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The coming of 2008 has triggered a spate of articles about how we were 40 years ago, in 1968. 40 seems to be a magic number, packing some powerful symbolism. Maybe it goes back to the Bible. Have we been wandering, since 1968, 40 years in the wilderness? Is there some promised land at hand? It hardly seems likely.
But lots of writers are finding it instructive to reflect back on how things were 40 years ago. Or perhaps, like me, they just can't resist the temptation to draw comparisons.
The 1968 reflections in the mainstream media generally focus on the three most memorable events of that year: the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, and the Democrat convention in Chicago. Most of the reflections find a common thread connecting those events: violence. 1968 is remembered as the year that three sudden outbreaks of violence shook America to its core.
That's a particularly convenient way to remember 1968. It suggests that these were three isolated events, connected only by the fact that they were so unexpected, like thunderbolts of violence bursting out of the blue. Such things were supposed to happen in third world banana republics, not in solid, stable, peaceable America. It all seemed so inexplicable, so senseless.
That was indeed a widespread feeling in 1968. As strange as it may seem, the label "senseless" was actually an effective way to make sense out of the violence. It made the violence seem like a superficial overlay on an unchanging essence of American life, a brief alien invasion that could not change things in any fundamental way.
"Senseless" violence was securely fixed in one corner of the public's picture of American life. So the violence could not disturb the larger picture of basically good people going about their basically pure, virtuous American lives. The idea of "senseless" violence actually reinforced the traditional American sense of national innocence.
It still does. For millions of Americans, it's just as comforting now as it was 40 years ago to put the spotlight on one piece of the picture and call it "senseless," leaving other equally important pieces shrouded in the darkness of historical forgetting.
Many find it convenient to forget that the violence of 1968 hardly came out of the blue. It came out of a complex interplay of many forms of violence that had been going on since the first white people set foot in North America. As H. Rap Brown famously said back in the '60s, violence is as American as cherry pie.
More specifically, the three great acts of violence that get remembered from 1968 all rose directly out of the larger framework of violence that surrounded American life in that year. On most days, the war in Vietnam was the lead story on the TV news, often with vivid video footage of American bombs destroying humble villages.
Yes, things have changed greatly in 40 years. Now, who even knows that the U.S. planes drop bombs almost every day in Iraq and Afghanistan?
In 1968, the Vietnam war might be eclipsed on the TV news when African-American ghettos across the nation burst into flame. Now, TV news still shows us violence in poor (often African-American) urban areas almost daily. But consider the vast difference. Today, the violence is interpreted as isolated criminal acts by individuals seeking money or revenge or having no rational motive at all.
40 years ago, there were also attempts to label the urban violence "senseless." But nearly everyone knew that the violence was in fact political: an expression of rage against an oppressive system. Nearly everyone knew -- though few had the language to say it -- that the violence in the streets was a direct response to the structural violence that had subjugated people of color for centuries.
Dr. King knew it and he did have the language to say it. By 1968 he was well into his new career, no longer a civil rights leader but a radical critic of the three pillars of American empire: racism, militarism, and materialism. He was calling for structural change on a scale that would have shaken the empire to its roots. And he was insisting that white America could no longer hide behind its familiar cloak of innocence. I'm surely not the only one who is convinced that's why he was killed.
By June, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was beginning to talk in similar tones. Certainly he never approached the radicalism of Dr. King. But RFK was more threatening in one sense because he was an insider, a full-fledged member of the white establishment, beginning to talk like a radical. How far he would have moved if he had lived, and if he had become president, we will never know. But it's hard to resist the conclusion that there were people who wanted to make sure we never found out. In that, they succeeded.
Then there was the third great outbreak of violence, in the streets of Chicago. An official commission of inquiry later labeled it a "police riot." There's no doubt that the large majority of the violence was initiated by the police, most in uniform, some disguised as protesters seeded through the crowd.
The victims of the violence had come to Chicago largely to protest the war in Vietnam. More broadly, though, they were expressing their dawning understanding that the war was no aberration, no "quagmire" that the U.S. had entered accidentally and then become trapped in (as so many antiwar establishment figures claimed). Most of the protesters understood, at least intuitively, that the war was a logical and inevitable product of U.S. imperialism.
The police also understood, at least intuitively, that more than just the war was at stake. Their violence, obviously planned well in advance, was not specifically meant to support the war. It was meant to support the political-economic-social system that gave birth to the war, a system that was under attack in the streets. Their violence was meant to show that the prevailing system would maintain itself, using the code words "law and order," at all costs.
Now, of course, there's not much need for such official violence. The attacks on the system are rather more polite and thus much less threatening to the establishment. But the U.S. is still fighting, and losing, wars as inevitable results of its imperialist policies. And the police are still ready to use violence whenever "law and order" seems even slightly at risk.
No, we are nowhere near the promised land. The system still rolls on, using violence whenever it seems useful, and using the mainstream media to frame the violence in ways that reinforce the old idea of American innocence.
But it is a good time to stop and remember that there was a time when the violence of the system was challenged by the nation's most respected, dignified, eloquent orator, by the scion of a super-rich establishment family, and by a mob of scruffy protesters who took to the streets as an exercise in good citizenship and planned to have great fun doing it. The system's violence produced those challenges. And the system's violence snuffed those challenges out. The violence was totally predictable.
But the resistance to the system was not. It all happened so fast. Just three or four years earlier, hardly anyone in this country could have imagined the kinds of resistance that MLK, RFK, and the protests in Chicago represented -- resistance that was sweeping across the nation in 1968. That was the really unpredictable bolt out of the blue.
