The biggest political irony today is that the generations who protested and opposed the Vietnam War, decried the industrial establishment, called for accelerated social change, and extolled popular democracy are now upset because it appears that their stated aspirations have been realized.

They don't like what they say they wanted, and it's driving them crazy.

As mishandled as Vietnam was, and as in all wars, the casualties were far too great for the effort made, the  underlying purpose to prevent malignant, aggressive communism from growing was the correct intention, and
it was fulfilled less than a score of years later with the failure of the Soviet Union and the adoption of a market economy by most Marxist or socialist states.  The hitherto U.S. industrial-technological establishment has been driven to globalize to avoid punitive taxation and regulation, valid and overdue social change has been compromised by predatory political correctness, and popular democracy has elected Donald Trump to be president of the United States.

Think for a moment about the content of the song lyrics, the protest poetry, the anti-establishment and antiwar bestselling novels, the political polemics, and the very vocabulary of the idealism of at least four generations of Americans over the past fifty years.  That content, which demanded fundamental changes in the character of the U.S. economy and society, is now the law of the land, the social practice of the land, and the language of the land.

Technological change and advance have not only disoriented so many in these generations, but left   many in the newest generations without a sense, or even a choice, of alternatives.  By alternatives, I don't mean going back or undoing what's been done, but choices of how to proceed.

The brutal truth is that no matter how many aspirations, improvements, and increased capacities we have attained, the world and human life do not ever stand still.  Changes might bring better circumstances, but they also bring new problems, new dilemmas, and new choices to be made.

These generations of idealists and protesters have now produced self-important academics, glib politicians, and self-styled commentators who espouse the denigration of representative democracy, free markets, free speech, and respect for all citizens.  Do they not realize this is the very rejection of the principles that nurtured and inspired them?  Employing the techniques of those they so strongly opposed, they now employ political correctness, elitist prejudices, and other hypocrisies.

The superficial solutions of these academics, commentators, and politicians are inherently totalitarian because they cannot prevail at the ballot box.  They hold the mass of voters in contempt even after they spent decades demanding that everyone have the right to vote.

This is the sad and dangerous irony in American politics today.