policy in the light of other alternatives.
And back home, in seemingly another entire world away – a report as given by The Independent-Star News on October 7th:
A spokesman says the hippie movement is declining. Matter of fact, says Ron Thelin, it’s nearly dead. Thelin, operator of the Psychadelic Shop, said inactivity in the Haight-Ashbury distrirt is so pronounced that he is going broke. (In hippie talk–the bread (money) is gone.) Some $6,000 in debt, Thelin planned to close the store, main gathering place in the area, on Friday. A three-day “Death of Hipple” observance is underway by Thelin and others, culminating in a funeral procession with a symbolic caskel to be borne through the Haight-Ashbury district Sunday.
The open coffin will be a receptacle for abandoned • trappings of hippie life, he said-shaven beards, wilted flowers, discarded marijuana and sandals. Thelin said hippics grew tired of being slaves of an image crealed by news media. “The desire now is to be free,” he affirmed. “The Haight-Ashbury was apportioned to 15 by media and police,” Thelin commented. “The tourists came to the zoo to see the captive animals and we growled fiercely bebind the bars we accepled.” The Psychedelic Shop has been in business a year and a half.
Last spring, Thelin predicted 100,000 “flower children” would flock to San Francisco for a “summer of Jove.” Large numbers arrived, all right, but police said they didn’t stay. San Francisco’s chilly, foggy summer weather had something to do with it, officers said. Camping out 1 in Golden Gate Park adjacent to the Haight-Ashbury proved uncomfortable. Beards, bare feet and rakish clothes are still to be seen in the district, but Thelin said “the spirit is gone.” “No we are no longer hippies,” he added.
And that’s a small slice of what happened on October 7, 1967 as reported by ABC Radio News Of The World.
Body Bags In Vietnam – A Funeral In The Haight – October 7, 1967
A day of many contrasts on October 7, 1967.
Starting with Vietnam. In less than a week President Johnson’s latest defense of his prosecution of the war in Vietnam has been thoroughly undermined. His San Antonio speech was followed by a week in which: -American casualties in Vietnam passed the 100,000 figure. The Vietnamese elections generated new opposition rather than new support for the Thieu-Ky government. Polls at home showed the war was supported by no more than 30 per cent of the American people and President Johnson’s popular support was at a low ebb. -The one strong voice support in the Congress for current policies came from Republican Senate Leader Dirksen, whose party was developing its own split over Vietnam.
Support for administration policy in Vietnam proved a serious embarrassment to Britain’s Labor government. – Demands for a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam continued to mount. This catalogue could be made longer. But just these half dozen items of the last few days revive the point raised by former Ambassador George F. Kennan months ago: The administration policy in Vietnam is extracting an ultimate cost out of all proportion to its potential accomplishments.
If the cost were simply a matter of the personal sacrifice that all wars involve, a majority of Americans might accept a Grant-like decision to fight it out on this line, come what may. But blood and cash are not the full price for Vietnam. There is as Kennan predicted a concurrent loss of influence in other areas. So, perhaps worst of all, there was the soul-sapping expense of carrying on without moral support or a sure sense that the effort was worth the candle. There was no question that this country has legitimate interests in Southeast Asia. But there were growing denials that those interests demand the day’s lonely struggle in Vietnam (in Dirksen’s words) to protect “the whole Pacific coast line of the United States” or even to keep the dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia. It would suit American ideals to create democracy in South Vietnam.
But as Mark Ethridge Jr.’s series of sober reports in The Observer had indicated, that project depended on the Vietnamese. And so far they have contributed little or nothing toward making South Vietnam an established national, democratic entity. In fact, with one or two exceptions, the non-Communist nations of Southeast Asia have shown no great eagerness to be protected from Communist or Chinese expansion in line with the Johnson administration’s policy in Vietnam. Saying that this policy is at odds with what the United States can and should do in Vietnam was not the same thing as saying what else could be done. Other alternative involved their own risks.
But other alternatives did exist. They need not involve the oversimplified prospects of total war or total surrender as President Johnson so often suggested. Faced with the mounting costs of his Vietnam policy at home and abroad, President Johnson needed to reappraise that policy in the light of other alternatives.
And back home, in seemingly another entire world away – a report as given by The Independent-Star News on October 7th:
A spokesman says the hippie movement is declining. Matter of fact, says Ron Thelin, it’s nearly dead. Thelin, operator of the Psychadelic Shop, said inactivity in the Haight-Ashbury distrirt is so pronounced that he is going broke. (In hippie talk–the bread (money) is gone.) Some $6,000 in debt, Thelin planned to close the store, main gathering place in the area, on Friday. A three-day “Death of Hipple” observance is underway by Thelin and others, culminating in a funeral procession with a symbolic caskel to be borne through the Haight-Ashbury district Sunday.
The open coffin will be a receptacle for abandoned • trappings of hippie life, he said-shaven beards, wilted flowers, discarded marijuana and sandals. Thelin said hippics grew tired of being slaves of an image crealed by news media. “The desire now is to be free,” he affirmed. “The Haight-Ashbury was apportioned to 15 by media and police,” Thelin commented. “The tourists came to the zoo to see the captive animals and we growled fiercely bebind the bars we accepled.” The Psychedelic Shop has been in business a year and a half.
Last spring, Thelin predicted 100,000 “flower children” would flock to San Francisco for a “summer of Jove.” Large numbers arrived, all right, but police said they didn’t stay. San Francisco’s chilly, foggy summer weather had something to do with it, officers said. Camping out 1 in Golden Gate Park adjacent to the Haight-Ashbury proved uncomfortable. Beards, bare feet and rakish clothes are still to be seen in the district, but Thelin said “the spirit is gone.” “No we are no longer hippies,” he added.
And that’s a small slice of what happened on October 7, 1967 as reported by ABC Radio News Of The World.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
Recent Posts
She Drew The Gun – In Session – 2018 – Past Daily Night Session
January 8, 1967 The 90th Congress In A Nutshell – Past Daily Reference Room
Hawkwind – Detroit – 1974 – Past Daily Lunchroom
January 9, 1980 – The View From Kabul – The Embassy In Tehran
Adwaith – Groningen – 2023 – Past Daily Night Session