AN HOUR OR two before I visited the Oakland Museum of California's "What's Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era," I was online reading Tom Englehardt's Weblog, the Tom Dispatch (www.tomdispatch.com), where, among other things, he offered an observation about presidential packaging that has a broader, more important application: "Of course, this country's greatest and most seductive export has always been imagery (and the fictions that went with it)."

Intricately linked with the compassionate, principled, and thoroughly fictive America is the nation's least seductive export, which happens to be war. "What's Going On?" could be described as a look at what happens when the lies we live by are so threadbare that they're no longer able to generate the societal belief necessary to wage a war. The exhibit uses oral history (available over headphones), TV footage, video and film clips, and a sometimes sublime mosaic of photos, signs, symbols, and odd graffiti to call up the dizzying chain of events that shaped life in the Golden State during the Vietnam years. Significantly, sit-ins at Sproul Plaza, draftees waiting to be shipped out, Bob Hope swinging a golf club on a makeshift in-country stage, and the short loop connecting a few beleaguered activists to the massive antiwar protests of 1970 and '71 share the spotlight with the struggle for civil rights, the nascent black electoral clout, the emergence of black power and pride, and the electrifying presence of Oakland's Black Panther Party.

What the exhibit does best is chronicle the way America's once-dominant narrative came undone. In the process, the painful, divine, horrible, and even hilarious responses of a nation in social and spiritual free fall are illuminated. The cover story of the September 1965 issue of Fortune magazine declares that "California is hyperbolic of the Western World, experiencing many ... things sooner and more extremely than the rest." Media coverage in those days was often absurd, but when it came to California, even the dimmest minds sensed trouble was brewing.

Finding two people who agreed on anything about the '60s was tough at the time – some folks saw red conspiracy everywhere (and sometimes they were right); astrologers welcomed an Aquarian golden age; hippies dropped acid and dropped out; a generation gap split families; ghettos erupted against racial hypocrisy. Students soberly marched to Oakland to protest the draft, only to be attacked by the Hells Angels; G.I.s came back from 'Nam with ghosts and the best dope on the planet; one president was shot, another retired, and a third quit. Life offered a mix of comedy and tragedy that was really surreal. It was liberating, confusing, and exhausting, and when the last Yankee helicopters lifted up and left – desperate refugees dangling and then dropping from the runners – there were few Americans sorry the war was over. But despite the more than three million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000 Americans killed during those years, despite the seemingly unforgettable grief, guilt, anger, and regret, history has wiped the slate clean. Meanwhile, a Vietnamese American community that's today 1,200,000 strong remains steadfastly opposed to the victorious National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese forces; their agenda – complicated, particular, and little understood outside that community – adds to the confusion.

Is it restating the obvious to note that the horrors of war have yet to stop a societal swan dive into whatever conflict is inching over the horizon? In the book of essays and observations accompanying the exhibit, a Vietnam veteran observes, "I watched John Wayne movies ... and you start thinking, well, I want to be like my Old Man. I want to be a war hero.... But when I got over there.... War ain't like you see in John Wayne." Another says, " 'You don't know until you go' was the truth.... John Wayne died in Vietnam." Why, then, can bovine weekend warriors and blowhard politicos romanticize bloodshed in Iraq while plotting more in Iran? The Duke may be dust, but the poison he spread is everywhere.

There was a burst of well-publicized protest from members of the local Vietnamese community during the planning of "What's Going On?," in response to a perceived American-centric outlook that would ignore or dismiss the experiences of those who today make up Vietnamese America. That there might be truth to the claim wouldn't be surprising – ours is the country that eulogizes the 60,000 dead Americans who should never have been in Vietnam and ignores millions of Vietnamese dead who were, in a manner of speaking, just trying to find their way home.

"What's Going On?" stirs powerful memories for those old enough to remember the bad old days – and no doubt the exhibit will offer everyone something to complain about. How could a museum presume to chronicle those 10 turbulent years (and how could it resist trying)? Still, there's only one question that really matters – and if, as the exhibit shows, it was answered once, it's clear it needs to be answered again.

'What's Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era' runs through Feb. 27, 2005. Wed.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m., Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak, Oakl. $5-$8. (510) 238-2200.

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E-mail J.H. Tompkins at tommy@sfbg.com.