There was a song by Barry McGuire that hit the charts on 1965 called Eve of Destruction. Maybe you remember his raspy voice singing:
The Eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill
But not for voting
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin
But your tell me over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.
In 1965 we had just had the Cuban Missile Crisis where Russia and the U.S. almost went to nuclear war. The Vietnam War was heating up. Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians were rattling their sabers for another war with Israel, while we had sent the Gemini astronauts into space for four days. Racial tensions were high in the South as Martin Luther King launched his non-violent protest over Jim Crow laws.
Now 60 years later, we have ‘violence flaring’ and some think we are on the ‘eve of destruction’.
Yet we made it through those turbulent years, 18 year- olds got the right to vote. Israel, Jordan and Egypt have peace and trade treaties with each other. We elected an African American/Caucasian president who served for two terms.