User:Mikado282/Remembering 68

“

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes. — Captain Kirk - taking 1968 off

”

Remembering 1968 is a listing of things I, Mikado282, remember happening in 1968, for comparison and contrast with the style and Storyline of Team Fortress 2. Try all of the links (because most are links to TF2 wiki pages that are related to what actually happened in 1968), check the citations to read more about the actual history, and let me know whether you enjoy the references.

When I started playing and learning about the 1968 Storyline, it was apparent to me that this tumultuous interval in U.S. and World history was only cartoonified, if it was given any attention at all, within the game's content and media. But I remember real Hippies, the Vietnam War, racial integration, inflation, atomic testing, etc. A particularly notable element of this is the friendship of Soldier and Demoman. I have to imagine that young players today think nothing of the races of Soldier and Demoman, but even as late as 1968, their association would have been regarded as novel in the Jim Crow south, which included New Mexico that was still effectively segregated at that point in history. Such was the state of affairs that even Hippies (largely middle class white kids) and Black Power organizations kept themselves rather separate, nominally because their concerns and objectives were very different. I suggest a study of the Badlands experiences of Sammy Davis, Jr., and his relationship with the Rat Pack.

1968

• The Tet Offensive scuttled any hope of reelection for then-President Johnson.

• The movie The Green Berets was released.

• Planet of the Apes was released, an influential science fiction movie that launched a franchise before there ever was such a thing as Star Wars.

• Arthur Ashe became the first African American to win the U.S. Open singles title

• Clint Eastwood starred in Hang Em High and Where Eagles Dare.

• Gary Gygax, founder of TSR, rented the Lake Geneva Horticultural Hall for the "Gen Con 0".

• The Moon Shot was originally scheduled for this year, but was delayed until 1969 following the launch pad deaths of three U.S. astronauts in 1967.

• Mikado282 enjoyed the movie Blackbeard's Ghost.

• But, Mikado282 wasn't enough to sit through 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the movie gave him the nickname "HAL9000" the rest of his school years.

• Speaking of computers, Mikado282's first reading assignment of this school year was about a boy who didn't like doing his math homework. So, the boy learned to program a mainframe, which his father worked, on to do his homework. The teacher found out and was going to flunk the boy, but was eventually convinced to give him credit for the programming (you have to know the subject to program the solution correctly).
  • In college, compensating for dyslexia, Mikado282 made every opportunity to use the line editors and immediate mode BASIC on the mainframes and the WANG 2200 to do Calculus, English, and Physics lab reports.
  • MSYN, his educational and professional start was assembly code on 68-hundred series microcontrollers.
  • He won an open house competition on an 68HC11 project.
  • His first professional 68xx project was the first system qualified on a new product class; and units have been operating for over 20 years with no bugs. Ditto the next project.

• Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb published this year predicted world-wide famine and disease and global economic collapse by 1980, or there abouts.
  • As if to demonstrate his global calamities to come, the Asian Flu was first detected this year in Hong Kong, which went on to kill 1 to 4 million people.

• George Lucas won his first movie award.

• The Unicorn song was recorded by the Irish Rovers this year.

• This year was dubbed the "Year of Inflation". The high and worsening inflation was an intention of Keynesian Demand-Side deficit-spending by the Kennedy and Johnson governments. It got worse: Nixon increased social spending and Carter accepted high inflation as inescapable. Reagan ended the inflation.

• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was released, starring Dick van Dyke.

• The publication of Chariots of the Gods? popularized alien theories, before Area 51 became such a trope.

• Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a black power salute as they received their medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

• Gabe Newell had his 6^th birthday this year. Mikado282 was a bit older than that.

• The Rolling Stones recorded You Can't Always Get What You Want for their Let It Bleed released the next year. It later became Donald Trump's favorite rally closing song.

• Civil Rights Act of 1964 required racial integration; however, New Mexico schools remained segregated until 1968.

• Union Pacific Railroad built the Omaha Zoo Train.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, triggering nation-wide riots, exceeding the riots of the long, hot summer of 1967, prompting the the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 during the riots, and assisting the election of Nixon.
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is also known as the Fair Housing Act.
  • The act also makes it a Federal felony to travel between states to vandalize statues.

• Hippy Riots occur in Chicago, protesting the Democratic National Committee's involvement in promotion of the Vietnam War and its Congressional role in the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. This accelerates the long transition of the DNC from the Party of Segregation to the Party of Socialism.
  • In direct response to the riots, John Lennon, a Maoist, writes Revolution, criticizing the violent Marxist elements of the riots and calling for non-violence.

• The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed. Good luck with that ....

• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band won 4 Grammy Awards.

• Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In began this year, featuring a guest clip of then Presidential candidate Richard Nixon saying "Sock it to me?".

• Richard Nixon won the 1968 election with a promise of "peace with honor" in the Vietnam War, but was later sapped by his own tape recordings.

• Hillary Clinton switched from the Republican Party to join Donald Trump, then in the Democrat Party, because, to HER, the segregationist Dixiecrats were maybe less racist than Nixon?!?!?!?!?

• Graduations:
  • Joe Biden graduated from Syracuse University College of Law, early in his Senate career reversing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (school integration).
  • Donald Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor's degree in Economics and began a career as real estate developer.
  • Hillary Clinton published her senior thesis and graduated the next year, which concluded that the Alinsky Method of radical organizing was great and all that, but didn't believe that it could be scaled nationally (Barack Obama, who shares a birthday with Mikado282, would later prove her wrong).
    • Six years later, her academic research on procedures of impeachment contributed to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

• Ross Perot became Texas' "fastest, richest" millionaire by taking EDS public this year. This action eventually made Perot rich enough to oppose George Bush's presidential candidacy, handing the Presidency to "Billary" Clinton. Perot particularly opposed unfair international trade deals, like Clinton's NAFTA. The independent reformer Donald Trump at one time ran as a successor Presidential candidate for Perot's Reform Party.

• The movie Yours, Mine and Ours was released.
  • My Father and Stepmother, both widowed with children, married, founding a family of Yours, Mine, Ours, Somebody Else's, and Who Knows, and gave me memories of '68 and many other years.