Apologies to Colin Kaepernick

Four years ago he took a knee to protest unjust policing.

     "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."          

    
 Colin Kaepernick, 2016

     "We admit we were wrong."

        Roger Goodell, 2020


White America watches the NFL. 

When Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker became critics of Trump, it made him stronger. People saw they became pariahs in the GOP, and it was a warning: cross Trump and you are out.

The Never Trump defections didn't hurt Trump, either. If Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, and Mike Murphy bitch from outside the tent, it just confirms their separation. It's not their Party, so they can cry if they want to.

But something new is happening this week: surprising defections. Former Defense Secretary Jim "Mad Dog" Maddis just denounced President Trump's use of the military. Former Chief of Staff John Kelly joined him. Fox News just posted an article saying that neither George Bush nor Mitt Romney plan to support Trump, nor is the widow of John McCain. 

The slow death of George Floyd shocked Americans. It is changing minds. It gave Black America a new focal point of anger and it gave White America a fresh look in the mirror and a realization that something isn't right. George Floyd wasn't resisting; it wasn't dark; he wasn't running away; he wasn't holding what maybe looked like a gun; he didn't lurch suddenly; he wasn't provoking with obscenities or threats; it wasn't over in an instant. Instead we saw something sad and ugly from several angles on video.

Goodell: Black Lives Matter

The protests trigger something in the memory of the public and the NFL: Colin Kaepernick. Four years ago he said racially prejudiced policing was taking place and he protested by bowing his head and taking a knee. Big controversy. Trump, Fox, and MAGA nation defined this as unpatriotic, an insult to America. It was a handy point of division for Trump: look at those ungrateful Black millionaires, dishonoring our sacred flag!

Football matters, to Americans and to Trump. Trump understands that NFL fans are Trump fans. The NFL took a stand, with Trump, against the protest. Kaepernick became a quarterback without a home. No team dared hire him. 

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Friday that he and the NFL have switched sides. "We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the National Football League, believe Black Lives Matter."

Drew Brees, quarterback for the New Orleans Saints,  sharpened the lines of disagreement with Trump, saying that he had erred in saying that the anthem-take-a-knee protests were wrong.

     "Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community, I realize this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been. . . . We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week. We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial and prison reform."

Trump doubled down, and said by tweet that Brees "should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag." He continued: "OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high. . . . There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag --NO KNEELING!"

As with the Bible photo op, Trump is associating himself with a revered symbol, but he is misreading the new significance of Kaepernick's gesture. The video showing the officer's knee on Floyd's neck redefined Kaepernick's knee. Now his knee is a symbol of courage and integrity and peaceful protest. Knees matter.  

Kaepernick is no longer works as Trump's symbol of the uppity black insulting America. Kaepernick's gesture was a respectful, silent, early warning, a wake up call we should have paid attention to. It was so respectful that Americans either ignored it, or in the case of Trump, Pence, Fox, and MAGA world, derided it. 

Now Kaepernick's protest looks wise and fair and peaceful, and indeed just the kind of protest people now say should be taking place. In continuing to attack Kaepernick Trump undermines his argument that he distinguishes between peaceful protest and riot. He is pointing at a kneeling Black and saying that, too, is wrong. 

Trump is retreating to his most reliable base, conservative White traditional-values Americans. At bottom, it is not about the form of the protest, it is about the subject of it. America "Great Again" wants an undisturbed social order, built on a premise that race relations in America are pretty much OK, or would be if Blacks quit making a fuss over them.

Trump should beware: the ground is shifting. When you lose football, it shows you are losing part of your base. White Americans see that something isn't quite right; maybe Kaepernick had something to say and we should have listened.

Democrats should beware: there are a lot of White traditional values oriented Americans. This is still a majority White country. 

Two videos in one week. White Female Privilege.

Click: ABC

Black man: "Please don't come close to me."

White Woman:  "I'm taking pictures and calling the cops."

Black Man: "Please call the cops. Please call the cops."

White Woman: "I'm going to tell them there's an Afro-American man threatening my life!"

The video of the suffocation and death of George Floyd opened eyes. Things are worse for Black Americans than some of us thought.

There was an earlier video.  It tells the story that some Americans knew all along that things are worse for Black Americans.

The police were her weapon.

The video is likely familiar to most readers. It offers a view of the context for police assumptions and profiling, and it comes a few days before release of the George Floyd death video. Here we have two educated middle class Americans, both armed with technology, hers to call the police, his to record the interaction. 

The dangerous Black man.  Her behavior reveals an understanding of race and policing in America. The event happened in the moment, in real time. It reveals her unspoken assumption of her privilege and its opposite, the assumption that a Black man will be perceived as the "bad guy" in an encounter. She knew police will come running when they hear there is a Black man threatening a woman, and framed that way they will believe her and do what they do to Black men. She twice tells the police dispatcher that she is being threatened by an Afro-American man. The second time she inserts a tone of panic in her voice. Now she has the ideal framing for the encounter when police arrive to assess the situation. The video shows her looking at him to see if he registers how afraid he should be.

One can easily imagine how this could have played out. Police are told there is a dangerous assault in progress. They arrive to stop a presumed crime in process, ready to use force, possibly deadly force, to detain, handcuff ,and arrest the male, Christian Cooper. If that happens, he begins a slow system of booking, arrest record, detention, bail, processing, and then he has a difficult legal situation, with her potential testimony and the evidence of the 911 recording.

The female, Amy Cooper, no relation, has a dilemma. She either sticks to her story to justify her police report, or backs off it and is revealed to have made a false police report, a crime. She may not be able to leave this as a "misunderstanding," never mind. If the original police encounter involves roughing up the man, then both police and Amy Cooper need to justify the nature of the arrest. This could go very badly for Christian Cooper. Amy Cooper appears to know the score, thus her confidence in weaponizing the police against a Black man telling her to leash her dog, and then recording her. She would sic the police.

In this case, she fails to understand the whole story. Christian Cooper did not stop recording as she had demanded. He has the tape. His voice sounds confident that he would be treated as a "citizen" with rights and presumptions of innocence, not as a "thug."  No surprise there: he is a Harvard graduate and therefore accustomed to a certain amount of credibility and privilege. He is a writer, a board member of a bird watching group. She profiled him by race and gender. She did not profile him by socioeconomic status. He has social capital. And he had the tape.

Believe women. Amy Cooper also put a spotlight on #BelieveWomen and #MeToo. She damaged them. We could see that he wasn't threatening her; she told police dispatchers he was, with fabricated panic. She lied. 

White women have privilege in encounters of this kind. "Why would a woman lie," Democrats ask? She lied because it gave her power in an encounter with a man telling her she needed to leash her dog. Amy Cooper's lie does not mean that Tara Reade or Christine Blasey-Ford or Stormy Daniels lied. But it does put the lie to the notion that women don't lie about assaults to gain advantage. They sometimes do. 

We saw it happen.

A Christian Supports Trump

"Many of us support what the President and the Republican Party are doing, even as we cringe at some of his actions, past and present."

               Robert Guyer

Surely this photo-op stunt was too much. Surely this was so nakedly hypocritical that a Christian simply must be offended and recoil from Trump.

No.

A Christian shares how he feels about Trump.

Robert Guyer is a believing, practicing evangelical Christian. He rose to my challenge to explain to me why he and other Christians support Trump. Trump has no interest in Christian faith nor practicing its virtues, and his ignorance of the Bible is apparent--laughably so, when he tries to disguise it. It would seem reasonable and predictable that the evangelical Christian faith community would resent such open hypocrisy.

