The Hinge Year
The author quotes two other writers who both view 1965 in retrospect through the same metaphor:
“`the 1960s turned as if on a hinge' in the summer of 1965."
“That year was the hinge of our postwar history.”
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution
When discussing the Vietnam War, what is really being discussed is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which is the legislation which tipped U.S. involvement in the region from that of the advisory into the big muddy of blood and bullets. President Lyndon Baines Johnson uses a typical down-home bit of Texas slang to describe:
“the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was `like grandma’ nightshirt—it covered everything.’”
The Fork in the Road
“The fork in the road” is a common metaphor for describing that moment in life when one must choose one of two alternate paths ultimately leading in opposite directions. In this case, the fork is reached on January 27. The fork itself was the decision to either to continue on the same path being pursued by American forces in South Vietnamese or intensity the situation by making the decision to take the bombing into North Vietnam. It really seems utterly needless to point out which path was taken upon reaching this fork in the road.
“Military Advisers”
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution really only codified what was already taking place. Widespread protests against the war did not kick into high gear until after granny’s nightshirt and the fork in the road. This was doubtlessly because of the metaphor for troops in Vietnam that had been commonly and universally used throughout the early 1960’s. “Military advisers” is a nice, ambiguous and inoffensive metaphor used to describe what they really were: soldiers shooting rifles.
Presidential Depression
Events of 1965 conspired to create a situation in which President Lyndon Johnson found himself under almost untenable pressure. Eventually, of course, the pressure would become so great that he would refuse to seek a second elected term. Speechwriter and close aide Bill Moyers describes the nadir of this self-pity part of the President when he found LBJ one day:
“lying in bed with the covers almost over his head” telling him that “he felt as if he were in a Louisiana swamp `that’s pulling me down.’”
