The protests against the Vietnam War were just and necessary, but what *really* tamped them down was Nixon getting rid of the draft in '73--specifically designed to tamp down on the college protests by not making those kids draft eligible anymore. Once their skin was no longer on the line, things settled down some until the fall of Saigon in '75.
If there was a protest that *really* took it to the administration, it was the one where veterans marched to the Capitol building and were denied entry, so they began throwing their medals at the building one at a time while discussing their post-experience opposition to the war they had fought themselves. It wasn't dirty-by-choice middle class hippies worried about being drafted or their friends being drafted, it was veterans who had fought the war themselves showing their discontent with how that war had gone sideways. That's the kind of thing I mean about putting a real face of victimhood behind a just cause, not just a bunch of privileged kids letting out their rebellious side and pretending it's "solidarity" on their way up the escalator to middle class success. Putting a face of privileged counter-culture rebellion on the front of a movement is not the way to highlight the true victimhood of the Vietnamese we were bombing or the service members who were dying.
Your points are well taken, and you’ve written very persuasively, but we privileged kids, because I guess I was one of them, were also voiceless in the face of an implacable government campaign. I maybe was too young to evaluate the impact of Kent State, but it seemed huge at the time to my young eyes. I learned that I wasn’t safe from my own government, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Yea, Kent State was horrific, not faulting you there at all. You'd think after moments like that that the left would understand the link between gun ownership and the 2A being about the people being able to fight against an abusive government that can't be trusted, but maybe it's going to take MAGA authoritarianism in the long run for them to learn that lesson the hard way.
The protests against the Vietnam War were just and necessary, but what *really* tamped them down was Nixon getting rid of the draft in '73--specifically designed to tamp down on the college protests by not making those kids draft eligible anymore. Once their skin was no longer on the line, things settled down some until the fall of Saigon in '75.
If there was a protest that *really* took it to the administration, it was the one where veterans marched to the Capitol building and were denied entry, so they began throwing their medals at the building one at a time while discussing their post-experience opposition to the war they had fought themselves. It wasn't dirty-by-choice middle class hippies worried about being drafted or their friends being drafted, it was veterans who had fought the war themselves showing their discontent with how that war had gone sideways. That's the kind of thing I mean about putting a real face of victimhood behind a just cause, not just a bunch of privileged kids letting out their rebellious side and pretending it's "solidarity" on their way up the escalator to middle class success. Putting a face of privileged counter-culture rebellion on the front of a movement is not the way to highlight the true victimhood of the Vietnamese we were bombing or the service members who were dying.
Your points are well taken, and you’ve written very persuasively, but we privileged kids, because I guess I was one of them, were also voiceless in the face of an implacable government campaign. I maybe was too young to evaluate the impact of Kent State, but it seemed huge at the time to my young eyes. I learned that I wasn’t safe from my own government, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Yea, Kent State was horrific, not faulting you there at all. You'd think after moments like that that the left would understand the link between gun ownership and the 2A being about the people being able to fight against an abusive government that can't be trusted, but maybe it's going to take MAGA authoritarianism in the long run for them to learn that lesson the hard way.