Trump is a highly visible representative of their faith; he claims to be a "big fan." Whatever political reasons a person might have for supporting Trump--his immigration policy, tax policy, abortion policy, gun policy, the fact that he is a Republican--the resilient fact of current politics is that his strongest support group are evangelical Christians, a faith community, adhering to a person who subjects their faith to ridicule. 

Click: "Trump" praises the Bible

Two Trump imitators have short clips that have gone viral and come to my attention. One, by comedian Sarah Cooper, simply lip-syncs Trump's actual voice when answering questions by a reporter regarding the Bible. Trump is clueless, and trying to hide it. The other is from an ongoing series by J L Cauvin who imitates Trump's voice and expressions, in this clip comparing himself favorably to Christ. Click

Yet Trump maintains evangelical support. This unintuitive condition requires an explanation. There must be something very special about Trump, something so powerfully good that it compensates for behavior that no Christian can ignore. 

Robert Guyer said my guess in an earlier post was nearly correct. Trump is a defender of his faith, and Christians feel that their faith is under active attack. God is using Trump.

Robert L. Guyer is licensed to the practice of law in Florida and District of Columbia. He is currently writing his seventh book on applied American politics. For many years Guyer has operated The Lobby School, which offered seminars on how people can lobby governments. His current focus is creating a series of lobbying manuals at www.insiderstalkwinning.com, with book titles including How to Successfully Lobby State Legislatures and How to Get and Keep Your First Lobby Job.

He quoted me below, and crossed out in yellow the part he thought I got in error.

Guest Post by Robert Guyer

“Evangelical Christians have no illusion that Trump is one of them, but theologically, there is a workaround to make Trump part of their tribe. Sometimes God uses un-Godly men for His purposes. That would be Trump, God's hired gun. Trump is showing that even if he wears the school colors incorrectly, waves a Bible when the religious nitpickers say he should have said a prayer or something instead, by gosh he is going to wear those colors.” 

Peter, with one small edit, you understand well a strain of evangelical thought and why many of us support what the President and the Republican Party are doing, even as we cringe at some of his actions, past and present. 

God uses even men that do bad things to bring about God’s will. That’s the Biblical narrative. We don’t understand why but there remains confidence that God is in control even as we don’t like what He’s doing. We are comfortable not understanding. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will make your paths straight.” (Prov 3:6) We persevered through eight years of insults from Barack Obama, Democrats, and a hostile judiciary. 

Barr and Senate investigations reveal that indeed God spared America from Hillary Clinton. Trump and the Senate are building judicial ramparts against the next wave of government zealotry for behaviors scripturally abhorrent. Until Jesus returns, the vast spiritual war goes on as it has for thousands of years.

Of course, evangelicals like all people are diverse. Evan McMullin’s former campaign manager is a member of our Green House Church. Our pastors are “woke” holding whites oppress blacks, females are victims of men, enough but not too much of wearisome SJW themes.  With 1,000 college students in the congregation we do tilt left. Bible-centric living is the binding orthodoxy among many different leanings, not politics.

Few will vote for those who proclaim Biblically abhorrent behavior so I expect few will vote Democrat, even among the 25% of us who are black. Many will support Trump, if only the better of the two. No idea about the campaign manager who is selling furniture since for now his political consulting career is over. The church won’t get into politics but will send tutors to failing public schools, send missionaries to Haiti, Africa, Miami, host recently released felons, promote black-white reconciliation, the do-gooder stuff peoples of goodwill and faith agree upon. 

We will all do and give our best, and in the end trust no matter who is president, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14. 

Political theater: the march to the church.

Armed men cleared Lafayette Park, and President Donald Trump, body erect, strode purposefully across the plaza to the Church.

A crowd of peaceful protesters were fired upon so Trump could do his photo op.

Both sides got what they wanted.

New Yorker caption: "after peaceful protesters were dispersed. . . "

What may or may not be true is that Donald Trump felt stung by the news stories that he was "hiding out" in  his White House bunker. News stories report that. He denies it. 

