1968

There is a tendency to believe the times we live in are extraordinary and that seems to be the case with 2020. Many people are too young remember 1968. The year was filled with antiwar protest in 150 major cities culminating in the killing of four Kent State students by the National Guard. The democratic convention in Chicago was a picture of mob violence inside and outside of the center. I recall watching Walter Cronkite go apoplectic when his young protege Dan Rather get gut punched by a police officer. The crowds outside were being clubbed by Mayor Daley's troops and the party was torn in half with some siding with the Pro war forces of Johnson and others the anti war McCarthy forces. Later Robert Kennedy came in on a white horse to rescue the party and he was assassinated. It was the year that MLK was assassinated and this led to race rioting as they joined in with the anti war folks. The republican party was split between the old guard Rockefeller's and the formerly disgraced Nixon who arose from the dead like the phoenix. The war put much more stress on everyone than this years election but that was long ago and far away.