1968
Only 1,445 days to go...
On Monday, I got two phone calls from friends (and subscribers!). Both commented on how they were reading my posts and both wondering how could I keep writing like this. I acknowledged, that I was going to take a break, and probably not going to write anything for a while.
But a weird thing has been happening. When I go to bed at night, I’m tapped out. I have nothing more to say. But somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious mind, an idea must be germinating because early in the morning, as I’m waking up, phrases or images surface and enter into my consciousness. While laying in bed, the verbiage for a post starts to materialize. Like I said, weird.
It happened again yesterday morning. This time the number, 1968, surfaced.
1968? Hum. 1968 - I remember it well. Anyone, who was over the age, of say, 10, could never forget 1968. Up until the year(s) the Depraved Grifter moved into the White House, 1968 had probably been the most tumultuous, consequential year in our memories.
The year started with more than half a million troops engaged in the Vietnam War. On January 30, 1968, during the Lunar New Year celebrations, the Tet Offensive began with a series of surprise attacks on South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. While the offensive was a military victory for the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces, it also weakened U.S. public support for the war.
Then in early February, Alabama Governor George Wallace announced his candidacy for President running as the nominee of the American Independent Party. He was uncomfortable with the direction the Democratic party was heading and was vehemently opposed to civil rights for African Americans. His 1963 words were still pretty fresh in people’s minds.
“…I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever...”
Later in February, trusted CBS news commentator, Walter Cronkite, made the trip to Vietnam. Once cable news came on the scene in the 1980s, it became typical for TV cameras to be in a war zone. But in 1968, that was unheard of — everything was taped and replayed for our singular showing during the evening news at 6:00pm CST.
Cronkite, a war correspondent from WWII, wanted to see things for himself, so he went back to his reporting roots, interviewed troops and saw the war up close. His special, CBS report from Vietnam, was a jolt to anyone watching it. Cronkite delivered a personal commentary that expressed his pessimism about the war effort.
"In this reporter's humble opinion, the war cannot be won. To say that were are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion."
President Johnson supposedly said, “If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country.”
Many people — particularly, young people who were being ask to fight in this war on the other side of the world — were asking the question, “Why are we in Vietnam?” Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, emerged as a prominent opponent of Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War and had entered the race on an antiwar platform. McCarthy had the same sort of following from young people that Bernie Sanders had in 2016. Though McCarthy was initially given little chance of winning, the Tet Offensive galvanized opposition to the war, and he finished in a strong second place in the New Hampshire primary in mid-March.
In late March, another bombshell fell. Johnson dropped out of the presidential race and threw his support to his VP, Hubert Humphrey. He announced his decision in a televised speech and everyone was stunned. Shortly thereafter, Robert Kennedy decided to throw his hat in the ring and it became a three-way race to earn the Democratic candidacy for President.
In April of that year, my sister was turning six and I was a junior in high school. My dad had a medical conference in Boston. My brother was in college in western Massachusetts. Given this, my folks thought Spring break in Massachusetts might be a good idea, so my mother, sister and I drove out and picked up my brother and Dad. On April 4th, we had driven out of Boston and were touring Cape Cod.
I remember it well — it was a chilly but beautiful sunny day. Many places were closed since the summer crowd hadn’t arrived, but we saw Plymouth Rock and had dinner in Provincetown. When we returned to our hotel room and turned on the TV, we were stunned to hear the news that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.
Over the next few days, while we were on vacation, we would return to the hotel, turn on our TV to watch the unfolding crisis across the U.S. as grief and protests escalated to massive fires around the country. Watching Chicago burning from a distance was surreal. Here we were in a beautiful part of the country and elsewhere in New York, DC, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Trenton, Durham, et al, American cities were ablaze.
I could keep writing and describing all the events of 1968 from the highs, like the signing of The Civil Rights Act on April 11th, to the many lows and tragedies including RJK’s assassination in June and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. But, you can view the CNN's special program, 1968 or easily Google “1968” to see the full list of notable events.
It was a frightening and fateful year in American history. Regardless, I was never really scared or worried in 1968. Of course, I was a teenager and, like most teenagers, oblivious to anything other than my own personal concerns like, what outfit I was going to wear to school or was my long hair sufficiently straight enough.
Yes, I was jolted by news events. I was shocked - again - when Mother woke me up to tell me that Robert Kennedy had been shot in LA. And I was glued to the TV and concerned about my dad in the city during the August protests in Chicago. I was also a bit perplexed, that so many high school friends were worried, when Nixon had won the election in November. But concerned or frightened? No, not really.
I think it was because my parents didn’t appear worried and they provided this sense of comfort and safety. They had this tremendous faith that informed and guided their lives. While they were extremely well-read and knowledgeable about what was happening in the world, they never discussed anything in draconian terms. They remained calm and simply got on with it.
But then my parents had already lived through the Great Depression and had lost friends and family during in WWII. While only in their forties, they had already had a lifetime of personal grief and disruption. Regardless, my folks simply lived their lives, did their daily routines and kept moving forward. I think, it was their serenity and acceptance that tomorrow was another day and that this, too, will pass, rubbed off on me and I wasn’t terribly agitated by the year’s events.
In 2020, during the Covid lockdown, with the Black Lives Matter protests, I was pretty much the same way. I had seen it all before so many times particularly during the ‘60s and ‘70s. The BLM protests didn’t really alarm me.