Now, 40 years later, we start a new year. We have been wandering a long time in the wilderness. No, we won't re-create '68. In history nothing ever really gets repeated. But who know what brand new things might happen this year?
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Email: chernus@colorado.edu
42 Comments so far
Show AllTHE MYTHOLOGY OF THE VIETNAM WAR
Or, How the Press is allowing history from the 60s to be Rewritten
Editor of Commentary Section
Oped Page
Oregonian Newspaper
1320 S.W. Broadway
Portland Oregon 97201
Dear Editor:
Your paper printed a lengthy diatribe by ____________ today January 13 that "the liberal media" (not defined, but apparently any journalist who dares disagree with him) was responsible for "losing" the Vietnam War. In selecting that piece for prominent display, did you happen to notice there was not a word either by him or you on whether we should have been there in the first place? That's surprising given the recent admission the Gulf of Tonkin "Incident" used to justify the massive escalation was entirely fabricated by our leaders at the time.
Even if the Vietnam ruse de guerre had not been a bold faced lie, did you happen to notice there was not a word about whether the government there actually deserved to be propped up? And if it did, did it deserve the profligate expenditure of young American lives, not to mention our treasury and out hard earned credibility at all levels? Even ignoring genuinely debatable issues about South Vietnamese dictatorship and official corruption, didn't you at least find it interesting that the same Communist government of the North we fought so hard against back then was last year loudly trumpeted by avowed Conservative Bush to award them "favored nation" trading status (the same Bush, by the way, who somehow found a way to avoid going there when he was in uniform)? So much for preserving the "national honor" which Conservatives profess they love when the prospect of new sources for lining their pockets apparently so easily trumps it.
There seemed to be a lot of pride in Mr. ___'s description of how good we were at piling up bodies back then. It's true. The average grunt, particularly of the field ranks usually did his best which was pretty good despite the risible brass foolishly dictating frontal assault tactics like at Hamburger Hill (my old unit). On the other hand, shouldn't there have been at least some reflection by Mr. ___ or your paper that a B-52 bomb run from 20,000 feet is not very good at discriminating between armed combatants and unarmed two year olds (not that we were ever very good at telling friend from foe even from across a table). There was not a word, not even an obtuse expression of regret, about the perhaps millions of admittedly dead and maimed, many of which were uninvolved, the "collateral damage" so blithesomely still being dismissed today as irrelevant?
It is conceded that Mr. ___ is probably correct when he claims reporting the actual news, rather than merely parroting whatever the military press releases said, hastened our exit. He is also spot on that the Viet Cong apparatus was essentially eliminated during the Tet defense. Nevertheless, he seems to have forgotten, as you apparently have, that the devastating Tet "surprise" which finally converted the journalists from being Army PR flacks back into genuine reporters was how stunningly massive the Tet attacks were in contrast to what our military had been alleging the Cong was still capable of doing. That was the big "surprise," not the mere date of the attacks. The reporters might never have stopped trusting the military so completely but for the deceptions and duplicities the military had been playing up to that point. Unfortunately, once credibility has been lost due to exaggeration, it takes a generation to rebuild.
Mr. ___ is entitled to his forgetfulness, even his animosity toward the press in general. My problem is not with him although I disagree with his conclusions. I too share a modicum of that antipathy toward the Oregonian editorial staff or possibly the ownership if it is steering the direction.
I do understand why the Oregonian would want to print traditional right wing opinions like those of Mr. ___, no matter how much they ignore now confirmed history. After all, the word "Liberal" has been so smeared by people like Mr. ___ that your paper has become terrified of a mere label. But, isn't your job description as journalists to resist such debasing of the English language? More over, isn't it your ethical responsibility to courageously and, more importantly, accurately report the facts rather allow your readership to be mislead out of fear?
Your printing without comment correcting Mr. ___ rewriting and obfuscation of history sadly perpetuates a number of myths that became popular after that misadventure in Southeast Asia. The dangerous aspect is that because of that institutional memory loss we ended up repeating in Iraq many of the same arrogant ill considered mistakes.
So, stop being so gutless. When you print something, add the corrections. Certainly do so when the preponderance of the evidence is in. Perhaps the Democrats will never grow a backbone to stand up to such misinformation being disseminated by individuals like Mr. ___, but our democracy might not survive unless at least the press does.
DIDN'T YOU LEAVE OUT THAT '68 was the first time that the president was sold like a pack of cigarettes, which lead directly to the present meaningless photo ops, and sound bites?? -it now is completely the medium, and not the message!!
One good thing if '68 comes back and the Democratic convention is going on in Denver is it will bring back the National Guard from Iraq.
MLK and RFK were bumped off for putting thousands of highly lucrative military-industrial contracts at risk. True patriots came forward in both cases to save the established order wihich worked so very well for such an important sector of the society.
Can everyone flood the Common Dreams webmaster with emails demanding that the software limit the lengths of URL strings posted in the forums? It ain't no fun reading these whacked out pages. Send the webmaster repeat copies, say four or eight, or fifty.
misanthrope January 2nd, 2008 7:37 pm
Don't forget women consume and spend about 3-4 times as much as men. Hence why Advertising and marketing is primarily geared towards them. Another reason they let women leave the kitchen.
Btw, women? Still followers and perpetual slaves who do everything the man's world tells them to do, and think whatever the men tell them to think.
In 1968, in USAland fascism was already present; as another commondreamer said: "the Titanic had hit the iceberg yet", and now fascism has tightened its grip. Fascism is powerful and brutal, but it can be defeated.
