A regular reader sent the WSJ op-ed "No Guardrails" from 10/3/2023 via March 1993 via 1968 protests. It called the 1993 editorial, which identified 1968 as a breakpoint in behavioral accountability, prophetic. Before that, people restrained their violence. 1968, on the occasion of the gunning down of an abortion doctor, signified that deterioration.
I think similar opinions are rather common in America, especially on the right, but really, across the spectrum. It wasn't like this in the old days.
Well, before 1968 there were urban race riots. People tended to regard those as not counting somehow, perhaps because it was not representatives of the majority bourgeoisie, like privileged college students, committing the violence. But union and suppression of union violence...those did not quite count? Socialist protests at the beginning of the Depression looked dangerous enough that it aided Roosevelt's election, because his Socialism Lite might buy them off. There was the Bonus Army, and the National Guard being brought out to suppress it.
I propose a different interpretation: It was actually the 1950s, or the years 1946-1965, that were the anomalous era. One could stretch that back a good deal further because of the war. There was violence, but it didn't make the headlines because radio, movies, and newspapers put the war or Depression, or the escapist entertainment in response to them Number One in importance. Because of the postwar generation, the economic boom, the last opening* of the frontier with better highways west (not just the interstates), and the Great Migration of Blacks to northern cities (a bit earlier, but enormously culturally relevant for those growing up in it), excess energy could be dispersed, or anger channeled, and we lived in a time of great stability.
And perhaps most important of all, "We were children then, and our needs were looked after by others." (Garrison Keillor). People writing op-eds in WSJ in 1993...how much political violence pre-1968 were they aware of, really? Of course the years before 1968 didn't look violent. Violence meant schoolyard fights, or spankings.
I've recently been listening to old radio Gunsmoke episodes, and it seems there is nothing new under the sun. ("The Constable" was surprisingly prescient, anticipating the whole defund-the-police movement and its easily-foreseen consequences)
ReplyDelete1919 was a pretty bad year for political violence. Big riots in a lot of places, put down by the National Guard.
ReplyDeleteBetween the end of the major Indian Wars and the Spanish American War, the main thing the US Army did was put down striking unions.