"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"
William Wordsworth, The French Revolution as it Appeared to its Enthusiasts at its Commencement, 1809
1969
We had discovered a great injustice.
We had clarity. We were sure we understood the situation. Our cause was just and the evil we opposed was so evident to us. The generation in power, having won World War II, was now carrying out an unjust war. They were lying to us. They said the war in Vietnam was in self-defense --dominos -- but they were pursuing a colonial agenda. They were wantonly killing helpless people, dropping bombs and celebrating body counts. It was wrong. And our government was trying to draft us.
Hell, no.
We could protest. The universities were close at hand and complicit, so we protested there. End ROTC!
Many young people today think they have uncovered a great injustice and a great hypocrisy. The generation in power is allied with a country whose hands are not as clean as they had been taught to believe. Trump is hopeless, but Biden knows better and is participating in the injustice anyway, so put pressure on Biden. Protest at the universities. They are close at hand and complicit. Divest!
I do not trivialize my earnest sincerity in 1969, nor the earnest sincerity of young protesters today. I am acknowledging it. There is nothing trivial about the passion of young people to be part of something great and good, nor indignation over the hypocrisy of their elders, nor of the blossoming power of young adulthood, nor of springtime. I was there.
Everything was new and exciting. I was healthy. Women found me attractive. I was letting my hair grow longer. I could get a red fist silk-screened on a T-shirt for free at a table in Harvard Yard. A size-medium T-shirt fit comfortably, and I wore it to classes. I was sure that the pressure we were bringing on Nixon would end the war soon. We were changing the world. It was springtime and warm after a long, long winter. Best time in my life.
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6 comments:
Young people aren't the only ones upset about what's happening in Gaza. Inflicting such indiscriminate, widespread death, destruction and famine on millions of civilians in response to a terrorist attack by Hamas is not only immoral, but against international law. Nor is it likely to make Israel any safer.
Israel certainly doesn't need 14 billion of our tax dollars to carry out their wanton slaughter, but Biden is giving it to them anyway. I'm afraid that isn't going to help him get re-elected.
I understand your memories, and share some of them. But then I enlisted, served on 3 submarines against the Soviets, and returned home thru LAX in 1971 with a fellow sailor, who was Black. In LAX we were spit on and called "baby killers" by long haired protestors. I turned to my friend and reminded that there were no babies on the subs. He turned, looked sadly at me and said, "welcome to my world". I remember that every time someone says "thank you for your service", and I spent my life working for the civil rights movement.
Bidens unyielding support of Netanyahus slaughter of the residents of Gaza, and ignoring of further Zionist incursions into the West Bank are not going to do one small thing to eliminate Hamas from the Palestinians causes, just as Netanyahu and his far right cabal are not making Israel a safer place for the residents of Israel, Jewish, Arab or Christian.
I'm with Mike, and feel this position is further eroding Bidens support, among more than just the college aged generation. Not that they will vote fore Trump, but that they and others will just not vote, or if they cast a Ballot, will leave the top line blank. Either way, the Republic suffers.
Beginning in the 1980s and through to the present, I have come to appreciate the toll that service in combat took on my father (World War Two), his contemporaries (World War Two and Korea, and for some it was both wars), and on my contemporaries and our children (the Viet Nam War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom). Supercilious is a word that fits so many who accused their elders in the 1960s of screwing everything up. "My generation" produced some of the worst leaders this country has had. Whatever the outcome of the November presidential election, it's fair to say that this is it for the generation born during World War Two and most of the Baby Boomers; that's a good thing. I hope the next generation of leaders will be more serious. It would be difficult to imagine a more irresponsible group than what we've had, beginning with Bill Clinton. (President Obama is an exception--he was a good president, especially given the hand dealt to him by George W. Bush) Three impeachments in the thirty-year period since 1994? You've got to be kidding. And the president's side in each of these impeachments--the Democrats in Clinton's case and the Republicans in Trump's--just defends the sleaze.
I was the student commander ot the USAF ROTC detachment at COLBY College in Waterville, Maine. We wore our USAF dress uniforms, initially weekly for military studies classes, and drill days. As student unrest grew at COLBY, uniforms were worn only on field drill days.
During the spring of 1970, when student protests over the emerging information that we were engaged in active combat operations in Cambodia led to student strikes,. ROTC became the local focus of protests. Junior and Senior ROTC classmen had already enlisted in the USAF and were obligated to a four years of active duty. Should they "resign" from ROTC,t t
hey would still be obligated to serve as enlisted airmen, not Reserve officers.
The ROTC cadets had the same conflicts as did other students,and many participated in the strike and demonstrations, though prohibited from wearing their uniforms while doing so.
While most protestors proclaimed a refusal to accept a draft notice, we had already pledged to.allow the USAF to send us to wherever in the world, to do.whatever we were assigned.
As US oil company investments in the South China Sea began to emerge as the deep-seated reason for the US to halt the Southeast Asian nations Domino- effect collapse, a deeply cynical view of government and its view of its citizens spread across the nation. For the good of the oil consuming public, the oil industry and the US fuel based economy, it was necessary to expend US human.capital.
Apparently, the lesson has some residual effect as we allow Ukrainians to resist, fight and die using US supplied weapons, representing actual capital resources, rather than human capital.
The initial support of Israel, our long term allybin the middle east after 7 Oct 2023 invasion was understandable. As the response went from retribution to genocide, continued support of Netanyahu's policies is complicity.
The leverage of Anerican Jewish capital in US industry and politics is if the same ilk as the oil leverage during the Vietnam era.
Student protests seem to be of a higher moral order than "Hell no! I WON'T GO", but voice high moral concerns, rage at what is emerging as a genocide, hidden in seeking the elimination of a defined enemy construct.
The ESCALATION to campus violence is opportunistic, tramples on the rights of other students, faculty and the institution to deliver the costly purchased services.
American Spring. But then they go home for the summer:
“You said you'll see me
When we're home for the summer
We won't have to work so we're gonna
Do whatever the hell we wanna
'Cause we know that one day we'll be
Gone from each other”
Sara Kays
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