TRUMP BRINGS BACK MEMORIES THAT WE WANT TO AVOID

…Pictures of past election riots that could be recurring.

 

The times are different, but in some ways it’s the same.

 

Being a Boomer, it took the watching of a Donald Trump’s Rally being disrupted to bringing back those memories of the 1968 riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

 

It is true that all these Trump demonstrations do brings back those memories, but times were very different back then,

 

It was the demonstrations and riots in 1968 that helped elect Richard M. Nixon. That was because he ran for election on a platform of “law and order”, a message at the time had enormous resonance.

 

Riots had engulfed major American cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.   Then, Robert F. Kennedy, running for president, was murdered in cold blood in Los Angeles.

 

In addition, the Selective Service was drafting many of my friends for a war they did not understand, or as it was with myself, I attended college while seriously opposing the War in Vietnam. 

 

Yes, Americans are fighting a war overseas today, but most of the war is happening in the air and the American soldiers are in relatively small numbers.  At its peak, more than 500,000 Americans were fighting and dying in Vietnam, most all of them draftees.

 

Demonstrations against the Vietnam War back then seemed a daily occurrence.  On the nation’s campuses, students and some faculty were occupying the offices of the deans and the university presidents, and some of these demonstrations, as at Columbia University, turned deadly violent. Overall, when watching the evening news, the country seemed to be coming apart.

 

Nothing like that is happening today. Even with the “Back Lives Matter” issues today, no one is arguing the pros and cons of segregation, and of course, the draft no longer exists.

 

But the reality is that Donald Trump is the ugliest national candidate since George Wallace.  Wallace was the racist governor of Alabama who was shot when he ran for president in 1972. Like Wallace and Nixon, Trump will surely exploit the demonstrations against him. His constituency of blue collar workers are already angry and feeling persecuted.  They appear to be a hair trigger away from serious violence.

 

The one similarity is that as today, violence back then made the nightly news. Also as today, most Americans recoiled at the violence. Like most people, Americans cherish stability and law and order.  Donald Trump remembers those days, and that is why he always praises the cops today, as he emphatically rejects the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

 

With jobs, wages and trades issues being at the top of the nation’s concerns, it is obvious why many of those protestors in Trump’s Chicago rally were Hispanic.  Trump has both insulted that community and threatened it with mass expulsion.  He has sown fear not only among the Hispanics, but also among Muslims and others from the middle east and Asia. 

 

Never mind the questionable legality and unquestionable impracticality of what he proposes. The Trump message is clear: “You non-white, non-Christian immigrants are not wanted.” He has been hateful and it is no wonder he is hated by Hispanics, Muslims and Asians.

 

So, exactly where is America today versus yesterday?

 

Compared with living with an unnecessary war and the draft, is Trump a historical asterisk who will eventually be gone or will he survive and flourish?  Will he be sullied and scorned in due course or will he seriously be accepted solely based on his ridiculous rhetoric of “Making America Great Again”. 

 

Will Trump be a national cause for returning to the danger of violence-triggering protests?  Donald Trump really has very little of value to say, but our democracy says we must let him say it, no matter what damage it causes.

 

What is so disturbing is that it appears the we are on the verge of either showing that our elections will eventually make all the right decisions, or will we set our country back for decades by believing in a reality show charlatan.

 

I guess we will just have to wait and see if our better angels of logic, fair-play and truth will come to the rescue, or will we be sold a bill of goods by a billionaire circus clown?

 

Based on the latest primary results, it doesn’t look good.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016