But it's costly; it cost many tears and much life, many good friends die, but fascism can be defeated.
My dear gringo dreamers, I think you have at least one advantage: we in Latinoamérica have to defeat our home tyrants, we have to face our own oligarchy and army, and they are always supported by the US; but if you snatch power from your oligarchy there would be no US to run to help them.
Probably entities like Blackwater would be the last ditch defence for corporations, in case US state's machinery could no longer provide their survival.
In 1968 much of the violence was orchestrated by our "leaders". Those anti-war and civil rights protests were encouraged to gain support of the white older Americans for the Vietnam war we never wanted to win. Those leaders in other years who were not committed to keeping the Vietnam War going were assassinated (JFK) or ousted (Nixon). It was us against them, establishment vs anti-establishment, pro-war vs anti-war, young generation vs the older generation, black vs white, men vs women. Divide and Rule. The drugs? CIA and organized crime always worked together. Heck, we invented organized crime with the prohibition. Also, the drugs were a great way to put the blacks into prisons in greater numbers. Even the Womens Liberation movement was funded by the leaders (Rockefellers) since it was a way of dividing families, and getting the women to work in preparation for the days ahead when living standards would be lowered and require that 2 people work to make ends meet.
The media? Heck, we know from Operation Mockingbird and the Church Committee that they controlled the media, CIA Director Colby admitted as such. The war coverage, anti-war protests and even Watergate would never have gotten the play they did if the leaders did not want it covered. You see, this was the transitioning of Democracy (the Republic was lost in 1913) to a controlled anarchy that preceeded the planned for Tyranny (Socialist or Fascist or some kind of hybrid) which began with the first Trilateralized President, Jimmy Carter and continues today.
MSM writing about 1968 may be a bad omen for 2008. Now I understand their need for Homegrown Terrorism Act, we might be subjected to the same state sponsored terrorism
in 2008 as people were in 1968. But of course, the terrorists will be the anti-war, anti-globalists, 9/11 truthers and we will need McCarthy like investigations to root them out and put them in the concentration camps Halliburon has built and managed by Blackwater who will have been trained by the CIA in torture techniques developed in Gitmo. Throw in a depression to boot. All the fixings for our leaders to have a Happy New Year.
I remember the jug-eared, sure of their God's and their Chevy's superiority, provincial young Republicans that the Nixonites would trot out for rallies and conventions. The ones who grew up to be the Roves, the Rumsfelds, the followers of Falwell, the yuppies who decided that they were in it to get all they could for themselves, screw the rest, and somehow that was "good". 68 brought us the beginning of total sliming of the opposition, the ascendancy of Ronnie Rayguns, the lie that there could be a Republican "Peace" candidate, the beginning of the total fulfillment of Eisenhower's warning about the Military, CONGRESSIONAL, Industrial complex.
Yes, War ate the nation as War eats it now. Innocents die.
No wonder so much LSD was dropped, so much grass smoked, so many saw the logic in total rejection of the lie infested waters of Corporate Media and Political union....
FOLKS.....America has been through this before......The robber baron age of 1865 to 1912 and the "business first" era of 1920 to 1932. These were also an eras of right-wing media dominance(remember William Randolph Hearst) and corporatism. And you can bet there was election fraud at every level then as well.
What brought us out of that funk? Why, the Great Depression of course. Americans have a history of not challenging fascism until their economic circumstance becomes so desperate, that the rise up en-masse in a political revolution and things genuinely change for the better (like the "New Deal").
In short, it will take massive economic suffering to arouse Americans to action. There will come a time when most people will figure out the MSM has conned them over the last 3 decades. There will be an attempt to by the MSM to direct American's anger at minorities, especially recent immigrants. But it won't work. There are too many of them and to attack them would result in a massive blowback. Even working class whites will eventually figure it out. It no longer works like it once did to pit various factions of the working classes against each other.
We are seeing fear in the corporatists as I text. The latest FCC ruling is intended to solidify the right-wing's control of information. We are seeing governments at all levels being given more police powers. Terrorism is the excuse, but it is really to put the corporatists in the best position possible to combat the inevitable tide against them as greater numbers of our citizens become economically disenfranchised.
The corporatists fear being voted out. It will eventually happen, although we will need a 10 to 20 million vote handicap to win a national election. FDR needed a handicap as well.
Sooner or later enough people will be suffering economically that even they will start to view "American Idol" and Paris Hilton's latest caper as trivial nonsense.
So change for the better will occur. We just have to sink deeper into a shithole befor it happens.
3 days w/o Water and You'll likely DIE
STOCKING UP ON _ W A T E R _ TIPS
1.) Purchase used food containers 20 - 55 gal, and be sure to have regular (cheap) bleach for purification (a few drops will kill most bad stuff, although you start thinking about swimming pools). Boil unknown water and filter and add chlorine, as best to be safer than sorrier.
1.B) Purchase 100-200 gal plastic bags for putting inside your bathtub, to be filled prior to power and water pressure outages
1.C) Have plastic sheeting for making a water still, to collect morning dew and extract drinkable (potable) water from plant cuttings. Make a square box maybe 3 - 6" high, and 3 ft square, place plastic over top, with stone in middle (on top), and good water pan inside under stone. Read up on web for many variations to enhance sun heating and water extraction. SHeets also can be used for sanitation and structures, especially where the wind is challenging (don't forget hat/gloves: most heat is lost thru your head and hands).
2.) Sanitation is 2nd, right after water, and even dirty water can be used (w/o home power) to flush toilet. When the electricity goes off (and it will) most homes will only have the hot water heater (and a hose and screw driver) is needed to empty that). It is imperative to separate human wastes and water supplies, or cholera and dysentery will kill off your community in short order. Remember the lesson of "the Martians" in War of the World, who were brought down my microbes.
Plastic bags from supermarket might be short term solution until latrines can be dug. Don't forget the toilet paper, or get used to sears catalog pages and newsprint.
With the above, and some canned & dry food, most families will be able to survive for a few weeks, depending on neighborhood issues.
Forming collectives and communities is the only way through this, as all stores and warehouses will be mostly emptied in a few weeks. Remember that most of all of our food comes into metropolitan areas via trucks, which are not likely to be running even 1/10000 as much. Bicycles and walking are going to be king, and cars will be our bedrooms. Having things of value (fire starting, knowledge of survival, wind power, radios, building lean-tos) will be very important to create new alliances, when meeting and bartering, prior to trusting each other.
Don't be surprised if marriage of teens becomes the uniting bounds of new connections of family between diverse groups, it worked for 100,000 years or more, and will likely be the beginning of societies branching out and linking together.
Your car's electric batteries and lights, plus miscl wires, is going to be crucial for night-time sanity, security, and lighting. Flashlights and radios with built-in cranks will a good bartering stash, and far better than carrying lots of D/C/AA batts.
Good luck, and persevere.
Remember humankind is much sturdier than most might expect, after so many decades of soft living, and our elders are revered for their experience for good reasons.
Shot guns are an ineffective weapon for the survivalist on the move because the ammunition is too heavy. A carbine is a great choice because the ammo works for pistols as a side arm. Where does this information come from? The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks - located in the humor section of your local bookstore. (WWZ is another amazing read if you have the time).
GNN blogger Black Packer is hardcore. http://blackpacker.gnn.tv/?page=6
"Dr. King knew it and he did have the language to say it. By 1968 he was well into his new career, no longer a civil rights leader but a radical critic of the three pillars of American empire: racism, militarism, and materialism."
Could Edwards have the courage of MLK or will he give in to threats or bribes?
If Hilary Rodham Klanton, (emphasis on the Klan) is the Democratic presidential candidate, we can recreate 1988 with the exception of the GOP, not only holding the presidency, but taking back the congress, which didn't happen in 1988, and then we can have a fully consolidated fascist banana republic.
For those of you who are interested in 'stocking up' cheaply, here's some advice. A local Fred's or Dollar Store is a good place to buy canned veggies or tins of meat on the cheap, usually two cans for a buck. They also carry dried beans and rice which can be cooked with a pot, a couple of quarts of water and a wood fire. Dried beans and rice will keep for a great while in plastic containers with no refrigeration as long as they have tight lids that will keep the bugs out. A hot bowl of beans goes good on an empty stomach, believe me.
For those of you that don't know how, learn to cook. It goes a long way towards surviving whether you are in the wild or not and it doesn't take electricity, just a fire.
Which brings up another point. Learn to build
a fire. Not the smoking kind that will give away you position but a clean burning one that will give heat and not give you away to unkind eyes. I learned from the Indians in the Sonora desert when we would heat up food in the ashes of mesquite fires but you folks may have to find an old timer or go to survival sites on the net. As far as the shotguns go, you're in luck! Most pawn shops now are overstocked with weapons of all kinds
because hard times mean folks are pawning them for cash. If you don't know how to shoot a gun, now would be a good time to learn. But
remember, the first thing to learn about a gun is when NOT to shoot. Shells might get scarce so learn to make a bow.
NOW is the time to start learning and doing these things before it gets too late and you find yourself naked in the wilderness with no knowledge of them. I was lucky. I was raised in a hunter/gatherer type of society
where they taught the young these things so I've always taken them for granted. Not know. Good luck, folks.
Misanthrope correctly notes that the JFK assassination trauma of 1963 was still fresh in 1968, and RuthK says "Whatever good came out of those years has been lost in the last seven years. Moreover, although we may have the will to change things, I'm not sure that we now have the freedom to do so."
The August '68 assassination of Robert Kennedy was pivotal. He had just won the California primary, running openly on a pledge to withdraw US troops from Vietnam (having publicly renounced his own prior support for LBJ's decision to send American troops into Indochina in front of a VFW convention in Birmingham, Alabama). The smart money was on Bobby to lock up the nomination before the Chicago convention, picking up clean Gene McCarthy's supporters, papering over hurt feelings with Humphrey and the Scoop Jackson militarist Dems, all the while reminding voters that Dr. King would approve of this multi-racial, antiwar message.
RFK was electable everywhere but in the deep south. And once sworn in as President, don't you think he would have moved heaven and earth to revisit the holes in the Warren Commission's work and the CIA and FBI records of MLK's last days?
Bang! Suddenly principled, orderly withdrawal from Vietnam is off the table as a Democratic party platform pledge, and the Daly machine right-of-center centrists abruptly inherit and shoulder responsibility for setting the Dems' national agenda for the next four years, with law and order and tear gas for all. I mean, who else are they going to vote for, Tricky Dick?
Bang! Major political discourse ended, courtesy of a single deranged gunman, acting all alone, aggrieved by the plight of the Palestinian people and the Kennedy family's support of Israel, according to the official historical narrative.
Just another random nut case. If it were anything bigger than that, it would have to be labeled an act of international terrorism.
In my opinion, much of the good that came out of those 60's struggles were eroded away gradually during the Reagan/Bush years of concentrated, relentless historical revisionism. It took over a decade to villify a whole decade, but the neocons eventually succeeded. Don't give George W too much blame, or to much credit either.
Peace was relabeled as Vietnam syndrome, a disease to be diagnosed, treated and eventually eradicated by successive injections of testosterone (in ever increasing dosages) into places like Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and finally into free Kuwait for a grand finale march on up the road towards Baghdad.
Similarly, equal rights were relabeled as anti-white favoritism, affirmative action as a form of race discrimination itself. By the time Little George was inaugerated in 2001, feminists had already been thoroughly rebranded into feminazis. The eight years of the Clinton era did little to promote such revisionism, but Bill and Hillary did even less to counter act the propaganda campaign ceaselessly waged against all that the 60's symbolized.
One thing good that came out of the Vietnam era that has not been lost is the ability of middle America to see a bad war as a fool's crusade and reverse course when necessary. The relatively short time it took for George Bush to go from 75% public approval in 2003 to less than 25% approval on his Iraq policy by 2006 is indicative to me that not all those lessons of Vietnam have been forgotten.
Do we still have the freedom to change things if the will to do so can be mustered up?
Yes, I think so, although any citizen's participation in any such effort will be much more thoroughly monitored and scrutinized now than it was in 1968.
What's happened I believe, is that the flaws and foibles - the feet of clay - beneath our current political leadership and would-be leadership gets exposed early, and gets exposed ruthlessly.
J Edgar Hoover was livid that he couldn't get any respectable news publication in America to report on Martin Luther King's extra marital activities. Today, Faux News would scoop the whole cable spectrum, and a feeding frenzy would erupt (why treat King any differently than Jimmy Swaggart, Bill Clinton, or Senator Larry Craig)?
And can you imagine what today's mainstream press, with its right wing megaphone component revved up full bore, would do with semi-reliable, semi-sourced news flash tidbits that put Sam Giancana's mistress Judith Exner paying visits to JFK in the green room, and Marilyn Monroe spending quality face time alone with John and Bobby both when the wives were not around?
What America had in the 60's that we don't have today is a counter culture running parallel to the antiwar political movement that is underway.
The counter culture of the 60's was one of unbridled tolerance. In 21st Century America, there's only a dominant culture - one that is mercilessly materialistic and increasingly intolerant - with aberrations from that culture that can be marginalized, or ignored outright, by the political elites in power.
Those who have the will to foment change, and those who might decide to exercise their freedom to become outspoken, can now be effectively neutralized quickly, and without using bullets, because they have become so vulnerable within the system itself.
Bill from Saginaw
greenerthanthou,
I very much appreciate your response. It helps me with my need to be recognized as making a positive contribution to life.
Please tell me, if you are willing, what is the ruling and guiding concern of the Sufis, what standard they use for judging which course of action is better.
ourgreatestproblem,
I don't know about Kansas, but here in my community, the people who are organizing cooperatively are the Sufis.
I'm not religious, but they are the best folks around. Maybe they have them in Kansas.
What is sensible violence? Why the organized kind that gets you other people's natural resources and cheap labor.
But don't forget there must be an individual scale (non-military). Because sometimes people are murdered and they only have $3.00 in their pockets. Everyone shakes their heads in disgust that someone would be murdered for so little.
I want to know- what is the correct price?
"It all happened so fast. Just three or four years earlier, hardly anyone in this country could have imagined the kinds of resistance that MLK, RFK, and the protests in Chicago represented — resistance that was sweeping across the nation in 1968. That was the really unpredictable bolt out of the blue."
I am proposing that the "bolt out of the blue" to be the forming, wherever we live, the nucleus and model of an alternative social, economic, and political order, one that has the process to which I am pointing as its ruling and guiding concern.
Please tell me what need, if any, would hold you back from doing that?
In fact, only in Saudi does it make any sense to have a Hummer.
Several posters have suggested stocking up on other threads.
I am going to the US tomorrow, but only for a week.
Then it's back to Mexico where the shit is also going to hit the fan--but where I live in a very rural area where Hummers and other SUVs are not clogging the highways....
I would very much appreciate hearing from anyone living in Wichita, Kansas who is willing to join with me in forming the nucleus and model of an alternative social, economic, and political order that has the process I described above as its ruling and guiding concern.
Well, these comments do an old man's heart that was around in '68 a lot of good. Old lucklefty talks a lot of sense cause, believe me, boys and girls, it's about to get BAD in the USofA. Oil just hit 100 dollars a barrel and when these brainless twits that elected Georgie and the Boys can't fill up their Hummers and pickup trucks without taking out a loan, they gonna get REAL pissed. Of course, they'll always find somebody else to blame for their misfortune. Probably Bill Clinton.
But, keep this in mind. In an article barely covered by the main media, Dennis Means and delegates from the Lakota Indians just told the U.S. Government that they were breaking off all treaty agreements and were founding their own soverign nation WITHIN the
United States, the Republic of Lakotah. They are going to issue their own drivers license,
passports, etc. Now, if the U.S. was the Titanic, I would say that this is the first indication that it just hit the fucking iceberg. Dr. Means is quoted as saying that anyone who wanted to join them could do so as long as they renounced U.S. citizenship. Now, there's an item I can't really say I've found a whole lot of use for lately. Like Tommy said in the movie 'O Brother Where art Thou?'
when asked why he traded his soul to the Devil:'Well, I wasn't using it.' Looks like 2008 is shaping up to be a VERY interesting year. Might ought to stock up on canned goods and shotguns.
