PSYCHOSCAPES: When the fuse is lit: Vietnam and Now

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Nixon talking to protesters on the National Mall, May 9, 1970

When the Fuse is Lit: Vietnam and Now

Some times, despite grave injustice, nothing happens for what feels like forever until one day, a fuse is lit, explosively releasing society’s pent up emotion. Based on my history, I’m thinking of Vietnam and now.

When I returned from Vietnam in February 1968 to start classes at UNH, the war was already in its second decade – with no end in sight. Amazingly, the campus still seemed more like the 1950s than the 1960s. Hair was still relatively, short, dress conventional, and no general outrage about the war.

But that soon changed after a succession of signal events. Increasing opposition to the war prompted LBJ to not seek a second term. MLK was assassinated. Then RFK. Riots and police brutality were the main event at the 1968 democratic convention. Anti-war protests blossomed.

But the fuse wasn’t lit until May of 1970 when Nixon announced that he had invaded Cambodia, expanding the war that he had pledged to end. In an explosion of anger, young people took to the streets everywhere. Within days, the Ohio National Guard responded by shooting for peaceful protesters and wounding nine others at Kent State.

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Earlier that spring before the fuse was lit, I had become demoralized and exhausted, like many black and brown folks today, from years of seeing no progress, only hearing upgraded body counts each day on the news.

At the beginning of 1968, 20,000 of my brothers and sisters had been killed in Vietnam; another 38,000 would have to die before it was over.^⁠1 Throwing up our hands, a group of my friends and I dropped out of classes and secluded ourselves in a remote farmhouse in Northwood.

That is until Nixon’s speech galvanized us into action. With no social media or even a phone, as by osmosis or some herd instinct, we piled into my rusty car and rushed to UNH, where we joined a rising throng of outrage.

We held a rally outside the Chancellor’s residence and then begun marching around the campus, chanting “Strike!, Strike! Strike!” Students flocked out of dormitories to join us. We occupied the Memorial Union Building. Within days, we had shut down the university, joining in solidarity with hundreds of colleges across the nation. We got nation-wide attention when Abby Hoffman, Dave Dellinger, and Jerry Rubins accepted our invitation to visit the campus, causing much gnashing of the teeth by the Manchester Union.

I then headed to Washington D.C., for a rally on May 9^th, hitchhiking there with a large black fist stenciled on the back of my shirt. Indeed, it was a major protest with a heavy presence of National Guard troops dispensing tear gas. But one aspect of that night is pertinent to what happened recently.

We kept hearing a crazy rumor that Nixon was out on the National Mall: it turned out to be true. The president, on the spur of the moment, walked out of the White House that night, alone except for his valet, to talk with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. That’s a much different scenario than Trump’s recent action, clearing away peaceful protesters with tear gas before feeling safe to leave the White House.

While we young people adamantly believed we were changing the world, the rest of the country was not on board. A Gallup poll in the wake of the Kent State shootings found that 58% of Americans blamed the students for the deaths, while only 11% blamed the National Guard.

Nixon saw this as a political opportunity to consolidate his hold on the “silent majority,” enabling him to win re-election in a landslide. And in a footnote to that election, here’s some paranoia potentially applicable to events unfolding today.

Nixon, like Trump, was obsessed with the idea that outside agitators were behind the student protests. J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon’s equivalent to Attorney General Barr, did a thorough investigation but could find no evidence to support this.

Undeterred, Nixon created his own surveillance force, the so-called plumbers who were caught breaking into the Democratic Nation Committee headquarters; this, in turn, leads to the Watergate scandal, resulting in him resigning in disgrace.

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The fuse has been lit again. In 1970, it was the escalation of the Vietnam war; this time it is the murder of George Floyd, who has become the face of police violence against blacks, while exposing, at a deeper level, the extreme level of income inequality that exists today, poisoning the well of our democracy.

But make no mistake: things are different this time. As Obama has pointed out, the outpouring of protest today is not just young people or people of color but a broad cross-section of society: every race, gender, age, and class.

This time around we are the majority –no longer silent – standing up to a blustering narcissist who delights in dividing us by appealing to our baser instincts while mocking all the higher values we hold in common that has made us a great nation.

Like Nixon, Trump’s overreach has greased the skids of his downfall.

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