Something a little different this week. This is not intended as political commentary, but more of a history lesson.
I hear people saying, both in person and online, and on television and the radio, that 2020 is one of the worst years ever and that the country is more divided than ever. Really? Granted, it has been a trying year, but it is not alone. It has plenty of company. This essay will discuss one such year.
1968 was, by any measure, a tumultuous year. From the Tet Offensive in January to the election of Richard Nixon in November, much of what happened that year was every bit as bad as what has been happening this year.
The North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive on January 30th as a major escalation of the war. This included the bloodiest battle of the war, the Battle of Hue, and the Battle of Khe Sahn. By the end of the year, 16,899 U.S. servicemen had died, making it, casualty wise, the worst year of the war.
By 1968, Lyndon Johnson's lies to the American people about the extent of the military's involvement in the war had come to light and the public's significant opposition convinced him that he couldn't win re-election, so on March 31st, in a nationally televised address, he announced that he wouldn't run due to "division in the American house now."
Then, on the heels of that historic announcement, on April 4th, Martin Luther King, Jr., the face of the civil rights movement, was murdered, triggering riots across the country. The combination of the civil rights and anti-war movements sparked a flame of rebellion across college campuses, and on April 23rd, students at Columbia University took over and occupied several administration buildings, including the president's office.
As if all of this wasn't enough, on June 5th Bobby Kennedy, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, was assassinated. It indeed seemed like the world was spinning out of control.
But this violence wasn't confined to the US. On August 20th, Soviet tanks rolled into Prague to crush reformist trends happening there. The following week, more than 700 people were injured at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, thanks in part to Mayor Daley's heavy-handed tactics.
In November, Nixon beat Vice-President Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election by a slim popular vote margin but a comfortable Electoral margin. As the war was a major campaign issue, some say it was Humphrey's failure to denounce LBJ's prosecution of the war as a major reason for his defeat.
So while I agree that 2020 has not been a good year so far, I do not believe that it is one of the worst years ever, nor do I believe the country is more divided than ever and those who do would be well served to bone up on their American history.
A classic song from 1968 from a classic movie from 1968.