Question: Was the environment more or less dangerous under Nixon

[BigmanPigman]

during the Vietnam war? I was too young to remember but I have heard that the unrest and violence is worse now than in the late 60s and early 70s. However, this article says it was worse before.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/28/nixon-protest-law-and-order-221920

[enough]

1. Given how many people were killed daily in that long war I guess we could say it was more

dangerous then. I remember it as a permanent pall of grief over everything, and I didn’t have any loved ones or friends killed. The grief was for our soldiers and the far greater number of Southeast Asian people constantly being killed.

[CountAllVotes]

2. No it was not worse

You did not have children being shot in schools.

You did not have shootings at churches.

You did not have all of this sort of bizarre racist behavior we now see.

As for violence, it was mostly surrounding the Vietnam war. People were pissed.

We watched 200,000 young Americans arrive home on airplanes in coffins.

It was a very difficult time but nothing like this crap we see today.

While Nixon was a crook, he didn't hold a to dump.

[Raven]

4. Absolutely agree.n/t

[MyOwnPeace]

12. I pretty much agree...

You didn’t see the raging anger like you do now, but then again, there were “four dead in O-hio” (yes, Americans firing on Americans - and I believe IQ45 would order the same if he had that chance.

[msongs]

3. in the 50 states it is much worse now. mass shootings were quite rare, street mob violence

was rare. mass protests against the war, racism, etc were peaceful for the most part. nixon did damage but he did not go around telling his followers to rape loot and murder.

[safeinOhio]

5. Major riots in the big cities.

National Gard killing students. Seemed like dangerous times me.

[Raine]

6. No, absolutely not! nt

[struggle4progress]

7. Chicago and Ohio

[Journeyman]

8. I'll repost something I wrote back in 2013, in response to a similar lament . . .

Grim times when I graduated high school.

When I graduated high school, in the early '70s, I'd dealt with the murders of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King; saw a localized war in Vietnam explode into a regional conflagration with tens of thousands of American soldiers dead and countless Vietnamese, maybe a million or more, slaughtered; witnessed fellow citizens shot down in the streets for daring to protest the increasingly reckless and illegal actions of an out-of-control President; huddled beneath school desks in mock anticipation of nuclear annihilation; witnessed a police riot in Chicago, and the disintegration of the social bonds in my hometown (Los Angeles), as well as countless other flashpoints for riots across the land -- Newark, Baltimore, Chicago, Louisville, and more; saw and participated in a raft of protests against the war, against social conditions, prison conditions, the grinding poverty that is life for too many millions in America; gasped in horror when Charles Whitman climbed the Texas U tower, reeled in shock when the Manson Family preyed together; sputtered in near impotent rage when the government refused to heed Rachel Carson's warning how we are poisoning ourselves and endured instead a corporate media blitz about the dangers of littering; debated the inanity of television and the dumbing of America; worried and complained that the media didn't cover the proper issues, that it too often gave only the government line and excluded alternative voices; worried about wars, and rumors of wars, and the relentless stockpiling of nuclear weaponry; sat in shocked disbelief as Munich unfolded; watched as a plethora of terrorist groups highjacked planes and used them as weapons against their "oppressors," flying them to Cuba & elsewheres, threatening to kill the passengers; wondered at the long-term effect of the OPEC embargo as the realization of oil's end became all too real . . . and these are just what I remember off the top, quickly typing in the busy hours of an April afternoon.

My schooling was bracketed by a death in Dallas and wanton killings in Kent. The dream -- the national fantasy inculcated into so many after the War -- died with JFK. But the hope . . . the hope spawned by Jefferson, reaffirmed by Lincoln, restored by Franklin Roosevelt . . . the hope remained, and beats as strong today as it did when I received my first diploma. From that hope we can generate anew the dreams that will carry us into the future, a future that grows increasingly bright if we but know how to focus on the light . . .

[unblock]

9. Stateside violence was not what it is today

There were peaceful hippie protests, and of course the right-wing hated that and called for "law and order", which culminated in the Kent state shootings, but that was didn't come close to the kind of violence we see today. The difference was that was the national guard instead of right-wing lunatics and racist police officers.

[struggle4progress]

10. Monster

[Poiuyt]

11. There was a different kind of discord back then

Now, it's mostly liberal vs conservative. Back then, it was young vs old ("Never trust anyone over 30&quot . This was due to the Viet Nam War and the military draft. The Kent State massacre, UW-Madison bombing, the 1968 Democratic Convention, etc.

There was also a lot of rioting over civil rights. Much of that predates Nixon, but it continued after he became president.

It was a very troubling time. The civil unrest was different from now in that it was masses of people (riots—both antiwar and civil rights) rather than individual mass shootings and terrorist attacks. While I think that trump is a much more corrupt and unethical president than Nixon, I'd say the times were more troubling back then.

[DeminPennswoods]

13. Weather Underground also was doing bombing

and/or making threats.

[Poiuyt]

14. Good memory

There were more radical groups back then

[MountCleaners]

15. Well...

If you were dark-skinned, there were a lot more places you couldn't go. Traveling was more hazardous. And I think police violence was more accepted so who knows how much brutality there was. Maybe we didn't have as many mass shootings, but I do think violence against certain groups was more accepted.