Kennedy beat Vice-President Nixon by 0.17% of the vote; eight years later, Nixon defeated Vice-President Humphrey by 0.70%. And Humphrey was closely associated with a President sufficiently unpopular as to be unwilling to seek reelection.

I suspect that "black power," urban riots, the shock of Tet all had more to do with Humphrey's loss than anything that went on that August outside the International Amphitheater in Chicago little of which was televised at the time.

(I'm sorry. I would have sent this to you privately but you are not accepting messages. I have no desire to be merely critical or "snarky" but this is the third or fourth entry I've read on TPM that asserts that it was the "activists" who ruined everything for the generation of the '60's. I must protest !(pun intended)

Ask representative John Lewis if they treat you better if you where a dark suit and a tie to a demonstration.

But I do thank you for your entry. One of the nagging questions that I have never been able to answer for myself is why did the Jews in Germany seemingly acquiesce in their own demise. I have asked this of several survivors over the years but they always say they really don't know. But you may be on to something. Maybe they didn't want to offend the "good Germans."

I understand why this is a concern. But I don't think there's much to worry about. From what I've heard, the organizers of the January 27 protest are interested in finding right-leaning and centrist allies and changing minds, and not in brute confrontation. (Not that there are many minds to change.)

Not to mention, after the tasering at UCLA a last month, it's a lot harder to portray cops sympathetically with You Tube.

Well ... then the only alternative is to be good little citizens like the "silent majority" were and just go shopping.

This kind of summarizes something that seems to be too common on the left: an inability to see past mass protests (which I'd argue are largely ineffective today, for a variety of reasons, including the lack of any real mass). Surely we aren't left with a demonstrating/shopping dichotomy. In fact, I'd argue that "retail therapy" and ineffective protests - inasmuch as the time spent organizing and participating isn't spend finding more effective tools - are very nearly equivalent. Both make you feel good, without making you really any better off.

"You can watch a country eating itself alive." Isn't that what's happening now, until we stop the madman Bush?

Tom

Easy - don't have morons in the White House.

Tom

Anti-war activists in 1968 were branded as communists. In 1968 that label still had powerful emotive connotations. And it had credibility. Many of the organizers and participants WERE communists or sympathizers. The concurrent demonstrations in Paris were about socialist revolution, not anti-war. It was easy therefore for right to label them as Unamerican and traitors.

Will it be as easy to brand the activists of 2007 as terrorists? Will the public beleive that today's activists support jihadists? The only comparable spin tools that the right will have today is that a)protestors do not support the troops (a weak case) and b) anti-war is anti-Israel/anti-semitic (an issue well discussed elsewhere on this site). It will be hard if not impossible to make the case that they are Unamerican to the general public.

I was an Army Captain in Germany in 1968, and I have been a Democrat since I accepted the family tradition and wondered why Truman wasn't running for reelection in 1952 (I was age 9.) My first Presidential vote was for LBJ, my fellow Texan.

But I understood in 1968 that Viet Nam was not a good or useful war for America. (Professionally, if I was going to remain in the Army a war was needed. It had already helped me be promoted from Second Lieutenant to First after one year, and again from First Lieutenant to Captain at the end of the second year on active duty. Fast promotion to Major needed more war.)

Nixon promised that he had a way out of the war, and Humphrey portrayed himself as a "nice Guy" and strong supporter of Civil Rights, but did NOT promise a way out of Viet Nam. I detested Nixon (Reruns of the "Checkers Speech" in the 50's proved to me that he was mean and not to be trusted), but after evaluatimg Humphrey's efforts (as perceived through the army's "Stars and Stripes" and "European Herald Tribune") I figured that Nixon wanted out of Viet Nam and was capable enough and mean enough to do it, while Humphrey was a wimp who offered more of the same from the LBJ period.

The riots in Chicago were pretty clearly police riots instigated by angry crowds but made really nasty by police out of control, but they didn't help Humphrey at all. After the assasinations of JFK, Malcolm X, RFK, and Martin Luther King, Jr., what is a mere political riot? It is another expected activity in a nation that is extremely unstable.

The problem for America centered on Viet Nam, so I voted (abesntee) for Nixon in 1968. He promised to get us out of Viet Nam and Humphrey seemed to offer more and better civil rights. Civil rights were really important, but in 1968 they were NOT the top priority for America. Viet Nam was. Nixon understod that. Humphrey did not. At least, that's what their respective Public Relations people put out. This was how it appeared through the Stars and Stripes and the International Herald Tribune at the time. But I lived inside a special world that I called the "Golden Ghetto." We could spend a quarter for a German Mark, had no English TV (I watched the Moon Landing in German, which I do not speak) and we got special gas stamps that kept gasoline prices at American levels. If we didn't want to, we never had to speak or hear German. We were isolated and it was a real effort to get out of the American culture and interact with real Germans - most of whom did not trust us primarily because of Viet Nam. Frankly a riot like Chicago was not too surprising. America was a mess.

Today America is not an unstable nation. The right-wing assassins seem to have learned that it is better to crash a plane than to use a sniper. Also, the right-wingers have clearly lost the Civil Rights wars against Blacks (and have moved on to Hispanics and so-called illegal immigrants. There will always be a panicked resistance to social change.) So mass demonstrations no longer attract untrained and ignorant police who react out of fear by killing supposed rioters.

The Press has figured out that determining the real cause of riots is news (or so I speculate.) Demonstration leaders have taken MLK to heart and now effectively avoid any real riots. (Hell of a control problem - but they do it.) A demonstration now is an effort to bring out more people than the pundits anticipated (many individual efforts massed together is still somewhat politically useful), and the right-wingers counter this by using the press to undercount the turnout.

The problem today is no longer to convince the so-called silent majority that they are not a real majority. Today the problem is to convince true believers that the sources of information they use are corrupt. Demonstrations worked on the former problem, but they don't work nearly as well on the latter.

So I really don't trust the rouch comparisons between today and the Viet Nam era. The mass demonstrations and the riots were quite effective them, but no longer work. The mass demonstrations are a lot more focused and controlled today, and have much different purposes.

Devon,

The stark choice between troublemaking and consumerism is most certainly a false one, of a kind with the "with us or with the terrorists" GOP variety, and three cheers for recognizing it and steering our attention to this annoying universal habit in our overall political discourse.

Meanwhile, kudos to Olden Golden Decoy for representing the "English majors" of Deadhead Nation and spreading the wordcraft of Robert Hunter.

Tom,

It's not just Bush.  It's this whole fake notion of romantic self-reliance: we don't need allies; we don't need taxes; we don't need regulations; we don't need the public sphere....  What we need to stop is the momentum of our cultural ethic of every-man-for-himself.

Another aspect of this generation gap discussion is the impact of the "Greatest Generation". Boomers, however numerous we were and are, stood in the shadow of the generation that grew up in the genuine sacrifice of the Depression and came of age in the genuine sacrifice of WWII. By the 60's they were a formidable establishment. They held the Presidency from 1960-1992. Why, they still haven't left the stage entirely.

Boomers were pampered and our own children are more pampered still. The question I ask is whether either of our generations is up to tackling really big issues that might require genuine sacrifices.

I welcome the new involvement from the young. I just wish you'd take on a few BIG issues without constantly talking yourself out of the passion required to really achieve social change.

You don't have to march in the streets, but whether the internet can energize that kind of passion is something I doubt.

Could we change "Many" to "Some" in the sentence about "...organizers and participants WERE communists or sypathizers."?

Tom

I don't disagree with this. Down with Ayn Rand. King said fight the triple evils of racism, materialism, and militarism. Who ever talks anymore about materialism as a problem?

Tom

I'm glad to learn that Mayor Daley's behavior had no part in creating the debacle of the '68 convention -- it was all the fault of those pesky protestors, both on and off the convention floor.

To OldenGoldenDecoy: No, the alternative is to be a smart citizen, one who thinks.

Your sort of either-or, black-white thinking is precisely the problem.  Thank you for exhibiting it for pedagogical purposes. 

Todd Gitlin

They just can't forgive the boomer generation for not "playing by the rules" and politely protesting in nice little cages like they set up for the last convention in Boston. I wonder what they'll dream up for Denver. I shudder to think of what they're going to do here in the Twin Cities when the Republicans come to town in 08.

