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Well, it’s Jan. 2. The new year’s unwrapped and it’s time to put it to work.
I have to say, I’m a bit twitchy going into this year. The rational part of me says there’s nothing special about numbers ending in zero, but the part of me that occasionally changes course for an approaching black cat and has yet to request a hotel room on the 13th floor isn’t so convinced. Forty years ago the new year was 1968.
I’m not about to claim that history repeats itself, but as ’67 eased into ’68 we had an unpopular Texan in the White House, a Romney running for president and the Packers were looking for another Super Bowl win. If we’re lucky, the similarities will end right about there.
In those first days of January we were being reassured that the war — this time in Vietnam — was showing positive signs, in fact, according to the U.S. commander in the field, the enemy was wearing out and the end of the war was in sight. Unfortunately, on New Year’s Day, the American military was only 30-some days from what some folks will describe as the greatest U.S. military victory of the Vietnam War — Tet. On Jan. 30, across South Vietnam Communist fighters launched simultaneous attacks on U.S. and South Vietnamese targets and they were slaughtered wholesale without attaining a single military objective. Yet, at the end of the battle, President Lyndon B. Johnson and the American commanders would only conclude with King Pyrrhus, “Another such victory and we are undone.” If there ever was a “light at the end of the tunnel,” the Tet Offensive blotted it out. Opposition to the war deepened, LBJ aborted his quest for reelection and a military solution to the war.
Forty years later, rather than escalate, we surged — and with a new year, we are told that the war — this time in Iraq — is showing positive signs. If we are lucky, the similarity will end right about there.
In 1968, a poisonous, divisive war flavored a poisonous, divisive brand of politics. “Hey, hey, LBJ — How many kids did you kill today?” was only the beginning. The end would be evermore bitter.
As never before, it was a year of blood politics — assassinations in Memphis and Los Angeles, riot and bloodshed in the streets of Chicago. King and Kennedy lay dead — demonstrating that even in America political power — or the power to dramatically alter political reality — did grow out of the barrel of a gun. The baby-blue phalanxes of Mayor Daly’s police, whipped into a club-wielding frenzy on national television, so rattled the American psyche that Richard Nixon could emerge from the chaos in Chicago as a unifier — not a divider; millions looking to the GOP’s premier hatchet-man to “bring us together again.”
Not that we were all that eager to be brought together. It was the time for not trusting anyone over 30 — a slogan that made some post-twentysomething protesters profoundly uneasy. For many Americans, if being “together” meant things would go back to the way they used to be, they wanted nothing to do with it.
And if “together” meant anything different than the way they used to be, a good number of folks had no use for that either. For more Americans than who would publicly admit it — then or now — James Earl Ray was no villain. Blacks, women, hippies — all needed to be shown their place and they knew just the man to do it. George Wallace running for president had cleaned up his talk from George Wallace running for Alabama governor. His campaign spoke in code — “forced bussin’,” “pointy-head liberals” and “lawn order” — but there was no question of the color of the children riding those buses or at the receiving end of the police baton.
Today, we’d like to think we’ve moved beyond that — after all, we have a Kenyan-American in the forefront of the fight for the Democratic nomination — but liberal, regardless of head shape, is still hurled as an epithet and campaigns still talk in code, this time of “border security” and “immigration reform.” The target is different — the racism, the same.
The poison is back in our politics. The question posed to John McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” reflects it in a double entendre resonating violence. We are caught up in wars we can’t win with allies we can’t rely on, we’re afraid to get sick, afraid to buy a house, afraid we won’t be able to afford fuel, food and the minimum payment on our maxed out credit cards, even afraid that someone’s going to come to our town and blow us up. Fear, frustration and a certainty that someone, somewhere is to blame. It’s feeling like the new year is 40-years-old.
Let’s hope that feeling will pass.
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com
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Jerome Christenson, WDN Online Editor wrote on Jan 18, 2008 11:08 AM: