{"id":4432,"date":"2016-05-15T09:24:46","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T16:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=4432"},"modified":"2016-05-11T11:25:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T18:25:37","slug":"big-birthday-memory-20-is-2016-the-new-1968-bernie-sanders-the-donald-and-eugene-mccarthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/15\/big-birthday-memory-20-is-2016-the-new-1968-bernie-sanders-the-donald-and-eugene-mccarthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Birthday Memory #20: Is 2016 the New 1968? Bernie Sanders, The Donald and Eugene McCarthy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today \u2013 from\u00a0September 22, 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"I'm<\/a>
I’m on the right – leafleting outside a textile mill in New Hampshire, February 1968<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They called us a lot of things. \u00a0\u201cThe Children\u2019s<\/a> Crusade<\/a>\u201d\u00a0(an awful lot of us were college kids,)\u201d \u201crevolutionaries,\u201d \u201cdangerous \u00a0idealists,\u201d sometimes even \u201ctraitors.\u201d\"Dump<\/a>We were the ones who responded to Allard Lowenstei<\/a>n\u2019s call to\u201dDump Johnson<\/a>\u201d by drafting\u00a0an anti-war candidate,\u00a0 because, as he told us, \u201cyou can\u2019t beat somebody with nobody.\u201d We signed on to\u00a0help to bring down President Lyndon Johnson and his Vietnam War with the only person willing to run, Minnesota\u00a0Senator Eugene McCarthy<\/a>.\u00a0 And yeah, that\u2019s me with that same Senator Eugene McCarthy. In 1968, in the middle of the night, in New Hampshire, when\u00a0we kind of won* the New Hampshire primary.<\/p>\n

Now observers of the movements behind both Senator Bernie Sanders and the Donald Trump\/Ben Carson Republicans, have compared\u00a0those campaigns to our efforts, and to some extent, to\u00a0the rest of the 1960\u2019s anti-war movement. \u00a0So. \u00a0What do we think?<\/p>\n

\"SM-Bernie-sanders-crowd-phoenix\"<\/a>
SANDERS Crowd, Phoenix, AZ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"TRUMP<\/a>
TRUMP crowd, Mobile AL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1968: We were desperate\u00a0and\u00a0felt we were losing our country \u2013 or at least its soul and moral place in the world. \u00a0We were doing it in someone else\u2019s country and with cruel tools like napalm and cluster bombs.<\/p>\n

2016: These campaigners, too, are desperate, and whether from right or left, feel they are losing their<\/em> country. \u00a0Consider Sanders\u2019 outrage and economic populism, calling out an economy he views as not\u00a0only unjust but un-American; consider the huge response.<\/p>\n

Consider the fevered reaction to Trump\u2019s pledges\u00a0to \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d, not only through his\u00a0business acumen (and some horrifying immigration changes and racial provocation) but also through economic ideas that even Paul Krugman reluctantly acknowledges<\/a>\u00a0aren\u2019t dumb.<\/p>\n

1968: Vietnam was a life and death issue; the draft brought it home to every American, especially the young\u00a0\u2014 and their parents and teachers\u00a0and, gradually, much of the rest of America.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always the old to lead us to the war
\nIt\u2019s always the young to fall
\nNow look at all we\u2019ve won with the saber and the gun
\nTell me is it worth it all? \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2014 Phil Ochs, I Ain\u2019t Marchin\u2019 Anymore<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2016: Today, the life and death issue is the disintegration of the great American middle class that has long built and sustained this country (to say nothing of enabling\u00a0a consumer economy that sustained growth for decades.) It\u2019s a brutal blow to what Americans see the their birthright. \u00a0We all know the symptoms \u2013 underemployment, disappearing job security and benefits,\u00a0and this, from a 2014 Pew report<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But after adjusting for inflation, today\u2019s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power as it did in 1979, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 has the same purchasing power as $22.41 would today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1968: We had very little faith in institutions (\u201cthe Establishment<\/a>,\u201d) from the government to the police to political parties, gigantic, impersonal universities, media that covered us with cruel disdain, and of course, the military. \u00a0With limited experience, we didn\u2019t really understand the complicated issues that faced each of these entities \u2013 and our country \u2013\u00a0and\u00a0exacerbated both its problems and every tragic mistake. \u00a0And though we were right about much of what we believed,\u00a0we were pretty cavalier in the belief we knew how to fix things.<\/p>\n

