1968 and 2012: Musings of an Old Man

In the summer of 1968 I had finished a master’s degree, and was commuting from Athens, GA to Clemson, SC to teach a UGA course to teachers in Clemson. During that commute, my first experience of the phenomenon, with no obnoxious talk shows spewing their venom to distract me, I had time to think. I thought about the times in which I lived, and dreamed about the future.

The Vietnam War was one of three very hot issues during that summer of youth and passion.

The U.S. was involved in an unpopular war to which we sent thousands of draftees, reluctant patriots who found courage, fear, drugs, mental and physical disfigurement, and death in the jungles.

People were demonstrating in the streets against this war. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was engaged. I brought the president of the Athens chapter in to speak to my persuasion class—probably have a file because of that.

Kent State had not yet happened.

Race and racism was the second passionate issue that summer. Dr. Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. The Black Panther Party was in full swing, taking up arms to end what they saw as extreme oppression. Some white preachers in Georgia and South Carolina were preaching the Biblical support for the proposition that black folks were inferior, cast aside by the Old Testament God. Some black preachers in Detroit and Chicago were just beginning to preach the same message, using the same scriptures, against white folks, the ice people, the blue eyed devils.

It was an election year, the third hot issue. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was scheduled for later in the summer. Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated.

My Quaker, Methodist, and UCC friends and other activists were in the streets passionately fighting against injustice.

In the summer of 2012 I am retired, do not commute but am still teaching, and continue to think about the times. Passion is in short supply as the U.S. Tea partiers chant tired, middle-class, white slogans sounding like robots, looking like robots. Occupiers try to find traction with the working class and minorities, but their tires keep slipping.

Racism is as prominent as it was in 1968, but has taken on new forms. Instead of President Obama being called the “n word” in public, as were Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and other leaders, he is called “a socialist” by people who do not understand what the word means, but do know it’s another “n” word. The percentage of unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. is debilitating. For people of color it is embarrassing, to them and us. The number of black people we legally kill each year should be embarrassing, but instead it is seen as a badge of honor by some governors who proudly proclaim themselves as pro-life.

We are now engaged in at least two wars to lesser or greater extents. Unlike Vietnam, people aren’t being drafted to fight these wars. I wonder if that’s why it is easier for us to ignore them. Also unlike Vietnam, these wars were declared “off budget” and “unfunded” by those avid supporters of fiscal responsibility who argued for the wars, and we now struggle to figure out how to pay for them while our economy has crumbled in part because of them.

As in Vietnam, our current troops are finding courage, fear, disfigurement, and drugs. Unlike Vietnam veterans, many of whom died slow deaths connected to the war, these troops are committing suicide at alarming rates. We struggle to figure out why.

And there is an election coming up in the fall.

There are still activists working within and outside the system with unflagging attention to issues of war and social injustice. Some are young activists fighting the good fight, like my Libertarian-with-a-conscience politician friend in Colorado. These people give me hope, and to them, and those in 1968, I humbly say thank you for your service to our country.

But as I sit in the summer of 2012, as wars and injustices continue to multiply, and as many of us whimper about our taxes and sinful women who use contraceptives, I wonder what happened to those changes I dreamed of in the summer of 1968.