"...the violence is interpreted as isolated criminal acts by individuals seeking money or revenge or having no rational motive at all." Soon, though, they will be charged by the Harmon Commission with "radical thoughts that might one day lead to violence" because, we will be told, they "hate our values and freedoms and ways of life and babies and Christmas and benevolent corporations and POTUS, too.
Prediction: Bad Thinkin' will be the hit crime of 2008, and the NYT will do a hard-hitting investigative piece about it 'round 2011.
Well, its a good thing we've got these old hippies still around, because the comments I see here tells me that those younger are idiots.
Apparently the cool thing is to deride anyone who's actually trying to change things and to tell them its hopeless.
But I sure as heck don't see any alternative plans. Other than rejoicing in what they perceive as the coming pain (which they somehow seem to believe will only affect others and not themselves).
And the one thing I sure won't do is support anyone or any movement that seems to want to inflict pain and disaster on people. Or to rejoice when it happens. We are already ruled by sick sociopaths. I don't see any reason to support a different bunch of sick sociopaths.
"I don't know your age or condition, but it is my belief that all of us who survive the next decade will be builders extrardinaire for the rest of our lives. We will have the challenge of rebuilding our entire world, on a new model, with limited resources, and from smoking rubble. We will have seen death, cruelty, ugliness, and squalor on a scale equaled only by Fallujah or Gaza – AND WE WILL BE ALIVE IN WAYS WE CANNOT IMAGINE NOW, though at times that aliveness will seem like agony. Many of us will not survive this decade. Nobody gets out of here alive. But the ashes of our lives will be the fertilizer for the world that is to come."
Basic to human existence and wellbeing, our first task must be the formation of the nucleus and model of an alternative social, economic, and political order, one concerned for the wellbeing of all people, regardless of race, class, nation, or religion, one that has the promotion of the creative source of human fulfillment as its ruling and guiding concern. I refer to the process that goes on within and between people that changes them so that they can understand and appreciate new ways of fulfilling human needs, ways that could never have been imagined before, and that enables them to view each other's needs as if they were their own.
This is waaaaaaaaaay to gringo-centered!
We are living in a global(ized) world--and even in 1968 the violence mixed with idealism and demands for rights were also present in other countries.
I was in Chicago for the democrats debacle at the hands of Daley's goons, BUT:
What about Prague Spring--and the dashing of hopes in August when Soviet tanks rolled into the city?
What about Paris May?????????????
And what about the Oct. 2nd massacre of students in Tlatelelco, so that DÃaz Ordaz could have a "pacified" Mexico City for the Olympics?
One of the reasons the US is going into the toilet of history is that it believes that its people are unique--and better than everybody else on the planet.
They are NOT.
Have you had a chance to interact with those with Power and Money (same thing) lately?
When they realize that you are not one of them, see how their attitude changes.
LUCKY LEFTY> -- Please let me add:
Rule #7: Any powerful politician who even suggests that we eliminate the Federal (with out) Reserve, or circumvent its grip, will be eliminated.
WITNESS THE TRUTH: JFK was killed 6 months after creating (thru an executive order, that is still standing) a parallel and REAL Federal government return to the gold standard as the basis for American _m o n e y _.
Contrast our current malfeasant fiscal domination by CORPO-FASCIST BANKING INDUSTRY is directly from the use of American _c u r r e n c y _ = Loan + usury (through the Fed w/o Reserve)
Please do notice that real GOLD-BACKED MONEY eliminates THREE essentail hooks of CORPO-FASCIST domination of American Democracy:
[ I. ] The extremely profitable interest (Nat'l debt and Nat'l deficit) payments, on banks loan to USA Gov't, AND
[ II. ] The extremely profitable ( to MIC & Gov't "agents") ability to allow Congress and Federal Gov't to deficit spend, print up money out of thin air, which must later paid back along with interest to banks.
[ III. ] The current generation of TAXPAYERs are thoroughly gamed and swindled about there NOT being a need to raise taxes to go to war. War is paid for by deficit spending, which transfers the interest and principle BURDENs to future generations. Remember "No taxation w/o Representation in 1776 ? This is the same thing all over again!
¿ How can it be possible to spend billions every day in Iraq, and not have to raise taxes ?
¿ Are American's so dumb to think that the Gov't can do the same as citizens with credit cards, and then not have to pay interest?
Maybe so!
It's taken me decades to really comprehend what the Fed Res does, and the concept is not that difficult to grasp.
Perhaps the "conservative" bankers, Corporations, and M$M really do understand how simply it would be to explain this, but _ somehow _ their insatiable greed and desire for total domination of the entire globe causes them to somehow feel that Americans needn't bother knowing about this.
Yeah right.
¿ HOW ABOUT let's keep on TRUSTing THESE corrupt defilers of American decency and democracy, and then open up and a few dozen or so credit cards as well ?
we are not so far from '68. imagine a true progressive getting the nomination or making a real run for it. the 'establishment,' as it were, would not hesitate another assasination and riots would again be right on the heels.
Eshu, the first victory is to survive. Get out of the suburbs if you can, they will be Dead Zones, get to a place where you can grow food in non-toxic soil with potable water.
Second, sooner that most think, you will be living in an Independent State, if you have a Federal Arsenal in your State it will be localized. Bankrupt Federal Gov'ts that cannot pay the troops, lose them. That's when you re-start building your community.
First act, round up the Richfilth (if you have any), cut off their heads, take their wealth and property and distribute them to your community. This is the seed-corn you will use to rebuild. These are the people who would condemn you and your children as short-lived slaves to their Richfilth spawn. Don't you doubt it.