.> The left is in a time warp. Not
> only do they not learn from the past

Perhaps you could give us a detailed explaination of (a) what the Radical Right learned from Vietnam (b) how that is working out for the US.

sPh

Ellen,

Indeed, the police riot footage in the film was shot by independents.

Todd Gitlin

Oh, fer cute.  You betcha!

Hindsight is always 20/20. After Cheney's 8/26/02 "no doubt" speech a majority of the American people and congress bought the assertions by the Bush Administration that Saddam had the capability and was poised to do us harm. In reality after Clinton&'s successful Desert Fox bombing campaign in December 1998 that destroyed the last vestiges of Iraq's WMD programs Saddam cracked down on his regime drying up any and all sources we had inside the country. Our intelligence agencies didn't know what was going on inside Iraq after 1998 because reliable informants fearing for their lives quit talking.

So in late 2002 every question about the evidence was answered by Cheney's certainties, Rice's erring on the side of preemptive war, and sneering bravado from Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, the rightwing noise machine and their overwhelmingly willing accomplices in the media. In that climate it was impossible and politically suicidal for most of our people to answer those unproven assertions with uncertainity.

Is that any excuse for giving this president as much authority as they did? To that I have to ask who thought fighting that tide of opinion in 2002 would have helped Dems retain control of the Senate? Who thought Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney were actually stupid enough to make just about every mistake in Iraq that could be made? Who thought Republicans in congress would totally abdicate their oversight responsibilty for short term political gain?

The only way Republicans will be saved from a decade of political vilification is if we on the left force Dems to take ownership of the Iraq fiasco right now, right before it ends in inevitable defeat. This is Bush's war. He's the Commander in Chief. Give him another 6 months. Give Waxman those same 6 months to expose the corruption, the lies and those centrists the DLC guys talk about who never read blogs and the casual indy voters who don't know Sadr from Sistani will be calling for Bush's impeachment.

Abbie Hoffman was a talented political organizer but in the end all he accomplished was to save a portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway from pollution and inadvertently help get Richard Nixon elected.

LOL I still get called a communist when I comment on rightwing blogs. They get a little flummoxed when I tell them I've owned my own business since 1982.

Hey Now you Golden Oldie Decoy. I'm giving you a 5 just for quoting a Hunter lyric post Touch of Grey. Me, I like this one ....

Standing on the moon
I see the battle rage below
Standing on the moon
I see the soldiers come and go
There's a metal flag beside me
Someone planted long ago
Old Glory standing stiffly
Crimson, white and indigo - indigo

I see all of Southeast Asia
I can see El Salvador
I hear the cries of children
And the other songs of war
It's like a mighty melody
That rings down from the sky
Standing here upon the moon
I watch it all roll by - all roll by

Dan Rather reported it, just as he reported being roughed up by Daley's goons on the floor of the convention.

The Greteset Generation didn't get Vietnam, however. They equated it with the fight against Hitler. That's why the Generation Gap existed back then.

Tom

Even the communists aren't communists anymore.

Tom

'Could we change "Many" to "Some" in the sentence about "...organizers and participants WERE communists or sypathizers?" ' I'd go further: either change it to "few" or dump the whole line as precisely the right-wing canard that was the problem. After all, if anything characterizes the New Left, it was that it grew up too young to have belonged to the old left that once saw the Soviet Union as a progressive force or as a God that had failed them personally.

It was a generation that grew up on postwar Boomer idealism about America. Betrayal of that bred the anger, and the idealism bred the optimism felt everywhere. Sure, there were fringe exceptions, "red diaper babies." But find those stories, and they'll turn out to be the nuts like David Horowitz who turned extreme right and created exactly this canard.

Nor where they alone in creating the canard. It was in the interest of those in power to attack the morality of those bringing the news that the war had failed. It's the same today, when GOP pundits keep talking about how war critics really want us to fail. Let's not let this turn a generation hence into a myth we've bought into, too. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Sorry for double post. Looked for it on the bottom instead of the top of the postings, didn't see it and so posted it again -- from memory.

If you can tell me who the Radical Right is, then Maybe I can help you with your analysis. You highlighted the quote about the left being in a time warp, are you trying to address the point or not?

"we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." the Chicago convention cut that philosophy out of the platform.

