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fabrisseHow 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?
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?
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 07:25 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 10:43 pm (UTC)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