The Sixties: Cartoon History of a Decade

I just want freedom, free love, enlightenment

What were "The Sixties"? They were a time of protest, peace activism, fighting the power for freedoms we take for granted today: free speech, civil rights, free love, racial equality, academic freedoms, fairness...

This country used to be about pretending to be all for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Sixties tried to cash that check so said, "Well, let's have it, Old People! You've been promising these three since the time of the Puritans, and we have yet to see the country live up to its ideals."

I did it! I got my spaceship to freedom! (VW)

The deception was, and it took the nation decades to figure this out, revealed: We have a right to pursue, not to catch. There's no happiness, just an endless search for it. We are lied to by TV and the media as to what would make us happy, when they know that such things -- carrots dangled before us -- will never lead to lasting happiness or fulfillment even if we could catch them.

We have to fight each other to even try to catch them. When we have a right at all, it is only to endlessly pursue. So secure some debt loans and make payments on this car and then another, on that house and then another, enter that relationship and then another...THEN you'll be happy.

Everything happens for a reason but WTF?

Make your appearance this way then another, lose this much weight then some more, grow to this height then some more...THEN you'll be happy. Own this jewelry then some more, have this experience then some more, win these honors then some more...THEN you'll be happy. It's the lie of endless consumerism. Welcome to the Machine, my son. Do what you're told, keep your head down, and just before you die, you'll be happy with nothing more to strive for, except an afterlife in heaven. So this is what you have to do to get it. We own here and hereafter.

The Sixties: A Cartoon History of the Decade That Rocked the Nation and the World

I started it. You're welcome.

This collection of cartoons is a humorous look at the characters and events that shaped the tumultuous Sixties (1960s).

The continuing tension of the

• American Cold War against the impoverished Russians,
• the crescendo of American racism that led to the Civil Rights Movement, 
• the deepening gloom of the American War on Vietnam [and the secret American bombing of Buddhist Cambodia and Laos],

• 

  Berkeley had a lot to do with it

  the Cultural Revolution in music and a questioning of morals,
• the triumph when American men pretended to step onto the moon on live TV [which was fake footage by Hollywood director Stanley Kubrick, which is not to say we never went to the moon. The Nazis got there, so there's no reason our American Nazi NASA program did not
• Woodstock and the Free Love Movement of the hippies]...

Dude, we were totally there in '69, I think.

they are all captured in the pages of this book.

So, too, are the larger-than-life figures who dominated this era:

• young, handsome first Catholic President John F. Kennedy,
• sociopath Lyndon B. Johnson,
• Tricky Dick Nixon,
• [Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
• Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh,
• self-immolating Buddhist monk U.S. War on Vietnam protester Thích Quảng Đức,
• UC Berkeley and anti-war/pro-peace Student Free Speech Movement Founder Mario Savio,
• genocidal Jewish madman and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger],



Chicano/Chicana Movement: Viva La Raza!

• Barry Goldwater,
• George Wallace,
• Nikita Khrushchev,
• China's Mao Zedong,
• Cuba's Fidel Castro,
• Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh,
• Russia's Leonid Brezhnev,
• France's Charles DeGaulle,
• plus a host of supporting characters.

Brother, we just hitchhiked a ride to the show, parked in the road, then walked to the farm.

Woodstock never happened, Man, just a pipe dream! - But Hendrix played! - Oh, yeah, huh?

.

I was tripping on CIA acid: LSD

Cartoonist (and author) Bill O'Neal was there during the decade to capture the spirit of the times, primarily for The Springfield Republican in Springfield, MA.

His satirical style was a fresh departure from the staid cartoons that dominated editorial pages up to then.

For younger readers, this collection of cartoons and commentary serves as a quick and entertaining introduction to the grooviest era that ever was.

For those who lived through the decade, who of course do not remember it (or are proving they were not there if they do claim to remember it) this book offers a telling reminder of the divisive issues of the time.