1968

[fabrisse]

How many people on my friends list remember 1968?

I'm beginning to worry that we're in for a repeat this year, and I'm in DC looking out my window at Washington where some of it could go down.

Back in the day, I studied International Relations. I decided not to challenge my comprehensive exam because I was worried about the repercussions for my father, so I can't write the initials "M.A." after my name. However, I passed all my classes and two of the three questions on that Comp (the "comprehensive" question and the Security Studies question -- the one I failed asked which side won the Cold War and my answer was that the Cold War had always been unwinnable so neither side won.).

I bring this up because all that long time ago I looked at the last 300 years of European and US history and noticed (as many others have) that every 30 to 60 years there are waves of violence that seem to catch across nations and change the course of events. Some of them aren't much more than a rock in a stream that cause things to flow around them; others are dams or the bursting of dams that create a very different world.

1848 is the easiest year to look at, for anyone who wants to play along at home. There are events in most of the duchies, counties, and principalities that later become Germany. The Paris riots brought down a king and created a new republic (I think it was the Second Republic and the Third comes in after Louis Napoleon). The Italian Revolution took place. Even the Hungarians tried to throw of the shackles of the Austrian Empire (and were quelled in an event that echoes forward to the end of World War II by the Russians).

1968 was a similar year. Because I was alive at the time, I actually know less about it. I was seven, living in Britain, and terrified of the United States. On Sunday afternoons there was an hour long weekly news wrap up by the BBC that my parents watched. I watched with them. To me the US was violence upon violence -- Martin Luther King's assassination, the nightmare of the Chicago riots, marches on Washington. I read my first newspaper story that year. The front page of The Times had a close-up picture of a man with a funny look on his face. It was Bobby Kennedy and he'd just been shot. I read the whole front page article -- though I won't swear that I understood every word of it -- and it reinforced my belief that this America was a dangerous place.

I also watched the Olympics a lot, though the 1972 Olympics were the first ones I understood both as a political and sporting entity. I remember asking my mother about the men with the fists over their heads and their heads hanging down during raising of the Stars and Stripes. She actually explained some of the Black Power movement to me, though she also made it clear that she disapproved of using the Olympics to bring attention to it.

Surprisingly, I wasn't particularly aware of the student riots in Paris or even some of the home grown ones in Britain. I certainly didn't know about the dog crap put into our letter box regularly because my father was a US Army officer and someone thought it was a good way to protest Vietnam.

The Olympics protests are already being debated this year, and I honestly don't know how I feel about the idea. I think the Black Power protests helped, but they also may have made it easier for the killings at Munich to happen four years later. The Olympics were no longer sacrosanct.

We have what looks to be a brokered Democratic Convention coming up. The political junkie in me is thrilled. The seven year old girl in me remembers the images from Chicago.

I fear for Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama on the assassination front -- for no reason I can put my finger on. Maybe it's because I think his security team will be heavier in areas of greater threat, and it's more difficult to quantify those threats for a woman than it is for a black man. But I'm not sanguine that the race won't become, well, sanguine if tensions -- within and without the Democratic Party -- don't ratchet down a bit.

How does everyone else see the shape of the year to come?

Comments

[jdulac.livejournal.com]

I remember 1968 quite vividly -- I was in high school and acutely aware of the world, Vietnam, RFK (my grandmother had a "Kennedy shrine" that put JFK right in there with St Teresa and St Anthony), MLK, and the Democratic National Convention. The party elders remember that too, and I am pretty confident it won't be allowed to happen again. Dean, Reid, Pelosi, and the rest are out there twisting arms up behind their backs, because a brokered convention will wreck the party. I'm afraid that Clinton's behavior in the last few weeks has disgusted me, because she has shown a willingness to destroy the party for her own ends. The math is against her, a super-delegate coup will ruin all the wonderful party-building that has been going on at the grass-roots across the nation, and if she thinks her best shot is defeating President McCain in 2012, then she has forfeited all respect I ever had for her.

