Fifty Years Ago

Fifty years ago.  I remember being in the Tube Room at the ATO House at Stanford where we all were watching the vote returns for the California 1968 Presidential Primary.

Robert Kennedy had campaigned in the Sac Joaquin Valley the previous week and several of my fraternity brothers had driven to see him. I was going to go, but something came up.

My best friend went.  He related that he was literally overcome with the charisma of Kennedy.  He said that he felt he had just seen the next President.

We both were Juniors and were entering our Senior year.  For all of us this meant our deferments were over and the “green” awaited us.   At the time 200 plus bodies were being sent back home from Vietnam.  Mortality for 21 year olds was a real possibility, or Canada or whatever.  It was not a good time to be young in America.

Dr. King has been assassinated a few weeks before, rupturing our integrated fraternity for reasons I have previously disclosed, splitting the country into riots and exposing the true nature of white supremacy.

It was already a very bad time, when someone ran to the podium just as we were leaving the Tube Room and announced that RFK had been shot.

We sat in stunned silence.  At first the reports were the wounds were not fatal, but by morning Kennedy was gone.

Again, it happened again!  The echoes of JFK’s assassination roared in our ears.    Many of us who were in college had been motivated by JFK’s ask not challenge.  Many of us made our career decisions, to serve our country, in many different ways based on that challenge.  I did, my best friend did...

And now RFK was gone.  And Nixon and Humphrey stood as instant favorites for the Presidency; the position that held the future of the Vietnam War in their hands.

There was no doubt that both would not stop the war.  Nixon said he would; we all knew he was a liar.  Humphrey said the same things, so had LBJ.

A wave of gloom swept over the campus, as anti-war demonstrations got more violent and widespread.

And the negativity and cynicism that is Trump grew in our hearts.

I have characterized the ‘deplorables”  of my generation as some  disgruntled Vietnam Vets, old retirees now, who long ago realized their government was corrupt and lied to them.  The war protestors already were saying that; and had mysteriously “flipped” into anti-tax conservatives taking out their anger over the war on schools and mental health hospitals.  In future years Vietnam Vets would go so far as to throw their medals back in Washington D.C., something that had never happened before in American history.  Anti-government fatigue crystallized into right wing fanaticism.

And that cynicism persisted up to and through the 2016 election.  Once people lose faith in their government it is easy for demagogues to twist that anger into getting themselves into power.

WWI vets in Germany fueled the fascist Nazi growth and helped Hitler take over the country.  Their beef was that the Treaty of Versailles unfairly blamed Germany for WWI and the reparations that ruined Germany’s economy and led to a worldwide depression, fueled Hitler’s rise to power.

The cynicism and anger against the Vietnam War, the repressed history that eventually proved the American government lied to its citizens, fueled everything from the war protests, the civil rights riots and the tax revolt that elected a right winger, Reagan , to power.

Fascism, incredibly, that Roosevelt had rallied the nation against, began to rise in America of all places!

And even the election of a African American could  not stop it, as Vietnam era baby boomers, vets and protestors, made cynical by the lies the government, reacted in a backlash and elected a Hitler ‘want to be’ as President.

The moderation of American Politics that had characterized  political discourse in the country since the Civil War, broke into armed camps of right and left.  

With the Cold War over, the anger crystallized into delegitimization of government period, local and state politics deteriorated into stark conflict, winner take all, and even voter suppression as white supremacy again built in power.

The result is the politics of today, as the Republican Party is all white; white fascism as its base now; and the Democratic Party is diverse with people of color as its base.  The lines are driven to the ground through flags of extremism.

This division is reminiscent of the divisions in American in 1859, when the Whig Party broke into pieces and the modern Republican Party was born, sparking a Civil War between the abolitionism Republican Party and the Slavery Democratic Party.

Is that possible today?  You bet it is.  As long as the anger and mistrust continues to be fueled by that damned war and baby boomers can still vote, the cynicism continues from the now right wing Vietnam Vet and unlikely hippie to the anti-war leftist hippie who gave up on democracy a long time ago.

Many of my hippie friends converted to right wing fascism a long time ago, joining those on the left who both hate what’s left of American democracy.

That leaves the rest of us, the young and those of us who know better, who know that fascism is the enemy, that government is still necessary  and needs to be reformed not discarded; who have read about the Weimar Republican and know the dangers of fascism and remember the warnings that Roosevelt made many years ago: that fascism was the end of times if it was allowed to live.

I have always mourned more than celebrated my country.  The sins of America are original and historical ranging from the most brutal slavery in history to the genocide of an entire race of people; Native Americans.

But it also the home of the most democratic experiment in democratic decision making in the history of man; the experiment in classic liberalism that has lasted the longest of any since Greece.

And it is in real trouble; led by a “Make America Great Again” movement that is fascist to its core.