Although I was immunized by my steel town history, shared with kids who would never see a college or a white-collar job, many of my peers saw my classmates and neighbors simply as \u201chard hats\u201d \u2013 lesser beings who needed us to instruct them. \u00a0Many didn\u2019t consider the gap\u00a0between our privileged lives and their own.<\/p>\n

We also were enormously suspicious of a military governed by law, tradition and\u00a0accountability to a commander-in-chief influenced not only by the legendary \u201cbest and the brightest\u201d but also by a legacy including Soviet power, the \u201closs\u201d of China to Communism\u00a0and the fear that it might be\u00a0replicated \u2013 and a political and personal story that was rapidly becoming obsolete. \u00a0That perceived rigidity and \u201cDr. Strangelove<\/a>\u201d stereotypes governed us.<\/p>\n

2016: That same distrust of the Establishment informs the Tea Party but it has also touched also many, many other Republicans\/Conservatives. \u00a0As one commentator observed: \u201cThey deeply believe that President Obama has ruined America.\u201d \u00a0Beyond their rage at him come the usual suspects: politicians who care only whether they lost their own jobs, hopelessness, inability to pay for their children\u2019s education, a cynical, uncaring media, the disappearance of decent, well-paying jobs, an emerging multicultural America where it\u2019s hard to find one\u2019s place and a chaotic present\u00a0from Ferguson to Syria to the Hungarian border.<\/p>\n

The Sanders people share a good deal of that distrust, beginning with the economic inequality, frozen wages and dead-end jobs at the heart of his message, but not ending there. \u00a0Add suspicion of the mainstream media (MSM), the police, college costs and crippling student loans, racism, sexism, union-busting and all the rest.<\/p>\n

So yes, there\u2019s plenty of common ground between that turbulent year and today. \u00a0And it\u2019s hard to underestimate \u00a0how far we might have gone back then if we\u2019d had the Internet.<\/p>\n

Even so, I can\u2019t vote YES on this one. \u00a0The initial 60\u2019s activists believed in so much more. \u00a0So many moments\u00a0have been declared the day \u201cAmerica lost its innocence\u201d and certainly they chipped away at it:\u00a0Vietnam, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the Chicago Democratic convention, Watergate, Irangate, the Clinton scandals, Oklahoma City, Challenger, the 1980 election and, of course, 9\/11. \u00a0Those who have chosen action since those shattering events are almost a different species \u2013 at least those 40 and younger.<\/p>\n

These losses also inform Trump and Tea Party voters, I think, as they try to turn back the clock and reconstitute an American that is no more.<\/p>\n

As for the left, after years during which unions were decimated, blue-collar wages eviscerated, voting rights emasculated, women\u2019s rights torn away and racial and religious tensions breaking every heart\u2026 \u00a0well, it sounds familiar but it\u2019s\u00a0so much tougher\u00a0because what\u2019s happening now has moved our country backward and the left is fighting to hang onto or reclaim lost rights, not win new ones.<\/p>\n

It really doesn\u2019t matter anyway. \u00a0Things look bad right now, and optimism, belief in the possibility of positive change\u2026 do you see it anywhere?<\/p>\n

*Actually we only got 42% of the vote but that was so high against such a powerful politician and Democratic machine that it really was a \u201cwin\u201d and caused him, a month or so later, to declare he would not \u201cseek nor will I accept\u201d the nomination to run for a second term.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today \u2013 from\u00a0September 22, 2015. They called us a lot of things. \u00a0\u201cThe Children\u2019s Crusade\u201d\u00a0(an awful lot of us were college kids,)\u201d \u201crevolutionaries,\u201d \u201cdangerous \u00a0idealists,\u201d sometimes even \u201ctraitors.\u201dWe were the ones who responded to Allard … Continue reading Big Birthday Memory #20: Is 2016 the New 1968? Bernie Sanders, The Donald and Eugene McCarthy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3799,3800,3,4,3798,3801,27,9],"tags":[3413,3424,3848,3429,3425,3845,3847,3430,3431,3428,3423,3846],"class_list":["post-4432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-3799","category-3800","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-big-birthday","category-big-birthday-70-1946-2016","category-current-affairs","category-politics","tag-3413","tag-3424","tag-bernie-bros","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-campaign-2016","tag-donald","tag-elections-2016","tag-paul-krugman","tag-pew","tag-sanders","tag-trump","tag-trump-income-inequality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-19u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4432"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4451,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4432\/revisions\/4451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}