JFK might have said that.  His generation did pay a price.   I'll refer you to an interview Bush did with Jim Lehrer this week in which he responded to a question about joint sacrifice with a snark that he didn't think we needed to raise taxes just because of Iraq. 

The FACT is we are not willing to pay ANY price and all the phony tough chickenhawk talk has only gotten us into unnecessary wars in which only a tiny minority pays any price at all. 

As to all the hysterics over radical Islam, I've lost two family members since 9/11 to cancer. 600,000 Americans die every year from cancer.  1500 die every day.  A cancer 9/11 every 2 days.  What is this country doing about that?  Cutting the budget for National Cancer Institute and other medical research.  That's what a distortion of priorities does and thousands of Americans will die because of that distorttion and the Democratic Party doesn't have the real courage to fight for the priorities from the environment to health care to medical research that would save far more American lives than any war on terror or anything else.

"Violent street protests are not needed right now"

This is a strawman argument. The protestors in Chicago were peaceful. The violence was committed by the police. The protests at Kent State were peaceful. The National Guard was not.

No one -- or very very few on the left -- then or now -- called for violent protest. (Some called for self defence -- and got shot for their pains).

Are you saying anyone who demonstrates or goes on strike is by extension violent? If so, what about the marches in Selma? There were lots of people in the South who would have agreed with the notion that to demonstrate at all was equivalent to violence. They wanted desegregation -- only not yet, not now. Many of those who switched parties and voted for Nixon still believe that Jim Crow was taken away too soon, by "violence."

I wish you could reword your post, because your grammar is making it difficult for me to follow what you are saying. Honestly.

How you can derive from my statement that, "I admit" that Cheney is running the war, is utter nonsense. I was refering to a statement by someone that was criticizing Cheney for not being in combat and went on to say Kerry had more experience running a war because he had riden around in a boat for a few months. Whereas, Cheney had been at the table of War Chiefs in 5 different wars over 3 decades (Vietnam, Panama, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq). If you agree with his assesment then say so.

Your second point? I don't know what you are talking about. But yes, I occasionally like to beat democrats with a stick.

Your third point, if I didn't make it clear, "My side" ...IS clearly acting in "the best interests of the United States of America".

It's strange to read the read diaper crowd is fringe - for a good part of my life I thought that was everybody.  But as a child I lived in an environment of very serious and heavey issues: namely people we knew who were being persecuted and prosecuted by HUAC, Hollywood, and their own neighbors. 

BTW, the old ones are almost all gone.  Tillie Olsen recently passed away.   I kick myself - the last time I was in Tillie's home I was more interested in her daughters than I was in the things she and her husband Jack were talking about.  Dan James was another, blacklisted even after writing the scripts for more that one Charlie Chaplin movie.  Alvah Besse - great guy, hounded and harmed - imprisioned and blacklisted.  Frank Carlson, nearly deported to his native Poland as "thanks" for his labor organization efforts (NYC Women's Garment Workers strike, among others).  My point is that so-called "red diaper babies" grew up in this kind of environment - and it was so much more than political philosophy - there were real people being attacked - hounded, injured and victimized.  

So there I was, 19 years old, with an old friend, Leo Nitzberg, telling me about his 19th year. He was alone, seperated from his comrades of La Quince Brigada, being chased across an area in Spain in the dead of winter by a German Nazi Patrol, with dogs. He came to a swollen river and his only choice was to dive in and try to swim it.  But he maded it and eluded the patrol.  He crawled into some rushes and collapsed, wet and cold.  Some hours later he awoke and discovered he hadn't swam the main part of the river yet - he was on an island - the main channel was wider and swifter.  He had to kick off all of his wet clothes, dove in again and again, barely made it.  A short rest and he began wander in the Spanish hills, stark naked.  Some hours later he came to a village, but he had no way of knowing if it would be friendly or deadly.  He decided it didn't matter, since he was on the verge of collaspe anyway.  But the villagers were friendly, and took him in and fed him, clothed him, and nursed him back to health.

Then came the expose of Stalin.  This tore everyone apart - a very serious affair.  A gigantic disallusionment that engulfed the entire fringe left.  Honestly, I don't know anyone except my grandmother, a die-hard Finnish Bolshevik, who could stomach Stalin after that.  But for the most part, old Reds managed to preserve their integrity and continue working for the common good and labor etc.  It just wasn't a "movement" any longer.

