“Romper lo que está resquebrajado”: 1968 in the United States of America

Abstract

Due to the inability of the United States political structure to resolve deep internal disagreements over the Vietnam War, Americans lost their faith in an effective public order regardless of their political sympathies. 1968 was the year in which faith in the nation’s political institutions cracked. The year began with an organized movement within the Democratic Party to oust Lyndon Johnson from the White House and to place an antiwar leader at the head of the party, a leader who would refocus the political energies of the nation on healing racial division and the “war on poverty.” The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy terminated movement to national reconciliation around a progressive program. Conservatives profited from escalating internal violence by presenting themselves as the only political force capable of bringing order. The New Left did not profit from the national political crisis, but new social movements forced into the public arena new conceptions of how the nation had developed and what “justice for all” entailed. The left failed politically, but its movements transformed the conduct of everyday life. The direction flowing from 1968 in the United States proved over the long term to be cultural regeneration of the nation’s liberal values to fit the realities of a more diverse and divided citizenry.