Question for those who were grown-ups in 1968...

[Ken Burch]

(I've studied a lot about the era, but I was only seven that year).

Did it feel like this the night Dr. King was executed?

[RoverSuswade]

1. I just remember thinking "oh, no, not again"

and feeling sick to my stomach. I wanted to throw up (I was 27)

[RoverSuswade]

2. and: I feel terrible about tonight

but I long ago expected this outcome (I posted to this effect on DU) so it was not a surprise. I feel just numb.

[kwassa]

3. I was sixteen.

the whole country blew up, with riots in many cities in the US. It was monumentally depressing. There ended up being race riots in my high school. A huge amount of anger.

[GGJohn]

4. I was in Vietnam when that happened, my younger brother said it got pretty nasty.

[socialist_n_TN]

5. Yeah, I was 17, so if you consider that as grown up, I was.....

It felt something like this. There was a lot of anger and shock. But this time there's the anger, but not much shock about this. People expect this kind of shit now. For some they turn that anger inward and give up. Some get even more pissed off. That's me.

This also feels different and I think it's because of the effects of the Great Recession on the rest of us. There's a lot more general anger out there today because for most of us the economy still sucks. That wasn't the case in '68.

I think there's a greater chance of this turning into something bigger than just anger and frustration about murderous racial oppression. Maybe still not a good chance of that happening, but more so than in '68. That's my take anyway.

[NOLALady]

6. I was 21.

I was numb with the political assassinations, the church bombings, the attacks and assassinations of civil rights leaders, dogs attacking children, etc...

God help Me, but I didn't cry when I heard of Kings death. I have no memory of that night. I don't think I'd fully recovered from the JFK assassination. Everytime I felt healed, there was another senseless atrocity. There was a part of my psyche that was in full blown shock.

Tonight, I am fighting to control tears of rage. I didn't think Amerikkka could stoop any lower after the Rodney King verdict. The Trayvon decision proved that I was wrong. And now this! I am sick!

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. I remember *knowing* there would be riots.

There was all this pressure building from the Civil Rights marches, you could feel it in the air.
Everyone remembered the 1965 Watts riots in L.A.
Dr. King was seen as Ghandi, to many people.
There were riots in over 100 American cities after his death.
We really felt the country was burning down.

I gotta tell ya, tho....when Robert Kennedy was murdered just 2 months after King, THAT's when I felt fear, cause it was very clear there were much larger forces at work.

[Recursion]

8. There's not an equivalent to Stokely Carmichael today (that I know of)

Oy. When I lived in DC 30 years later there were still 4 burnt-out lots on my street...

[delrem]

9. I was 18. There was hope, then, among people of good will.

Not so much anymore.

(interjection: I'm Canadian, so have a decidedly leftist "wanna believe in the US" perspective, but it isn't a US perspective.)

People feel hopeless, to stop racism, to stop insane wars of choice, to stop the .1%, to stop the killing/polluting machine. In Canada we now have Harper. Harper is way to the right of most Republican politicians. And I feel surrounded by Stepford people. People who can no longer articulate what has been lost. People who are afraid to speak up - afraid of being ostracised.

The US rejected Carter and elected Ronald Fucking Reagan, for all the reasons that we know they did. That was a huge wake up for me because then I knew that the people of the USA were acting out of fully conscious choice. Except for "a wingnut/commie left" the people of the US went gung ho for all of Reagan's wars, they fucking loved it. Just as now the people of Canada are quietly going along with Harper's new war on Iraq and Syria. No fucking *debate* happened, Ken. None. Even those politicians who might debate because they privately hold a decidedly different opinion are afraid to speak up because the people are totally numb. Not receptive anymore.

Here's how I started feeling the difference. It was after the Vietnam war and history began being rewritten. Movies like "Rambo" started being made, glorifying the soldiers and denying any of the true context, putting out false memes like pacifists spitting on the returning troops (in fact, most everyone was fully aware that the US draftees, the "troops", were among the victims). The US military machine learned that a free press was the enemy of their plans, was the monkey-wrench that spoiled things, and did what was necessary to control it, bring it under their total dominion. The succeeded. The overt and systematic embedding of media starting in the 2nd Iraq war (another illegal war of choice) cemented that total control in place and it couldn't have happened if all the pieces weren't already set in place -- now the MSM is totally embedded (yes, including MSNBC and their favorite war reporter/heros) and the practice is no longer questioned, if it ever seriously was.

IMO the entire english speaking world is a bubble controlled by the MIC. Psychotic. The arguments, the blame-the-victim propaganda, are psychotic. I mean that literally: psychotic. Disconnect from real values and vision, entirely self-serving. And the MIC/MSM of 2014 is incomparably more powerful and concentrated as compared to those glory days of the 50's, 60's, and even early 70's.