1968 and 2006: Comparing two watershed years

By Barry Ragin
Created Oct 21 2006 - 6:11pm

With all of the pre-election madness, the polls showing the likelihood of a
Democratic victory, perhaps a landslide; the Mark Foley/Dennis Hastert
coverup in the House of Representatives; the emergence of a second
Republican in the Connecticut Senate race; with all that, i think a recent
acknowledgement by President Bush of the parallels between his Iraq war and
the war in Vietnam marked an important rhetorical and psychological change
that has gone largely uncommented on.

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Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals on their dramatic ninth inning
win over the Mets last night in game 7 of the NLCS. As the Great Baseball
Scribe himself has said, "Wait till next year."

The Cardinals' victory sets up a rematch of sorts of the 1968 World Series
between these same two teams, a Series which was a true October Classic in
every sense of the word. The Cardinals had future Hall of Famers Lou Brock
and Orlando Cepeda in their everyday lineup, Bob Gibson on the mound for
Games 1, 4 and 7, and three other players (Curt Flood, Roger Maris, and Tim
McCarver) for whom Hall of Fame credentials can be claimed. The Tigers were
led by their aging superstar Al Kaline, former AL batting champ Norm Cash,
and Denny McClain, the first (and last) 30 game winner in 3 decades.

Gibson beat McClain in Games 1 and 4, Mickey Lolich defeated Nelson Briles
in Games 2 and 5, and by virtue of their 7-3 victory in Game 3, the Cards
had a 3-2 advantage when the Series returned to St. Louis for Games 6 and 7.
Denny McClain took the mound on two days rest for Game 6, and shut the
Cardinals down, giving up only a single run in the 9th inning of a 13-1
blowout. It was up to unlikely hero Mickey Lolich to do the same against
Cardinal ace Gibson in Game 7, and he came through, again giving up just a
single run in the 9th and winning 4-1.

The 68 Series was also noted for the stirring, soulful, and very Hispanic
version of the National Anthem sung by Jose Feliciano before Game 5 in
Detroit, which was not recieved very well by fans and viewers around the
country. Feliciano's website notes [1]:

He wanted to sing an anthem of gratitude to a country that had given him a
chance; who had allowed a blind kid with a dream reach far above his
limitations, far beyond the expected to a place few at his young age, had
achieved. He wanted to sing an anthem of praise to a country that had given
a better life to him and his family.

Playing slowly and meaningfully on a sunny October afternoon, he felt the
vastness of the stadium and the presence of so many listening to him as he
began to sing, " Oh, say, can you see?..." . Before he had completed his
performance, however, he could feel the discontent within the waves of
cheers and applause that spurred on the first pitch. "Wonder what that was
about?," he thought, as he was escorted to the press box to enjoy a couple
of innings before his flight back to Vegas for his shows later that evening.

"Do you know what you did?", He was asked by someone in the box. "You're
causing a furor! The switchboard is lighting up with calls from people
complaining about your singing The National Anthem!"

"My God", He thought, as the great controversy exploded across the
country. Veterans, reportedly, threw their shoes at the television as he
sang. Others questioned his right to stay in the United States, suggesting
he should be deported (to where, exactly, had never been mentioned as those
from Puerto Rico are, of course, American citizens)! Still others just
attributed it to the times and felt sad for the state of our country.

There were, obviously, many who understood the depth and breadth of his
rendition. Those, young and old, who weren't jaded by the negativity which
surrounded anything new, anything a little different. It was unusual. It was
beautifully done. It certainly was sincere.

The controversy was to shadow Feliciano and his music for many years. It
inspired a sense of compassion about our Anthem which, until that time, had
pretty much been taken for granted. It became the topic of conversation in
circles that never discussed patriotism and, it brought about a sense of
commitment to whatever side of the line one stood.

Today, it is common to hear our National Anthem performed in a stylized
fashion. Some renditions are clearly better than others, still sparking some
criticism. You will, however, notice that it is very acceptable, indeed
admirable, to deliver an intensely personal interpretation of The National
Anthem.

This was not the case before Jose Feliciano.

As the comedian Robert Klein later joked, "I guess the only reason they
didn't kill him on the spot is that he's blind."

2006 is reminiscent of 1968 in other ways than just a World Series rematch.
An unpopular president trying to rally the country around his unpopular war,
a potential sea change in the political climate.