I had a treat once - I went to a reception in Berkeley around 1964 for a new magazine: Root and Branch: a radical left wing quarterly - published by some UCB students.  Among the guests was Frank Carlson and Aubrey Grossman (SF labor attorney) and the started debating the old left movement and the Stalin issue.  I thought it was pretty awesome - both these men were encyclopedias with a very strong purchase on the truth of history.  Since both Frank and Aubrey are gone now, I feel very privileged to have listened to them. 

Neoboho

G C  Wall
The left had a plan... get out. The lesson of Vietnam is that an invader is not a liberator when the civilian population sympathizes with the guerrillas.

The invader has an option. Genocide. There must be an unassailable justification other than it is a necessary method of breaking the will of the guerrillas. A merciless assault against the guerrillas and the civilian sympathizers must be waged to create a wide-spread sense of hopelessness to bring about surrender. The winning of hearts and minds can wait until after the guerrillas surrender. Unless a nation is fighting a war to win, it is engaging in reckless miscalculations based on a set of assumptions that historically were not proved valid.

If a nation is not committed to genocide it shouldn't become involved in such a war in the first place, because it will not be won by attrition. The arrogance of those who believe in perpetual war to stimulate the economy is similar to that of a murderer who decides that he has the right to take another persons life, because that person has something he or she wants. It is not an act of self-defense since the victim doesn't know that he or she is about to become a victim.

Paranoia was the cause of the Vietnam War. This cannot be said of Iraq. There was nothing about which to be paranoid. Its military was devastated by the Gulf War, Its economy was wrecked by U.N. imposed sanctions. Its soldiers lived on bread and water. It had defensive capabilities only, and then it could only defend against neighboring states. Iraq had no air force to speak of, no navy, no sophisticated communications, and no surveillance from above. It was weak and primitive when compared to the most powerful military in the world.

Given my choice, I prefer the smart citizens OldenGoldenDecoy quoted and I suspect the words of this Smart Citizen will probably be remembered when Mr. Gitlin's words here have been long forgot. 

• The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as the rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least:

Just occasionally, black and white are black and white.

aMike

I find it vaguely satisfying that in Russian politics, the Communists are part of the Right.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

How does "get out" as a plan hinder Islamic Radicals from killing Americans. Based on your theory, we should never wage war on any entity that has popular support in the land they reside or otherwise. Japan and Germany had popular support, so what! we invaded them! I don't care how much public support Al Qaeda or the baathists enjoy, they want us dead and have the means to do something about it. So I want them neutralized as a threat. You have no plan to do that as you have stated.

Unless, you are actually advocating What you say as the alternative. I do not agree with you that Genocide is the only alternative to the "Get out" plan. If so, I agree with you that Bush should wage a more vigorous war and he is doing so now. If you think adequate vigor requires killing them all, we disagree.

There are many lessons to learn from Vietnam. East Asia without Western resistance would have lost the opportunity to protect the eventual emergence of the Asian Tiger economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. With no presence in the region Japan could have easily become threatened and still born. The later emerging economies of the Philipines, Thailand and malaysia would have never had a chance at a better life. We made East Asia safe for Capitalism, and the hope of freedom. By challenging China and the USSR, Vietnam was a theater in the cold war and ended up converting them to Capitalism as well. Weed and seed worked. Capitalism won. Communism lost. We won. They lost. Lesson learned.

Your false premise that our technology and weapons are a guarentee of eternal security is folly. The Islamic radicals have youth and will. The west is an aging population that as you clearly state does not have the will to use its force for long and if the left had its way not use it at all. They know that and that is why they are only going to increase their aggressions, not decrease. They can't be bought. You can die or convert, that's it. They are the imperialists and by the time you figure it out, it will be too late.

And I reiterate, you don't have a plan for that reality.

TJKING,

You missed the point.  Simply put, no one thinks it's a good idea to recreate the Chicago protests of 1968.

Your concern is just so touching.

sPh

How about MLK?

"... get out before more American soldiers were killed for no good purpose..." Hmmm. Sound similar to any situation that were in now?

Tom

Ok thanks, Devon, I'll leave it there.