Small aside: Mercs hired by Richfilth as body guards are a joke when under siege by 5000 hungry armed people. Any walled community can be shattered by a home made trebuchet and a few refrigerators. Those walls are decorations.
Second act, secure the sewer system. Cholera can ruin your whole week.
Third act, get your radio station working even if it means guys on bicycles driving a generator in 3 shifts. We can all use the exercise. Such work would get you extra rations. Radio is the key organizing tool. Within 48 hours you would have the ears of everyone in your community.
Fourth act, start generating cheap, renewable, decentralized energy in your community by any means necessary. Best system: make the stuff local. Find substitutes. Get hold of people with the knowledge. Promote from within. Do what we have always done best – innovate (under stress). Did I hear any body say jobs?
Fifth act, somewhere in here get a town council going. Make sure you have every part of your community around the table, even the people you don't like. You decide as a group if you wish to include any of the old re-tread politicians. I have a great respect for honestly reformed whores, as long as they are not a plant, which can only be demonstrated by behavior. You can meet under a tree in somebody's back yard. Then come the questions.
What are you there to do? No pie in the sky. What needs doing?
Food & Water – got to have'em. Who's got? Who don't?
Housing – Same.
Sanitation – Same.
And then…
And then…
From your neighborhood meetings to your town council back to the neighborhood meetings to the labor that gets things done. And somebody has a cousin who has a friend who can do that really good.
Enshu, I don't know your age or condition, but all of you who survive the next decade will be builders extradinaire for the rest of your lives. You will have the challenge of re building your entire world, on a new model, with limited resources from smoking rubble. You will have seen death, cruelty, ugliness, and squalor on a scale equaled only by Fallujah or Gaza – AND YOU WILL BE ALIVE IN WAYS YOU CANNOT IMAGINE NOW, though at times that aliveness will seem like agony.
Many of us will not survive this decade. Nobody gets out of here alive. But the ashes of our lives will be the fertilizer for the world that is to come. There's been a lot of fertilizing over the past 40 years one way and another.
Peace.
This is not 1968. I am old enough (71) to remember 1968. I was never part of the drug, free love, or violent groups. There were other things happening. Many of us believed that there were problems with the system. We also believed that we could change the system. We believed that we had the right to speak out and the will and capability to make the world better.
All too quickly, things changed back again. The statement then was that the "center held". My view was that the "power stucture held".
Nonetheless, there were improvements for blacks and women (like me). There was, for a time, a concern about poverty.
Whatever good came out of those years has been lost in the last seven years. Moreover, although we may have the will to change things, I'm not sure that we now have the freedom to do so.
I'm going to post exactly what I did under the other article:
What is it about you baby boomers and vietnam? You really think you made a difference with all those protests in 68 and 69? The war continued for 6 more years, and in fact esculated into two more nations, slaughtering millions more - not to mention tens of thousands of Americans. And heck, let's not forget the economic crisis of 1979 caused primarily by Vietnam. So if you're a baby boomber who participated in that, get it outta your head that you made a difference, because you didn't do shit - what you did was akin to whining on an internet blog like this one. Tantamount to nothing.
But make no mistake, the imperialist conservatives will assure you we didn't lose in Vietnam. This group of baby boomers is even more insane than the one's I spoke of above. Listen to what they say… that's right, they claim it's your (the public's) damn fault we lost - political reasons. Not the fault of the government, or the foreign policy blunder one after the other - that's right it's not politicians fault, it's you're fuckin fault you stupid morons. Who the fuck actually believes the asshole who's in charge of conducting the war, pointing fingers at everyone else including the public. If you just bought a bumper sticker, and a lapel pin, all of a sudden things would have magically turned around in Vietnam. It's never their fault. Goddamnit, I wish I had a built in excuse scapegoating everyone else everytime I failed at something - taking responsibility is just too hard, it's hard work.
And building off that, also make no mistake that you get morons like Hannity or O'Rielly who vocally and adimately apply this same rationale to why things aren't going well in Iraq. With the snake Dana Perino right behind them.
We also need to take into consideration the assination of JFK in 1963. When it was first reported on the news, so many shots were heard that some thought it was machinegun fire. Many of us knew immediately that this was not the work of just one man. Just as many of us sensed immediately that 911 was an inside job. The assinations of MLK and RFK were likewise seen as the work of a high-level conspiracy since the trauma of 1963 was still fresh in 1968.
A fairly concise overview of the mess we're entrenched in, luckylefty. All the same, those of us who have to stay here and are not likely to develop the resource to leave the country permanently in the next couple of years are going to have to figure out how we're going to take our stand.
I agree with everything you've said, but it's still contingent upon us to figure out how to fight as though we're going to win- even though the greater likelihood is that we won't.
Ira Chernus reminds me of the Libertarian constitutionalists who want the Constitution the way it was at our nations's founding in 1787. While such heartwarming nostalgia is understandable, it is absurdly impractical because (Libertarians as well as Professor Chernus) this is neither 1787 nor 1968 and hence what happened then while instructive is irrelevent as far as any planning for 2008 is concerned.
Our culture, people, society, and expectations have completely changed and hence so must any tactics or movements to deal with them.
I see "senseless violence" as a perfectly fine phrase for easy digestion of facts that are vastly inconsistent with the people's ideas of how things should be.
This cop out was the easy way out 40 years ago, and is similarly part of the continuing problem today, as JACK37 said poignantly of violence,"What's the sensible kind?"
