An Uncivil War: This Ain’t like Vietnam War Protests

 

Alabama Pro-Segregation Rally

Vietnam War Protest

White Christian nationalists in Charlottesville

BLM movement

 Charlie Krik Rally              

              

An Uncivil War: This Ain’t like Vietnam War Protests

American dumbs down and turns on itself

The protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s against American involvement in the civil war in Vietnam – a communist north battling a pro-American corrupt south – was the beginning of the question about the staunch American belief of the domino theory and the US’ need to throw American bodies in an effort to stop the spread of “communism.” Like a row of falling dominoes, the reasoning stated, if you don’t erase communism where it appears, it will take down nation after nation. But it was as much a confrontation between younger Americans, now questioning the government’s stated goals, against older Americans raised in the red scare “duck and cover” era where containing Communist Russia and China nuclear power was their focus. Over time, “socialism” – misdefined and misused – became a meme that ultimately was lost in an ill-defined sea of lables, with the right’s embracing a litany of memes from “radical leftists,” “invasion of violent alien criminals,” “wokism,” the “enemy,” and “only I can fix it.”

As we face the unforgivable assassination of 31-year-old wildly successful white Christian nationalist, Charlie Kirk, who was able to steer vast cadres of the rising younger generation into what he perceived was a MAGA destination controlled by his messianic mission. Unafraid openly to debate his foes, Kirk became the single most important connection between Trump and young voters. But until Trump’s assumption to the presidency in 2017, Kirk was a passionate “never Trumper.” As one of his young recruits, Caroline Stout recalls, Kirk’s shift to back Trump was a betrayal to some, but it represented an opportunistic path to growth and power. Kirk capitalized brilliantly on the Zeitgeist of that slice of the nation.

Even as the nation was unequivocally tethered, economically and politically, to the rest of the world, the notion of American isolationism exploded as the Trump’s “America First” mantra that introduced a notion is isolationism and the “possible” erasure of history to return the country to its rewritten glorious past, represented by the “vision” of the 1950s and 60s, hardly a time of American glory. But time erases the tough time of transition. A rich post-WII America began to address civil and voting rights. It was sometimes violent, confusing, but even the leaders of retaining segregation, like Alabama Governor George Wallace – later a presidential candidate who survived an assassination attempt – wound up become a champion of expanding civil and voting rights to Black voters. That has changed.

The Vietnam War protests may have embraced racism, but the heart and soul of that movement lay on college campuses across the nation. There was no campaign against education, science or academic elites. Corporations were charged with feeding the revenue-producing war, their rampant pollution and pushing tobacco and pretending it was not toxic. But whatever was happening, the optimistic Democratic days of Clinton came crashing down on 9/11/2001 during the Bush administration, Republicans borrowed money to support the resulting wars while lowering taxes to support the rich (which was anchored in the profoundly false narrative of “incent the job creators). Deficits soared, and still the nation prospered.

But Democrats ignored workers and embraced globalism. Republicans veered into conservative, religious voters, supporting every major evangelical platform they could (anti-gay, anti-abortion, blind patriotism and increasing anti-liberal) as long as tax cuts and deregulation were advanced. Universities, the source of most of the new technology that did create jobs, were lambasted as out-of-touch left-leaning houses of indoctrination. Workers joined evangelicals as the GOP sprouted Tea Party-to-MAGA values… and the underlying enemy was a “culture” that needed to die, because it was fostering a Godless nation lost in global commerce proselytizing world that minimized and “replaced” white Christian national values with unpatriotic multiculturalism that was destroying America.

What Americans believed, read, thought, watched, and practiced had to be redirected if America were to survive. Social media spread the word… and repealed facts and educated elites by any means possible. This wasn’t a movement against an unjust foreign war; it was a fight to reinvent American culture into one, uniform, acceptable mold, ordained by God, inevitable and unstoppable. Though this perspective represented a sizeable faction, it was a minority view. With its roots in a system of government generated in a young nation that was 95% agricultural and rural at inception, this minority was given disproportionate representation in Congress, and the rest was driven by religious zeal against most of the population that was largely uninvolved.

Parallel with this movement was a steady decline in math and reading scores, as the rest of the world was going otherwise, to our lowest recorded level in decades. Elites and science were vilified, and the value of college eroded: “Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value and cost of college, with most saying they feel the US higher education system is headed in the ‘wrong direction,’ according to a [recent] poll… Overall, only 36% of adults say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to the report released Monday by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. That confidence level has declined steadily from 57% in 2015.

Some of the same opinions have been reflected in declining enrollment as colleges contend with the effects of the student debt crisis, concerns about the high cost of tuition and political debates over how they teach about race and other topics… The dimming view of whether college is worth the time and money cuts across all demographics — including gender, age and political affiliation. Among Republicans, the number of respondents with high confidence in higher education has dropped 36 percentage points over the last decade — far more than it dropped for Democrats or independents…

“The June 2024 [Gallup and the Lumina Foundation] survey’s overall finding — that 36% of adults feel strong confidence in higher education — is unchanged from the year before. But what concerns researchers is shifting opinion on the bottom end, with fewer Americans saying they have “some” confidence and more reporting ‘very little’ and ‘none.’ This year’s [2024] findings show almost as many people have little or no confidence, 32%, as those with high confidence.

“Experts say fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care to information technology. For those who forgo college, it often means lower lifetime earnings — 75% less compared with those who get bachelor’s degrees, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. And during an economic downturn, those without degrees are more likely to lose jobs.” CNN.com, September 15th.

This powerful demographic segment believes strong leadership, not limited by “archaic” laws, it necessary to right this ship. They must rewrite history, purge culture and science that contradict this vector, and control each and every one of us in thought, culture and body. That is the huge change from past, much more narrowly focused protest movements… and is completely antithetical to true democracy. The growth of artificial intelligence increases the level of fear and desperation. What’s next? The possible answers terrify me.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless and until each and every American selects a hate/anger off-ramp, this uncivil war will undo America to the delight of China, Russia, Iran and N Korea.