With any luck, this election looks more like 1932 than 1968.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It's so hard to tell. 1932 redux has its own set of fears. Both my parents were depression kids. The taste of poverty, to me, is the flavor of the salad dressings we ate while I was growing up. Mom would use pickle juice to eke the last little scrapings out of mayonaise, mustard, and/or ketchup jars.

In its favor, the country pulled together rather than apart (for the most part), and that would make it a nice change from the barricades and projectiles of 1848 or 1968.

I distrust Obama for no reason I can put my finger on. I've always said I prefer eloquence to the grammar free (and content free) stylings of either Bush, so I don't think it's that. Nor do I think it's racial, although I'm trying to dig deep and excavate on that subject. If it comes to Obama or McCain, no question, I vote for Obama. But something feels off to me.

Clinton's campaign is terrible. And fish stink from the head. But. Her specificity appeals to me. I feel like I know what I'll get and that she's thought it through. On the other hand, the pettiness is really beginning to get to me.

As I've said in other contexts, the political junkie in me wants to see a brokered convention. Then I remember the last one was 1968.

[jdulac.livejournal.com]

my point about 1932 is that is was "change" year that swept a foolproof Democratic majority into congress and the White House. FDR had little concrete to offer at that time and little in the way of foreign policy experience. He changed America's idea of government forever.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yes.

FDR was truly both a man of his times and class and a man who transcended his time and class. Not only was he transformative, he was mostly a force for good (I have some problems with his unsuccessful attempt to pack the Supreme Court).

But, if this year holds that transformative potential, and on economic grounds I fear it might, then poverty is also a real fear. When I was staying with eanja the first time, I ended up having to fill in paperwork declaring myself indigent in order to receive medical care. So that's where my mind first went when you mentioned 1932.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

I remember 1968 clearly. I was 12.5 and went from clueless (an adjective not used then) to clue-full very fast. What I found most exciting about the Chicago convention was not what was on the streets, but the action inside - Julian Bond received a serious nomination for VP. He politely declined, because he was younger than the constitution requires. I guess the world changed some, but not so much. The war dragged on, and despite weird gestures like the radio stations where I lived (in NC) pledging not to play "White Christmas" and such-like later that year, not very much serious talk about race seemed to happen.

I'd be interested to see a regular old-fashioned convention, but I don't expect it. The delegate system seems to lock things up.

You're the first person I've heard mention a Clinton assassination risk. Lots of people hate her, but their response will be to vote for McCain, not shoot her. Many people are fearful about Obama's safety, though, and I think they're right to worry. Did you note the revelations about the secret service errors in judgment last month? This was reported
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/02/21/report_security_relaxed_at_obama_speech/8649/
and after initial denials, it was acknowledged that this was the general policy, not just for that one venue.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard about those errors in judgment, and I hope the officers responsible were called on the carpet for it.

So many people seem aware of the threat to Obama, that I think he's actually better covered than Clinton is. And the viciousness I've personally heard from the people who dislike her seems to be more extreme than the expressions of dislike I've heard from Obama's detractors.

Either way, I hope nothing untoward happens to any of the candidates.

[mystery-sock.livejournal.com]

I wasn't alive quite yet...

The coming year fills me with a stark terror so complete that I can't even study its dimensions. I think that whoever gains the nomination is going to be the most potent assassination target of all time; I am desperately worried for both of them as human beings. Me no likey asssassinations. Those are human beings, not just figureheads; I can't reduce a person only to the things they stand for, no matter who they are.

And it's been very difficult for me to watch the actions of Mrs. Clinton over the last several months, because the feminist in me refused to give up hope for the possible primacy of women's power in the United States. Unfortunately she is NOT the one we need, and I'm interested in seeing exactly how this will affect women's political power as individuals seeking election over the course of my lifetime. It's been a very fraught couple of months from me, as a woman, a Democrat, and a person of color; I just feel so incredibly ignorant, even if I am more politically informed and savvy (and interested) than 95% of the people I've ever met, but I know that my tendency to see people as "people" blinds me to the potential evil that they can do... and I feel really shitty about myself for it.

