If You Remember the Sixties...

The completion of that statement goes something like;
If you remember the sixties, you weren't there.  Well I
remember the sixties; I was there and I was cold-stone
sober and drug free though them all.  And the way I
remember them, they make today look like a church.
picnic.

For all the hand-wringing and hair pulling of today,
the world, and especially the United States, have survived
much worse.  For one thing there was the Great Civil War,
but if that is too far back for you, lets jump up
100 years to 1968...

The year started badly with the war in Viet Nam, and
the Tet Offensive.  The North Viet Cong army, 85,000
strong, attacked over 100 cities and military bases in
the South, shattering Americas belief that the war was
going well.  And by February, American casualties
totaled 500 or more a week.

March brought us face to face with what the war was
doing to our servicemen.  On March 16th, the extent
of the massacre at the village of My Lai was revealed.
Between 400 and 500 unarmed men, women and
children were gunned down, lined up and photographed.
Exhausted and facing opposition from the Democrats
for his handling of the war, Lyndon Johnson announced,
on March 31st, that he would not run for another term.
Leaving the field open for Humphry, McGovern, and
Robert Kennedy, a fateful group.

Then on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis TN, sending shock waves
across America and the rest of the world.  The shooter,
James Earl Ray, was apprehended in London's Heath-
row Airport and quickly extradited to the US and just as
quickly tried and sentenced.  Robert Kennedy gave a passionate
speech calling for unity.

And on June 5th, after winning the California presidential
primary, Robert Kennedy was gunned down on live television
in the basement of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
All this was leading up to and culminating with the
Democratic National Convention  August 26 thru 29,
in Chicago.

While the Democratic delegates gathered in the Interna-
tional Amphitheater, tens of thousands of protesters gathered
in Grant Park on the city's lakefront.  The peaceful demon-
strations were soon disrupted by police, in riot gear, who
tried to disperse the crowd.  Hundreds of young demonstrators
were beaten and arrested.  And a new lexicon entered our
vocabulary: Hippies, Black Panthers, and Chicago 8, became
household names.  Hubert Humphry was nominated by a widely
divisive Democratic Party.  It was four days that rocked the world,
and it would be years before the wounds would finally heal.

In November, during the Mexico City Olympics, the tumult of
the preceding year came to a head when two black athletes, who
won a gold and a bronze medal, raised their fists in a Black
Power salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.
The outrage just further widened the gap that was forming
between the black and white population, despite the work done
by LBJ with the Civil Right Act of 1964.

November of that year had Richard Nixon wining the presidency,
and George Wallace, the third-party candidate and avowed
segregationist, garnering over 13% of the vote.  The year ended
with 16,592 Americans dead in the Viet Nam War!

If you are exhausted just reading this, you should have tried living
thru it.  Those years changed America, and not for the better.  But,
we survived, we adapted, and we came out of those difficult times
with a new resolve to work harder to close the gap between black
and white Americans.  Funny thing about gaps though, they never
really stay closed for long.

Today it is the man in the White House that, instead of calling
for calm, unity and reassurance, is once again stoking the fires
 of segregation.  Turning white people against those people
of color, and Christians against Muslims, he has emboldened
 the far-right white supremacists, encouraging them to violence.
Instead of seeking unity across the globe, he has disparaged our
allies and encouraged our avowed enemies.  His coarse and crude
ad hominem attacks of persons he perceives as being against him,
are broadcast everyday via Twitter to his tens of thousands of
followers.

He has single-handily changed American discourse, and debased
the office of the presidency.  He seeks no council, relying on gut
emotion to guide him, most times erroneously.  His wild swings
of contradictory decrees confuse and frighten our allies.  For all
appearances, he makes 'shooting from the hip' look like a marks-
manship contest.  The question is, will we come out of this better
than we were, or will we be forever cursed with a country and a
presidency that no longer commands the respect of the world?

I'm just askin'.