1968 and 2015

    
So NPR interviewed a couple of First Responders from the days after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, drawing a parallel between what happened then to what is happening now.  It got me thinking.  Here are a couple of observations.


In 1968, our cities were a warzone.  One of the Responders likened walking through the streets of Baltimore and Washington D.C. after the riots like walking through the cities of Germany that were wiped out in the bombing campaigns of the Second World War.


In 2015, our cities are ‘thug-fests’.  Legitimate, necessary, desirable public protests are hijacked by looters and hooligans, more intent on busting into a CVS than expressing anger and grief to a nation.


1968 gave us riots of anger.  2015 gives us riots of hooliganism.  I see more parallels in 2015 to the soccer hooligans in the United Kingdom who are just out to cause trouble than parallels to 1968.


In 1968, the ‘information age’ put the war in Vietnam into our living rooms.  Every night, we saw the raw, unedited footage of our draftee army fighting a war that no one could explain our presence in to the satisfaction of a nation.


In 2015, the ‘information age’ puts the police actions of our nation into our living rooms.  Every night, we see the raw, unedited footage of our cops fighting a war on the thin blue line that no one can presently explain to the satisfaction of a nation.


In 1968 and 2015, violence sells.  The worst of the worst is what attracts viewers to our media outlets.  In 1968, hundreds and thousands of positive interactions between US soldiers and the Vietnamese went by the way, forgotten and uninteresting to the people at home.  In 2015, hundreds and thousands of positive interactions between US law enforcement and public go by the way, forgotten and uninteresting to us.


In 1968, the My Lai Massacre caught the attention of the nation, American soldiers doing horrible things.  They were caught, they were prosecuted.  Not everybody was.  In 2015, our police are catching the attention of the nation, doing some horrible, some questionable, some hard things, some inexplicable things.  Some were caught, some were prosecuted.  Not everybody was.


At the end of the day, we are the United States.  Sometimes we do it right, a lot of times we don’t.  But we are going to keep trying.