What is true is that a reporter had asked him about it directly. 

Also true is that a meme was circulating with the hashtag Bunker Bitch, with photos of Trump.  Jokes circulate on Facebook: Why did the chicken cross the road? To take a photo in front of a church.

Probably most important was that Tucker Carlson on Fox criticized him harshly for being in the White House guarded by armed men while regular Americans were facing chaos, and that Trump was not showing strength. Trump takes cues from Tucker Carlson, a bellwether for conservative nationalist populism.

Trump responded. After his Rose Garden speech about using armed forces, overwhelming strength, and domination, and warning of long prison sentences for wrongdoers, armed people under his command cleared Lafayette Park using pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Then his proud walk leading to the photo with the Bible. Take that, you guilt-ridden liberal weenies, whining about George Floyd, and providing a catalyst for crime. I join right and might, God and the US military.

He got what he needed for his base. The left got what it needed, too. 

All of the mainstream-liberal news sources describe the clearing of Lafayette Park in essentially the same way: that Trump, in his sociopathic arrogance, used unnecessary force against peaceful protesters. Look at us, victims of authoritarian narcissism, all so Trump could do an utterly phony pose with a Bible. From the left's perspective it was perfect theater, encapsulating their big message points of Trump's danger to America, that he places personal political self interest above the law, a reiteration of the impeachment accusation.

NY Times

The left raises money on this. Katie Porter, a new Democratic congressperson from Orange County, California, who flipped a red District, just sent me an e-mail saying she is "PISSED." 

The New Yorker's story describes the Trump-Bible image immediately in the context of him having dispersed peaceful protesters with tear gas.

The Nation magazine reports the story and cites CNN: "Intended or not, the juxtaposition with the scene outside was damning and ludicrous. CNN carried the President's remarks on a split screen with images of police advancing through the crowds. A moment later, a chyron noted, 'Trump says he's an "ally of peaceful protesters" as police fire tear gas, rubber bullets on peaceful protesters. . . '"

In an unusual coincidence, there is a single story that tells in body language the favored story for each side. The left shows Trump as a lawless bull in a china shop. Trump gets to show he doesn't care what the left thinks.

Thad Guyer is an attorney who represents whistleblowing employees. His life and law practice put him in close proximity to the White House and, by coincidence, also to Mara Lago, so he has some up close insights on the Secret Service and Presidential protection. He offers this Guest Post observation that the protesters chose to be rousted.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer:

"New Arrest Records by the Thousands, if you want one."

Guyer, at general aviation airport near Mira Lago

For 20 years I have several times a year reported to a law office two blocks from Lafayette Park and the White House. I have seen various presidents and vice presidents depart by car.  The Secret Service immediately takes control of the area, people are told to back up, sometimes barricades go up. If you are in front of the White House for any reason and the Secret Service tells you to back up, or if you are in Lafayette Park and you are told to get out, guess what?  You get out.  You don't say "hey, we were here first, and we are protesting and we refuse to obey your lawful orders and we will stand our ground!." 

I am riding out Covid 19 in Palm Beach county, my house is 3 miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago, which I pass regularly.  Since the inauguration, when Trump comes here not only are we diverted off the streets, but the airport I fly rented planes from shuts down-- yes the  general aviation airspace shuts down for days at a time, as do the waterways near the mansion. On foot, by car and motorcade, or by air or waterway, the highest security in the world surrounds our presidents, and we all must yield to the Secret Service and police who protect him. 

The video is stark, the Secret Service comes out and notifies people they must clear the area.  Most people obey and begin leaving.  The lawless few refuse.  They are looking for trouble, for cameras for chaos.  As the uniformed s police move slowly toward them with plexiglass shields, those few won't move and they are pushed slowly at first, then the scuffles, then the tear gas and flash grenades. I always like watching it!   

And that is what happened when Trump decided to make his bible photo op at the church  next to the park, the historic beautiful church that the criminal arsonists and looters tried to burn. All presidents do photo ops, that is a giant part of their job, and churches are favored photo op stages for them all. Trump's message was no more corny than the photo ops of most presidents. Trump is just more pushy, brazen and boorish. 

By this weekend, some 10,000 rioters, looters and curfew breakers will have been arrested.  Whomever wants to create a criminal record for themselves, or to add to the one they have already earned, they are welcomed. You can be a lawful protestor and looter on the same day if you want, but for the latter you may be one of the 10,000 arrestees. You get arrested for your criminal acts not for your lawful protesting. You can even be one of the few who get a wiff of tear gas, or a welt from a rubber bullet if you feel that strongly about it. 

But don't expect the Secret Service or police who are doing their jobs to yield public space to you when the commander-in-chief is in transit, even if CNN encourages you to.     

Planting his flag

Trump's photo op

It was blasphemy? So what?  

It was outrageous? All the better.


Trump is taunting politically correct liberals. Trump is king of the mountain, and he's not afraid of a fight. 

Hold up a Bible? Hell, yeah. Take that, you snowflake weenies!

Trump is doing body language.

This blog post will assert an unintuitive idea and I expect disagreement. This image of Trump helps him politically. I think the fact that most readers smirk at the image, or are offended by it, or think it laughable, or obscene, or deeply offensive, is evidence not that I am wrong, but that I am right. It is in-your-face politics. You are supposed to be offended and then write your op-eds.

All the predictable people criticized Trump, and it is continuing today. The "good government" types complained that he sprayed tear gas to disperse totally lawful, peaceful protesters to do a photo op, an offense to his claim to support lawful peaceable assembly. The mainstream media commentariat complains that it is hypocritical for Trump--of all people-- to stride to a church to hold up a Bible to use as a political weapon. A large segment of clergy, including the Bishop for the church Trump visited, noted publicly that this was sacrilege, waving a Bible in a political stunt. Young people with time on their hands and photo editing on their laptops mocked the image by inserting different books onto the image.

No question about it,  a lot of people thought the photo op offensive. It is so tacky. It is such an over the top a show-off act, brazenly using religion for political purpose, showing off the Bible like a war trophy. 

Trump's base got the message. He is the leader planting a marker. The war is on-going, but in an early counterattack, Trump re-took ground, Lafayette Park, pushing others aside to stand where he chose. He doesn't need permission. He doesn't need to say, "excuse me" or defer to others who are there lawfully, or ask a minister where he should stand. 

Of course it disturbs the other team. He is demonstrating power, not piety or religious practice. He is demonstrating whose side is is on: regular Americans and especially Christians, who feel picked on. 

Trump is changing and re-defining what this moment is about. It isn't about police brutality and most certainly not an opportunity for reflection on persistent racism. Heck with that. We are not going to waste time worrying about endemic anything, most certainly not racism or white guilt. 

Trump doesn't feel one bit guilty for anything, and he shows it. Guilt is for liberals snowflakes. His team feels just fine and doesn't like being shamed for feeling fine. They love that Trump feels guiltless, too.

Trump is demonstrating this this moment is about the two tribes, between the people who have traditionally had the power--"normal Americans," vs. the people who feel aggrieved and and their allies of troublemakers and criminals and liberals and guilt-mongers.  And in that war, we are winning. We have the power of law, police, and military, and we are using it--like we just did, see?-- so we can keep that power.

Trump's team doesn't want to feel guilty for being white. They want to feel powerful for being white. 

Evangelical Christians have no illusion that Trump is one of them, but theologically, there is a workaround to make Trump part of their tribe. Sometimes God uses un-Godly men for His purposes. That would be Trump, God's hired gun. Trump is showing that even if he wears the school colors incorrectly, waves a Bible when the religious nitpickers say he should have said a prayer or something instead, by gosh he is going to wear those colors. 

