![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 07:37 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 02:15 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 07:03 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 08:14 pm (UTC)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*)