This is central to the "unexamined life" that most have become pleased to gobble up, in part because that is what they're told is OK
The _ e x t r e m e __ i r o n y _ is contrasted by the facts that there is actually a _ t a l l __ o r d e r _ of _ S E N S E _ to see behind both the violence of 1968 and today's world:
(1.) We are conditioned to accept violence as the cost of pumping up our economy, as if there is no other way. That is too easy of a way out of our corporate domination of gov't and all aspects of American life.
(2.) The deaths of JFK, his brother, MLK, and American dream of democracy are not conspiratorially connected to corporate and backing domination of America, they are directly connected, and the definitive evidence is systematically hidden.
(3.) The American people's understanding and belief's are force feed a diet of bu$h!t through M$M, and they really do believe that the conspiracies are true, as they do now recognize the bite and stench of the beast.
(4.) Wake up and smell the bu$h!t, care for your own and fellow citizen's terrifyingly deep wounds - both physically and psychically - and begin the healing process.
(5.) We must learn how to _ K I L L _ the _ B E A S T _, not the innocents of the global community and our own citizens.
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
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Recreate '68? Hell no! That's what got us Richard Nixon. 1968 should be in the ash heap of history.
Great article, Mr. Chernus. It's not often that the sixties get an even break in print. I'm not quite as fond of Robert Kennedy, however. If he was about to become a liberal Saul on the road to Damascus, he certainly didn't show much evidence of it before he died. A better dream might be that Bobby didn't decide to run and stop Eugene McCarthy's campaign in its tracks, and that McCarthy went on to the White House. Sweet dreams, indeed.
So American, the phrase "senseless violence." What's the sensible kind?
Violence has always been the norm in America or we wouldn't be occupying Iraq or for that matter the Middle East by now. Besides, in a country where alcohol, tobacco, junk food, and manufactured medicine is "legal" despite the fact that they kill people both physically and mentally whereas marijuana is "illegal" despite the fact that it causes no deaths but cures and puts peace and happiness first, of course the first "solution" to anything is violence first. Let's first concentrate on shutting down the "war on drugs". And then Peace.
Nspire, lemme add this to the fire you started:
"By 1968 he (MLK) was well into his new career, no longer a civil rights leader but a radical critic of the three pillars of American empire: racism, militarism, and materialism."
"By June, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was beginning to talk in similar tones. Certainly he never approached the radicalism of Dr. King. But RFK was more threatening in one sense because he was an insider, a full-fledged member of the white establishment, beginning to talk like a radical."
And that's why they're DEAD. COINTELPRO with a little barbershop brutality (read murder) by the FBI & local cops to seal the deal. They knew their jobs – to keep the races, the genders, and the classes in their place and to transfer all wealth into the hands of the Top 1%. They're still doing it. The American people are still taking it in the ass.
Mr. Chernus fails to mention the core of the issue however. By '64 America, after 30 years of the Roosevelt Legacy (90% tax on earned income over $6mn; 53% tax on unearned income; 50+% on mega-estates; Glass-Seagal; Wagner Act; & Corp Regulation with teeth.) America had the greatest distribution of wealth in the history of the species, 35% unionization in the private sector, and the highest standard of living in the world. By '64 our Ruling Class was also, as a direct result, nearly moribund. That produced the Class WAR. The richfilth monsters wanted THEIR country back – so they took it.
Rule #1: If you want to transfer wealth to the Top ¼ of 1% and consolidate power into the hands of The Few – Start a War.
Rule #2: White American males did not and do not believe in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. Didn't then, don't now. They BELIEVE in White Male Supremacy; Gender Slavery; Massive child abuse (see Patriarchy); Constant War; & Genocide. Tell me about wedge issues again. White American males will give up EVERYTHING as long as those are maintained. They would rather be sick, illiterate, and poverty stricken with a life expectancy of 46, rather than give those up.
Rule #3: In any contained population, 5% are the shit-disturbers. Get rid of them and the rest will act like cattle in a stockyards. So they did. The leaders of every movement for economic and social justice from '64 til the final mopping up in the late '70's were hounded into silence and suicide, falsely imprisoned with cooked evidence, planted evidence, or by withholding exculpatory evidence, or by outright execution. MLK & RFK were simply two of the BIG names that were butchered. We are nothing if not an abattoir, a place of forgetting.
Rule #4: Laws and Regulation mean NOTHING if 'your guys' are the ones who write and enforce the Law. Starting in the Early 1970's the Richfilth animals started buying our entire Political Class in wholesale lots. Buy 1980 it was a fait acompli. Buckley v. Vallejo
Rule #5: Use the Political Class to make you and yours above the Law.
Rule #6: It doesn't matter who votes as long as "Your Guys" do the counting.
These 6 Rules, accomplished by the Richfilth over the last 40 years have reversed the Roosevelt Legacy, bankrupted the Nation and our Middle Class while turning Our Country it into a smoking dish of spongiform encephalitis. This, BTW, is what every parasitical Richfilth Class has done to every society where they gained hegemony for the last 4000 years.
And yes, you can vote for any of "Their Guys" that you want.
Better luck next time. Remember: Richfilth are always the high fever symptom of a sick society. In our case, we didn't know what to do with prosperity, health care, and full access education – they were a direct threat to our flat-earth, Patriarchal, Aryan Supremacy model of life – SO WE GAVE THEM ALL BACK SO WE COULD HAVE THE OLD MODEL – White Male supremacy, human slavery, gender slavery, massive child abuse, constant war, and genocide.
How do you like it so far?
Peace.