Blog #43

The Beatles influenced my father during his youth. He grew up in Detroit with motown and great musical groups. He was very involved with music and even going to concerts at a local dance hall. He saw Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and other great musicians that he hadn't even heard of before. The Beatles was one of his favorite bands and he remembers waiting in line to buy their record and hear their new songs. The Beatles were a huge band in more ways then we even know. They have influenced other music and musicians and even the public. They were the, "most popular rock band of the era." (Powerpoint Lecture Part Two, Lecture 14.) The band became an idol for my dad and made a huge impact on music. My dad went to a concert of theirs but said he couldn't even hear them perform because they girls were singing so loudly-they became the teen obsession. 

If my father and his family knew all the information about the Vietnam War- or really anyone in America for that matter-they may have had different views about America. It might not have still been their view of a perfect country with endless opportunities. In fact it may have brought the image they created in their mind and had heard al about down. To have the real truth about the war could have hurt them and many Americans as the war didn't meet the criteria list and was therefore justifiable. Although at that time the public was unaware of all of this. There was a lot that wasn't disclosed to the public. Why was the United States doing this? To the public, the word was that the United States was helping to stop Communism in Asia, but there was not much public discussion. In the secret memoranda of the National Security Council (which advised the President on foreign policy) there was talk in 1950 of what came to be known as the "domino theory"—that, like a row of dominoes, if one country fell to Communism, the next one would do the same and so on. It was important therefore to keep the first one from falling.

The Watergate scandal was a huge controversy of taping in the White House, which resulted in the exposure of Nixon obstructing justice. My father would have still been a young man then and still only ten years into living in America. He had already seen one president shot to death and now another was resigning for the first time. In his eyes he may have seen America falling down as presidents were either being shot or forced to resign. It could impact him as an immigrant and his view on America as the land of hopes and dreams. 

Martin Luther King gave his famous 'I Have A Dream Speech' in the first years while my father was living in America. This would have had a great impact on my dad. He came to America for freedom because he was oppressed in his country of Romania. Now here he was in America where dreams can happen and all are seen as equal. To me seeing this video would show that change was happening and the fight for equal rights for all was at full force. That would only reassure him about the freedom that America provides us and the rights for all.