Beverly Deepe Keever is a professor emerita of the University of Hawaii and the author of 鈥淒eath Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting鈥 and 鈥淣ews Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb.鈥 She taught journalism and communications for 29 years at the University of Hawaii Manoa.
It鈥檚 taking place at home and it鈥檚 buoyed by seismic shifts in media, and nearly half a century after the end of the Vietnam War.
It was just a low-grade insurgency when I arrived in Saigon in February 1962, jostling a camera and portable typewriter. Newly elected President John F. Kennedy was already forging his self-proclaimed New Frontier in South Vietnam.
He had ordered the disembarking of banana-shaped helicopters in Saigon and dispatched more American advisers to the countryside. There, Vietnamese villagers were 鈥渞eady to be ignited,鈥 a cadre noted. And Communist-inspired guerrillas were vigorously igniting them.
Then, just 13 years later, with historic abruptness and finality, the Vietnam War ended. On April 30, 1975 鈥 the 48th anniversary just occurred 鈥 the world was stunned by iconic images of desperate Vietnamese identified with Americans clawing aboard a U.S. helicopter perched on the narrow runway platform of a building.
North Vietnamese tanks and troops seized Saigon鈥檚 Presidential Palace, after the humiliating collapse of South Vietnam鈥檚 armed forces that had cost millions of dollars, thousands of U.S. and Asian lives, and incalculable prestige.
A 鈥渞agged-ass little fourth-rate country鈥 鈥 President Lyndon Johnson鈥檚 words 鈥 had etched for America its first politico-military defeat.
Underpinning this defeat, however, was an unacknowledged factor 鈥 the advent of television. I termed it a 鈥渕ediashift鈥 after reading Harold Innis and his 1950 landmark 鈥淓mpire and Communications.鈥
Innis found that communication media are so central to social structure and culture that the principal axis of change 鈥 or the rise and fall of empire 鈥 will be a change in the communication technology that the society mostly relies on. He saw America鈥檚 culture as being based on print media that foster speed, commercialism and militarism.
Later, a second made-in-America mediashift arrived 鈥 social media. It enabled 鈥 even aided 鈥 a look-alike Vietnam insurgency within America itself.
The 1960s counterculture spotlighted Innis鈥檚 findings. Toddlers watched television before they learned to read. Changing the way they accessed information silently, unknowingly changed their senses, thinking and world-view.
They questioned their parents鈥 values and 鈥 as fighting in South Vietnam escalated 鈥 protested their government鈥檚 national draft as record numbers of U. S. men reached its 18-to 26-year-old age bracket.
Television transported into American living rooms the visual immediacy of the bloodshed and battlefield that I was unable to capture in writing for Newsweek, the New York Herald Tribune or the Christian Science Monitor.
Shades of Vietnam鈥檚 insurgency began to waft to America itself. Like the failed coups I had covered in Saigon, President Richard Nixon subverted democracy鈥檚 rule-of-law foundation until exposed by the Watergate scandal that forced his 1974 resignation.
Americans鈥 grievances began snowballing, like the Vietnamese villagers ready to ignite when I arrived in Saigon. Grievances in the U. S. grew with the mounting costs of Middle East misadventures, the loss of Rust Belt manufacturing jobs and the masculinity they embodied. The 2008 election of America鈥檚 first Black president rekindled latent pro-segregationist sentiments.
Antipathy toward immigrants, migrants and 鈥渢he other鈥 was tinged with xenophobia, like that exploited so adroitly by Vietnamese Communists. Hardcore elements of Christianity in the U. S. flexed their political muscle to oppose legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and gay rights, much like the militant Buddhists who sparked the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem鈥檚 government in 1963.
This constellation of U. S.-made grievances was fostered by a second mediashift 鈥 the increased use and adaptations of social media. These cyber-platforms like Twitter and Facebook enabled (but did not determine) a horizontal mode of remote conversation that had been closed to e-citizens using top-down print and broadcast media.
These grievances were solidified and ignited by the Tweetified presidential campaign of Donald Trump and his successful 2016 election. But Tweets are too technically abbreviated to provide discussion needed for solutions or compromise, like that afforded by oral cultures based on close human contact. Social media facilitate 鈥渟warming,鈥 messaging e-citizens anywhere and everywhere all at once to focus on a single target, like the hum of honeybees beckoning them to their nest.
Enabled by social media鈥檚 swarming, Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, beaconed his followers to a massive rally in Washington and urged them to disrupt Congress as it sought to certify the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden.
Tweets are too technically abbreviated to provide discussion needed for solutions or compromise.
Then insurgents stormed the U. S. Capitol while Congress began certifying Trump鈥檚 defeat. That almost-successful January 6 disruption of Congress recalled to me the momentous coup d鈥檈tat in Saigon that overthrew President Diem鈥檚 government.
Even more, the January 6 insurgents made visible a cyber-spectacular 鈥 while the whole world was watching 鈥 of an assault on the U.S. government, which President Nixon had secretly subverted 48 years earlier.
Now, 48 years after the end of the Vietnam War, America鈥檚 insurgency is still unfolding. It is being fought with subpoenas and counter-investigations rather than AR-15s.
These two 鈥渕ediashifts鈥 鈥 television and social media 鈥 have enabled America鈥檚 slow-motion fall from empire. They came as the U.S. awaits still more mediashifts 鈥 A.I., Metaverse and of others not yet born.
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Beverly Deepe Keever is a professor emerita of the University of Hawaii and the author of 鈥淒eath Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting鈥 and 鈥淣ews Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb.鈥 She taught journalism and communications for 29 years at the University of Hawaii Manoa.
It's actually good news that the blame shifting has begun. That means we are one step closer to accountability.
TenPercentForDaBigGuy·
1 year ago
Wonderfully insightful article, thank you!It is no surprise to me that it is only one party that is xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, and fearful.
Scotty_Poppins·
1 year ago
"cyber-platforms like Twitter and Facebook enabled (but did not determine) a horizontal mode of remote conversation that had been closed to e-citizens using top-down print and broadcast media"Vertical suppression by Twitter and Facebook revealed by the ignored Twitter Files, informs us that top down suppression of facts still dominates the neo-legacy social media we have today. Comparing the US orchestrated coup that overthrew Diem's Catholic dominated government to Jan. 6th riot, may be pertinent in light of Jan. 6th agitators like Ray Epps, and the fact that Enique Tarrio of the Proud Boys was a FBI informant. The much repeated lyrics of Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, even today, could be true because the media, both corporate social and legacy media, can manipulate the perception of events to create cognitive dissonance. Is the narrative of the US pivoting from serial insurgencies, from Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine, all having been given the seal of approval by the media of their urgent strategic needs, appears to now boomerang back to exposing Washington's criminal incompetence and lack of vision?
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