May Day! May Day! My brain's hard drive seems to be full.

I must admit that I was unaware until I saw it on some site that April 30 marked the 50-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon. I should have known, since I had seen a quiz on the Washington Post site about "how much do we remember about the Vietnam War?" I didn't bother to take it. BTW, in Vietnam that conflict is called "The American War."

Overlooking THAT anniversary reminded me that I completely missed celebrating my own anniversary from that war: my discharge from the Air Force on May 8, 1974. Perhaps I hoisted an adult beverage last year, by accident. But that really should have been a bigger deal.

And THAT reminds me that the entire Vietnam War thing is not that big a deal to most Americans at this point. That really isn't a huge surprise when we look at the math.

The current U.S. population is about 340 million and it was about 213 million in 1975. Some percentage of those alive in 1975 have died and simple arithmetic gives us about 127 million not even born when the war ended. My roughest guess is that a majority of Americans were not alive when Saigon fell and I would also guess that an even larger majority of Vietnamese were not yet born. And many alive in 1975 were too young to retain much in terms of firm memories.

Much like the Korean War (really, a conflict), Vietnam was not a "glorious" war, and perhaps that is why there are relatively few pop culture reminders of those difficult times other than in music. WWII continues to reign supreme in movies and TV shows. I assume that is because we clearly "won." The music of the late 60s and '70s clearly still strikes a chord, so to speak, since it continues to show up in all sorts of movies and TV shows. 

Of course, old timers like myself will shake our heads, annoyed by something so important in our lives being ignored by the wider public. 

That is somewhat hypocritical since we ourselves likely find events from half a century ago tough to keep in our thoughts. Or maybe that's just me.

Really, though, it is healthy to forget (though I would argue that younger people should have SOME familiarity with major historical events and eras). 

I hope that my grandchildren will eventually find current political events equally forgettable, despite the seemingly existential pain at least some Americans are feeling right now, and likely will continue to feel for years. I am relatively confident there will still BE an America in fifty years and equally confident that our grandchildren will be somewhat close to my current age at that point... 

And it is comforting to imagine them sitting at a dining table with their own children and grandchildren and reminiscing about the whole Trump thing. "Tell us about the days when civil liberties were simply assumed, gramps."

One thing I will predict is that our current political era will NOT produce great movies or TV shows that future generations will come back to again and again. And I'm not too confident about the music this time.