Criticism has huge value to a politician. It proves ones bone fides.  We believe in a person's sincerity and authenticity when they pay a price.

The enemies of Jesus mocked and humiliated him. He was the real thing. Now his enemies mock Trump, so he must be real, too.

American retreat and decline

The "American Century" is ending. 

The United States is giving up global leadership.  Amid talk of confronting China, we are turning the world over to them.

After World War One the United States failed to join the League of Nations. After World War Two we changed our minds. The United Nations was headquartered in New York City, with specialized agencies and programs for common action in agriculture, education, refugee health, trade negotiations, and weapons control. We led in establishing NATO, the Organization of American States and other regional alliances. The operating theory--adopted by both parties and all presidents since 1945-- was that the world that cooperated with each other might avoid yet another world war. 

The US got many benefits out of this arrangement, but the economic globalism it facilitated (free trade and investment, plus open immigration policies) meant that manufacturing moved offshore, to the detriment of the non-college American worker.  Everyone noticed it; Trump took political advantage of it, with a populist, anti-globalist message in the campaign, and in actual governance.

Jeffrey Laurenti

We are experiencing what that means. Trump has been ineffective as a legislator, but very effective in changing the American role in the world in those areas where a President can act on his own.

Jeffrey Laurenti is a college classmate, did graduate work at Princeton, and then had a long career as a foreign policy expert, advising governments in his policy work with the United Nations Association of the United States, the United Nations Foundation, and the Century Foundation. I asked him to tell me what Trump's fight with China meant, expecting something about electoral politics. He answered with something about America's place in the world.

Guest Post by Jeffrey Laurenti

"China, public health, and the domino theory in 2020"

Protests and disorders across the United States this weekend have distracted Americans’ attention from the Covid-19 pandemic raging worldwide, much less the Trump administration’s latest salvo in its escalating conflict with China. 

For those who have put it out of their minds, the issue most insistently demanding Washington’s attention last week was China’s move to subject Hong Kong to the same repressive “national security” discipline that the Communist Party has imposed on China for seven decades. Late Friday President Trump announced steps he would take to penalize Hong Kong’s economy when China’s law takes effect. 

Puzzlingly, Trump simultaneously announced U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization. How this reinforces his punishment of China is not obvious, but what is clear is that derailing the only global health agency will not help the United States, Europe, Latin America, or the rest of the world end the coronavirus pandemic. 

In early May, when he first trained his sights on the W.H.O. as a target of his wrath, Trump announced he had formed a review panel to report back in 60 to 90 days on problems at the Geneva-based agency. In his declaration about cutting all U.S. ties to W.H.O. a few weeks later, there was no mention of this review panel or any “work” it may have done to justify U.S. withdrawal. Nor was there any hint of what is to become of the American health experts who work at the agency once Washington walks away.  

The W.H.O. has relied heavily on the medical and scientific expertise of America’s public health community in all its great campaigns, from eliminating smallpox to curtailing smoking to containing AIDS and Ebola virus. But after the abysmal failure of the United States in dealing with Covid-19 – despite months of public health warnings, it is now #1 in the world in infections, boasting over 30 percent of Covid deaths worldwide -- the rest of the world can only see the United States as a model to avoid.

Indeed, if the Trump administration’s concern is about contesting Chinese influence over the global health agenda, abandoning the U.N. agency that guides most nations' public health policies can only seal Beijing's dominance. But the president and his team seem oblivious to the role all the agencies of the United Nations play in forging common policies that nations seek to apply as best they can. Like flies trapped in amber, they seem frozen in the 1950s paranoia of the old John Birch Society that hallucinated about Soviet subjugation of America through the U.N. and international law. 

So on Trump's watch the United States has so far withdrawn from UNESCO, the U.N. Human Rights Council, and the W.H.O. It has abandoned the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, the Open Skies treaty, the Iran nuclear rollback pact, and (imminently) the New START nuclear arsenal caps. It has eliminated the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement machinery. And, of course, it has denounced the Paris climate accord. 

