No, History Is Not Repeating Itself 3
Persons who were not there are comparing what happened last week (and may continue to happen this and subsequent weeks) to 1968.
I can attest that the only similarity is in the size of the headlines. In 1968, despite the violence and assassinations, there was a feeling of optimism and hope, of persons standing up against the corrupt “system”–a corrupt war, racism and theft of labor, corrupt corporations fouling the air and the water, women subjected by social norms to the whims of men (who were as piggish then as they are now).
The feeling I sense today is desperation and loss, not optimism and hope: Persons attempting to fight off resurgent racism and a militarized “law enforcement” implicitly empowered to execute black and brown folks with impunity; a usurious economy built on leeching the blood from the poor and what’s left of the middle class; a world that will literally drown, becoming engulfed by water as the seas rise from climate change engendered by those willing to sit back and watch the rising tide from their enclaves on the hill; a political establishment held hostage by the forces of reaction, when it’s not actively abetting them.
Other than that, I reckon things are okay.
Shaun Mullen seems slightly more optimistic than I. Here’s a bit of what he wrote; follow the link for the rest:
July 11, 2016 at 2:27 pm
Nah, it’s all over. The country will not cease to exist but it will set an example. It will just become a smaller nastier version of a former superpower, a country that will stubbornly hang onto enough military and thermonuclear warheads to theoretically sterilize the globe.
HRC will just be a president to keep it going in the right direction, to keep the cheap veneer on for a little bit longer. I’ve seen a couple big mainstream media pieces increasingly comparing her to Richard Nixon, in that she’s more paranoid, seeing little distinction between what’s legal and what’s not as long as the right important person is doing the doing.
I rate her as more likely to get into a shooting war with Russia and at least even with him on doing something that eventually leads to the trashing of the agreement with Iran. On increasing the bombing of Muslim nations and failed states, dead even, too, with Trump. She is someone who was incompetent and militaristic as the head diplomat, paradoxically believing herself to be the best among them.
But that’s just secondary infections compared to the larger national character disease. Corporate America capitalism will destroy everything, slowly. The national answer to everything will continue to be what it has been — lethal force, the mailed fist, staggering arms sales, domestic and overseas, prison, surveillance and suppression. Of course, there will be riots and unrest. That will bring change, disastrous in nature.
July 11, 2016 at 2:41 pm
Unfortunately, Mr. Smith may well have it right.
July 11, 2016 at 10:50 pm
I’m glad I’m old.