There was one major difference, of course. Unlike #FOTUS hiding in the bunker of the White House and then staging a performative reality TV show in Lafayette Park, Nixon had, at least, shown the initiative to make an unplanned (and untelevised) visit to the Lincoln Memorial to actually meet with anti-war protesters and students and talk to them for almost two hours.
In my lifetime, we had gotten through so many momentous times. From the frequent and disturbing events of the tumultuous ‘60s; to the Cambodia invasion protests with the tragic Kent State shooting; to the Watergate scandal; to the frightening meltdown at Three Mile Island; to the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War; to the Oklahoma City bombing; to the Y2K uncertainty; to the horrific terrorist attack and subsequent events of 9/11; to the 2008 financial meltdown…et al… to me, the BLM protests didn’t seem like anything to fear.
But perhaps it’s because, I remember how 1968 ended. After all the chaos and tragedy of the year, there was an inconceivable highlight on Christmas Eve. The Apollo 8 mission became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon. The crew broadcast a public message from lunar orbit to an audience of about half a billion people and read the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness….”
Even experiencing that moment on our little black and white TV, it was so awe-inspiring. We couldn’t believe that this was happening. It was extraordinary. For the first time, we got a glimpse of the Earth’s place within the universe. It was like a small dot in a Georges Seurat painting.
Our fears and uncertainties were even more miniscule. Life would go on.
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.” ~ Adlai Stevenson II
What I read every day…
I’ve decided to eliminate a few sites from my posts, specifically, Letters from an American and The Bulwark. You can go directly to their Substack accounts to read what I read every day. I very much encourage you to subscribe to both. The links to their sites are below.
Quote of the day:
“Trump has abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government. Trump may be powerful, but I have no doubt that he will be remembered as by far the worst president in American history — assuming history will be written by people who have access to the truth.”
~Robert Reich
What I’m reading today…
The circumstances of the Jackson and Trump presidencies might look similar, but the key is that they are two very different men. Both wanted to fully reform the federal government, faced scandal, felt like an outsider in Washington, D.C., and had all sorts of close loyalists around pushing their agendas. But Jackson didn’t get distracted. So he was not a useful puppet for those who sought to exploit him that way.
Trump famously turns on aides who he believes eclipse him. But by his own account, he remains enamored of Musk, seeming to relish the fact that the world’s wealthiest person is working for him... Trump also believes that Musk has shown a willingness to take public pushback for controversial actions, allowing the president himself to avoid blame.
Trump Lackey Throws FBI Into Chaos With Jan. 6 Survey
One knowledgeable source says that some 1,500 agents played significant roles in the Jan. 6 investigation, with another 5,000 assigned lesser tasks. All have reason to feel targeted for simply doing their jobs.
The Latest Trump Appointee Is One of the ‘Worst People Ever Born’
Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for making a speech to white nationalists, has reportedly been appointed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to fill a key role as acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.
Trump's vanishing guardrails challenge Washington
So far, there's no sign Republicans will put up any resistance. In Trump's first two weeks in office, his administration has:
Temporarily frozen all federal grants, loans and financial assistance, signaling a desire to challenge Congress' power of the purse.
Offered "deferred resignations" to roughly 2 million federal workers, promising to pay them through September even though the government hasn't been funded past March 14.
Fired at least 17 independent agency watchdogs, openly defying a statute requiring an explanation to Congress 30 days in advance.
Fired federal prosecutors involved in Trump-related investigations and hinted at an additional purge for thousands of FBI agents.
Signed an executive order directing the attorney general not to enforce the law Congress passed requiring TikTok to be sold by its Chinese parent company or face a U.S. ban.
North Carolina imports nearly $5 billion in goods a year from Canada
North Carolina exports $7.7 billion in goods annually to Canada, making Canada our state's No. 1 export market. The state imports $4.7 billion in goods from Canada — including equipment and machinery, agriculture and forest products.
North Carolina among the states with highest number of bird flu cases
Over the past month, more than 3.3 million birds have been affected in North Carolina, a number that only trails Ohio and Missouri. Nearly all of the birds affected come from a commercial egg-laying operation in Hyde County, according to a database from the N.C. Department of Agriculture.
California’s monarch butterfly population plummets; fire wipes out Topanga habitat
The butterfly’s Western population has plummeted more than 95% since the 1980s, when up to 4 million butterflies were estimated to spend winter in California, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Without urgent conservation efforts, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the Western population faces a 99% chance of extinction by 2080. Habitat destruction, pesticides and extreme weather fluctuation due to climate change are all to blame for the butterfly’s decline.
The U.S. Economy Is Racing Ahead. Almost Everything Else Is Falling Behind.
The U.S. economy has outperformed most of its rivals in terms of productive might and innovation. But this success has not led to rapidly rising living standards for most Americans. “We’re so wealthy but so unhappy.”
Hunger rises as food aid falls – and those living under autocratic systems bear the brunt
The results indicate that autocracies experience heightened food insecurity when sharp cuts to international food assistance occur, whereas democracies keep their people fed.
What I am watching…
Things I read everyday….
I read Letters from An American everyday, so I am no longer going to reference it in my Substack posts. Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletters are fabulous, so I encourage you to subscribe on your own.
I’m also a big fan of The Bulwark. I started subscribing to it shortly after I discovered it in 2019. The Bulwark was founded to provide analysis and reporting in defense of America’s liberal democracy. That’s it. That’s the mission. I find their podcasts and articles thoughtful and helpful in making sense of what is going on with the US.
