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<blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 4707907" data-attributes="member: 50304">I was born in 1980. I learned about the events of the 60s and 70s after the fact, rather than lived through them. That stripped away a lot of the emotional investment that colors those eras for many people. I never really got exposed to the cult of personality surrounding Nixon or Kennedy nor did I grow up facing the full brunt of the cold war propaganda. Like children from every generation I looked at what the previous generation believed and found fault.Looking back on it the idea of a successful preemptive strike seemed laughable and the idea of the government actually trying to pull it off seemed divorced from reality.Meanwhile the constant revisiting of Vietnam through extremely slanted fiction looked like little more than a tired appeal for the dollars of people who'd once said &quot;Never trust anyone over 30&quot; and were now themselves well over 30.That's why, to me, the Watchmen feels like it is set in a city made of cardboard cut-outs and populated by straw men. I can feel the author's fears and apprehensions spawned from ignorance and emotional investment and see how the Straw Men he writes are really just the hobgoblins that haunt his own head. I'm not saying his feelings weren't real, or even pervasive. I'm just saying that no matter how strongly he felt that way the world he portrayed was more divorced from reality than he probably realized.Of course, he wasn't lacking company either. The world many broadcasters, TV executives, movie producers, professors, and journalists portrayed was pretty far divorced from reality as well. There was propaganda everywhere trying to sway people politically and not a whole lot of information resources available to the general public.- Marty Lund</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mlund, post: 4707907, member: 50304"] I was born in 1980. I learned about the events of the 60s and 70s after the fact, rather than lived through them. That stripped away a lot of the emotional investment that colors those eras for many people. I never really got exposed to the cult of personality surrounding Nixon or Kennedy nor did I grow up facing the full brunt of the cold war propaganda. Like children from every generation I looked at what the previous generation believed and found fault. Looking back on it the idea of a successful preemptive strike seemed laughable and the idea of the government actually trying to pull it off seemed divorced from reality. Meanwhile the constant revisiting of Vietnam through extremely slanted fiction looked like little more than a tired appeal for the dollars of people who'd once said "Never trust anyone over 30" and were now themselves well over 30. That's why, to me, the Watchmen feels like it is set in a city made of cardboard cut-outs and populated by straw men. I can feel the author's fears and apprehensions spawned from ignorance and emotional investment and see how the Straw Men he writes are really just the hobgoblins that haunt his own head. I'm not saying his feelings weren't real, or even pervasive. I'm just saying that no matter how strongly he felt that way the world he portrayed was more divorced from reality than he probably realized. Of course, he wasn't lacking company either. The world many broadcasters, TV executives, movie producers, professors, and journalists portrayed was pretty far divorced from reality as well. There was propaganda everywhere trying to sway people politically and not a whole lot of information resources available to the general public. - Marty Lund [/QUOTE]

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