That's a quite stunning record of achievement in just one term. Imagine the dominoes yet to fall to achieve the dream of restoring the world order of 1914.  

1968. I have been here before

I am older now. I have seen this road.

It is a bad stretch, and it will get worse.

1968

From Facebook, a comment on yesterday's blog post:

     "Peter Sage, You keep posting these Pro Pig propaganda. At some point it might be that you're not looking in the mirror anymore. You are an old white guy telling a black woman, fighting for justice, what's acceptable to say. Check your privilege, my friend. Now is not the time to spread your anti-progressive, anti-change, pro Neo-liberal attitude. Do it somewhere else."

The year 1968 was a miserable year in America. 

Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. Urban neighborhoods were in flames from riots. The war in Vietnam escalated, and every day we got a report of more American deaths. Politics was in turmoil. The Democratic Convention turned into a police riot on the floor of the convention hall. George Wallace drew big crowds goading Blacks and college students. The generation gap between young people with long hair and their parents in the WW2 Greatest Generation was at its height. Billboards told us to cut our hair. The draft was forcing people just like me, age 18, to go fight in an immoral war.

Actually not people just like me, which was another problem. People who could go to college, and stay there making regular progress toward a degree, could get deferments and spend the war years in classrooms and newly co-ed dormitories rather than in Vietnam. Sweet duty. It accelerated a trend that would grow large in leftist politics, a division between the liberal college educated and future-prosperous leftists, and the non-college future working person. 

1968: The news was of turmoil, daily. Like today. 

News this morning

Many young politically active people of my era thought the turmoil politically useful, that we were shocking and changing America. After all, America was complacent and only turmoil would get its attention, sometimes with direct action and maybe even those urban riots. Students forcibly occupied my university's administration building--direct action. Other protests in urban, mostly Black neighborhoods, experienced fires and looting. 

College students might have gotten a clue how we appeared to the "regular Joes" from the fact that the police forces that removed the "direct action" students from the university building were rough and angry. They did not see students as fellow fighters for economic and social justice. To them we were privileged hooligans. Some of my classmates were surprised and indignant at the rough treatment.

Didn't they understand we were the "good guys" fighting for righteous causes?  

No they didn't.

1968, The "Law and Order" election. Nixon won it, a task more difficult because George Wallace won almost ten million votes and five states, running on a blunter, rougher version of the same issues as Nixon. Between the two they won 41 million votes to Hubert Humphrey's 31 million. 

It was a wipeout for the left. 

Nixon, in his convention speech said, "As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flames. We hear sirens in the night. . . We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home." He had his issue: stop the chaos.

My generation underestimated something fifty years ago, especially when we thought that urban riots and looting were sending a useful message of frustration with an unjust status quo. We underestimated the public's appetite for order.


Joe Biden has the opportunity to be the symbol of social order. This turmoil could work to his advantage because Donald Trump is so firmly temperamentally oriented toward creating disorder. He has thrived by picking fights and throwing gasoline on political fires. He has benefited from stirring the pot. He could screw this up for himself and look like part of the problem. This could--possibly--break Biden's way, but that is not the history I remember. 

Denver responds to protest riots

What I experienced was that in an era of chaos Americans move toward a political leader who speaks of using no-nonsense blunt force. Looting and arson appear to need overwhelming strength to combat them, not parsing between peaceful protest and violence. A majority of American voters think war zones require warriors, not diplomats. Amid chaotic conditions it all looks like a war zone.

The year 1968 was a miserable year for America--mitigated for me personally by my idealism, my youth, great music, and a zeitgeist that assured me that we young people were changing the world, and everything would be great. 

It wasn't great. The protests, once they got out of control, which they quickly did, were scaring people, so they did what a majority of scared people do: they called the police.