Seems Like Old Times

I’m guessing JMM thinks the ‘60’s were only about hippies and Vietnam War protests. And the ‘70’s were only about “Saturday Night Fever.”

I remember the’60’s being seriously assessed, in the’70’s, as a period which could well have tilted over into civil war; especially in 1968. The argument was accompanied with historical references and analysis, to establish how dangerous the year was to the country. It isn’t just news reporting that is too close to history to be worth much in assessing events it reports on. 

As Chou En Lai reportedly replied when asked during Nixon’s trip to China what he thought about the French Revolution: “It’s too soon to tell.”

The political violence of the ‘60’s (how do you think the church bombings and murders of civil rights workers, and the police riot in Chicago in ‘68, should be classified? Not to mention the assassinations of JFK, King, and RFK?) gave way to the political violence of the ‘70’s. There was plenty of state violence, too. Kent State was forgiven, after all. And bombs became the preferred tool of political protest; not marches or demonstrations.

JMM focuses on the violence of the 19th century, but passes over the violence of the 20th:

It wasn’t like the 1960s or the 1990s or the teens of this century when there was politically inflected violence that was overwhelmingly on the left or the right

The’70’s? All the political violence of the’70’s? Never happened? The assassinations of the ‘60’? Three in five years? Nothing. And yet:

Let’s start with the fact that the winners of the 1860, 1880 and 1900 elections were all murdered by assassins. That’s a lot! There was also widespread paramilitar

It is a lot. But so is three public figures, one a sitting President, within 5 years. As much, if not more so, I’d say. And now it’s supposed to be worse? Or is it just because JMM is too young to remember, and thinks the relative calm of the decades since is the proper norm?   But America used, and government allowed, a great deal of violence to support slavery (“Follow the money.” Slavery made America an economic power in the 19th century.), as well as in support of Jim Crow. There was a cottage industry in postcard photos of lynchings in the early 20th century. Not to mention the wholesale slaughter of the natives here; or the mestizo of Mexico, brutalized by people and state governments across the Southwest even as they were relied on for labor. Then there was the state and private violence against labor unions and union organizers. Violence is as American as cherry pie. The inhibition of violence is far more aberrant in American culture than is the disinhibition.

We haven’t begun to see the violence of the first 70 years of the 20th century repeated. All we have now are purported leaders who talk like schoolyard bullies, but what do they accomplish? Giuliani? Bannon? Alex Jones? Stephen Miller? His sole accomplishment was the family separation policy, which was a horror and a disaster, but which didn’t win any more of the country over to his racism. Even Trump bellows far more than he does things. He does inspire violence; the real kind, not the verbal kind he trades in. But most of that violence is directed back at him.

Funny how that works.

Trump is not Hitler. He’s not Andrew Jackson. He’s closer to Joe McCarthy, who finally couldn’t produce his list of Communists in the State Department and collapsed under his own lies. Trump is already a lame duck. He’ll bellow and threaten and rejoice in the violence of others (and should be held responsible for his actions that led to the injury and death of others (thank you, CJ Roberts)), if it’s on his behalf. But he won’t again foment even the violence of J6. The violence he is disinhibiting? That’s more the reaction to the end of legally protected racism. Trump is not responsible for the use of DEI and “woke” and even equality as terms of opprobrium. He’s just another 70 year old racist riding that wave. There are chains upon those hands. He’s just riding on a train.

Violence is, and always has been, the way America conducts its business. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

What's different now is that many middle-class and affluent white People feel in danger from it. Members of targeted minority groups have lived with that all along.

The point I should have made, but didn’t.