I am the dog that's been kicked by the boot of realpolitik entirely too much over the last eight years, and now I'm cringing underneath the front porch stairs. I don't know what to do about it; I have never felt so politically useless, ignored, and helpless in my life. Before the 2000 elections, I genuinely felt like my opinions, actions, and knowledge counted for something; now I know that that's not true.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

ITA on the Mrs. Clinton stuff. WHAT has she been thinking?!? Or Smoking?!?

And yet, as I said to jdulac above, I appreciate her specificity in her answers to healthcare for example. Obama may be more electable because his experience has not been the typical black experience -- growing up in Hawaii changes things, for instance. I just wish I felt comfortable with him. It doesn't help that the people I talk to about him talk about the inspirational nature of his speaking, but rarely seem to be able to answer a question on his specific policies. It may lose him some of the older vote that a person needs to go to his website to find out more about his policy ideas. My mother, for one, won't vote for him for that reason.

I disagree vehemently that your opinions and actions don't count. They do. Vote. Get your friends to vote. Go to your local Boys and Girls Club and get the members who will be 18 by election day to register and vote.

Especially at the representative level, your vote COUNTS. My dad came up with a list of representatives who won their seats by fewer than 1000 votes in the 2006 by-elections. One of -- I want to say in Vermont, but don't quote me -- won by fewer than 10 votes. If just 11 of his opponent's supporters had gotten up and voted on their way to work that morning the district he represents would be writing to someone else to complain about their taxes.

[gileswench.livejournal.com]

I remember that Black Power salute on a visceral level to this day. My mother was an Olympics junkie, and I have followed in her footsteps on that front. That moment, really, had a huge impact on me for something I've never quite made up my mind about on the inside. Should they have done it? Should they have been punished for it? All I know is that while I've neve quite decided what they ought to have done or what the Olympic committe should have done in response, that's the moment when I became aware of race divisions on a conscious level. I was not quite six, and goodbye to one honking level of innocence. And in keeping with the rest of my feelings on the subject, I'm not entirely sure whether I thank them or not.

What happened in Munich, though, well, I was watching when that news came through and it sickens me to this day. At the time, the sickness was literal.

The question of an assassination attempt - let alone accomplishment - frankly hadn't entered my mind before this moment. I don't know that I'm really too concerned about that, but I do have visions of a great deal of animosity and potential for more scattered violence. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

But I think we've hit a point where the direction of the country is probably going to shift significantly, and that always increases the potential for large-scale disaster.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's what's running through my brain at the moment, the whole zeitgeist shift.

I'm also still undecided about the Black Power salute.

Munich was the first time I really understood that I was seeing human blood on the screen, if that makes sense. I knew it before that, although I think they were far more circumspect about showing crime scenes on the news then, but it came through viscerally at Munich and that feeling has never really gone away.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I remember 1968--or at least, I remember all the events you are talking about. Also, my mother was pregnant with my youngest sister who was born in November of that year, so it was an eventful year mixed up with bad things happening in the real world and my new baby sister who had some health problems and then later (possibly 1969), big blizzards that had the power out and, for some reason, no (or little?) heat.

I wasn't aware of much beyond the big news in the U.S., but back in those days, we kids talked about all that stuff on the bus stop in the way that we might have argued "Beatles or Monkees?" a few years before. I can remember having sort of a line-up like "Red Rover" with kids on either side marching towards the other chanting who they were going to vote for as if our votes even mattered. We all cast our votes at school, though, and they were counted at the end of the day.

Right now, I hadn't really thought about assassinations or whatever, and I hope nothing like that happens. Right now I feel somewhat disappointed and disenfranchised. I'm voting in the primary, but I may not be voting in the general election. I don't have bigger thoughts than that right now. I'm not a political junkie, but I care a lot about the things I care about. *g*

Anyway, IIRC, we are about the same age, but I'm not sure I would have been as aware of the big picture at that age as you might have been. I think I became more aware during the last year or so of Jimmy Carter's presidency when the news became a TV show.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I remember being shocked about a decade ago when I discovered a study about the average age children start remembering large "outside" events. The researchers took into account traumas and big items, like assassinations or the Challenger disaster (this being before 9/11), and came up with the age of 10 as the one where people really start to absorb political and/or social events. This seemed WAY too late to me. (And way too early to my sister who swears she doesn't remember anything that happened before she was 16. I know she's exaggerating for effect, but still...)

The 1965 evacuation of US dependents from Saigon is what marked me. I certainly didn't understand everything -- I may not have understood the majority of things -- but I was extremely aware that forces outside my family had a wide impact on my life.

Vote. Even if you have to hold your nose to do it, vote. I've always appreciated the fact that I have a say in the system, however small it may be, but in the few weeks since I moved to DC it's become a huge thing for me. You have a right to representation that I currently do not. Use it. Please.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I'd say ten is too late. Developmentally, children don't really have the ability to put things into perspective much before that age and I'm not sure it's helpful for them to be *overly* aware of everything, anyway. I definitely don't think kids should be watching the news, especially. Heck, I don't even watch the news now, and I'm much happier for it.

OTOH, I think it's healthy and good for kids to be somewhat aware of politics from dinner table type discussions and that sort of thing, but as you said, they don't really understand it, and I don't think it's helpful to drill stuff into them at too young of an age. To be honest, I don't understand it all now at my age either. *g*

Looking back, I think that one mistake they made back when I was in school was in not teaching us the realities of the election process. Having us kids vote in school was good because we got involved and saw that involvement was important, but we never really learned anything about how it *really* works, and I think even now most people are confused by it.

I remember the Vietnam War because we collected canned food and other things to send to the soldiers in grade school and, of course, neighbors and friends fought in the war and then, when I was older, I had friends who had no legs or no arms or were in wheel chairs forever because of that. It wasn't like I was unaware, but we had the news on all the time at home, and it was a sort of over-saturation, even then.

As for voting, I've always voted in every election since I was 18. I even voted in the local elections in AK, and so I'll most likely vote no matter what. I meant I may not vote in the presidential election (just that part). If there is no good choice, I'm not sure I will make one. I may change my mind by then, but right now... Meh.

Anyway, it's my choice to make and I'm adult enough to make that choice for myself.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that you weren't. I'm sorry for that.

The Boys and Girls Club and some of my other experiences in Boston showed me that too many people are discouraged by the process (and dismayed by the choices), and I was worried that we'd lose another good person at the polls.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

*g* Don't worry about it. I wasn't offended. I just wanted to assure you that I'm actually a regular and conscientious voter. There's never been an election that I didn't vote in, although once my vote wasn't counted because of a technicality. (I was voting absentee ballot in AK, and I had everything in order as far as I know. I'd voted absentee ballot many times before and did again after that, so I'm still not sure what the problem was that one time, but it was when Bill Clinton got reelected, and I was voting for him anyway, so I wasn't too disappointed.)

Anyway, I definitely plan to vote, as we have a governor election here and, of course, some other local (county) elections that, I confess, I don't really know a lot about right now, but I'll research before the election. The main thing is that we do not want an outlying landing field here, and I'm not sure we'll even get to vote on that. It really sucks, because we've already got Blackwater directly in our backyard (wish I were kidding--I hear them shooting on their firing range when I'm lying in bed).

I do understand people feeling frustrated by and apathetic about the process. I'm voting anyway, provided there still *is* a primary when ours is held in May, but I think the whole process stinks. (I think you can probably guess that I'm a Clinton supporter. *g*)