1968 of course, was a watershed year in American history, and even as a
twelve year old experiencing it mostly through TV and newspapers, the
extraordinariness of the turmoil was painful. Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy both assassinated in the spring, the former shortly after he began
speaking out against the continued US engagement in the Vietnam war, the
latter as he celebrated a victory in the California primary which would
likely propel him to the Democratic party nomination for the presidency.
Riots in many cities changed the urban landscape permanently. The 1968
Democratic convention in Chicago scarred the party for generations. In many
ways, it never recovered. Racial and class schisms, for which a general
prosperity of the 50s and early 60s had been able to minimize, were now
being exploited by a conservative movement which saw an opportunity to
achieve power that had not existed since before the Great Depression. The
new Republican Southern strategy, embraced by Richard Nixon, pitted working
class whites against blacks and Hispanics, claiming that white prosperity
was threatened by minorities on welfare. In its most extreme and virulent
form, the right wing would claim (and still does) that the survival of
white, christian America was at stake.

Another reminder of 1968 has been in the news this week. With all of the
pre-election madness, the polls showing the likelihood of a Democratic
victory, perhaps a landslide; the Mark Foley/Dennis Hastert coverup in the
House of Representatives; the emergence of a second Republican in the
Connecticut Senate race; with all that, i think a recent acknowledgement by
President Bush of the parallels between his Iraq war and the war in Vietnam
marked an important rhetorical and psychological change that has gone
largely uncommented on. This change in rhetoric and psychology should
indicate to those of us who opposed this war from its inception that the
time is now right to push for the US to conclude its part in the war, to
ensure that those who led us into this war are punished for their criminal
arrogance and willful violation of both the Constitution of the United
States and international law, and to fight to make sure that our elected
representatives and leaders are never able to do this again.

Tom Friedman wrote a column the other day [2], as off target as most of his
work. But he said this:

In the competition for the biggest "October surprise" of the 2006 election
cycle, it might seem hard to top North Korea's nuclear test. But I'd suggest
that in time we'll come to see the events unfolding - or rather,
unraveling - in Iraq today as the real October surprise, because what we're
seeing there seems like the jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive.

For those of you too young to remember, the Tet offensive was the series
of attacks undertaken by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese armies between
Jan. 30, 1968 - the start of the Lunar New Year - and June 1969. Although
the Vietcong and Hanoi were badly mauled during Tet, they delivered, through
the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of "winning" in Vietnam
that Tet is widely credited with eroding support for President Johnson and
driving him to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.

For someone possessed of the Moustache of Understanding [3], Friedman is
uncannily dense. And for someone who has the platform and audience he does,
that denseness can rise to the level of a felony.

The lesson of the Tet offensive is not that the VC and the NVA "delivered,
through the media, such a psychological blow to U.S. hopes of "winning" in
Vietnam", that Lyndon Johnson had to decline to seek re-election. What the
Tet offensive did was put the lie to 4 years of American propaganda bullshit
that the war was going well, that we were winning, that our body counts were
constantly improving, that the puppet government we had installed in South
Vietnam had the support of the people, that there was a light at the end of
the tunnel.

What Tet did was reveal to the world, and to the American people, who are
not that dense after all, that our government had been doing nothing else
but lying about the Vietnam war. That our government was putting at risk
half a million of our soldiers at a time, perhaps 2 million total, to defend
absolutely nothing else but the government's own ability to project
bullshit. Tet made crystal clear that US military actions in Vietnam,
including chemical and ecological warfare, and virtually unimaginable death
and destruction, had no chance of succeeding, and had, as its sole purpose,
its own self-perpetuation. We were in Vietnam because we were in Vietnam,
and we were going to stay because if we didn't, we wouldn't be in Vietnam.

Friedman alone is not enough to signal the rhetorical and psychological
changewinds which are blowing, even if he is somewhat like a weathercock on
a fallingdown barn. But the acknowlegement by none other than George W. Bush
[4], whose intellectual acuity may rival that of Friedman, even if he's not
as wealthy, that Friedman is right, is a key milemarker.

"He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly
a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."

"George, my gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict
enough damage that we'd leave," Bush said. "And the leaders of al Qaeda have
made that very clear. Look, here's how I view it. First of all, al Qaeda is
still very active in Iraq. They are dangerous. They are lethal. They are
trying to not only kill American troops, but they're trying to foment
sectarian violence. They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the
American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause
government to withdraw."

Bush said he could not imagine any circumstances under which all U.S.
troops would be withdrawn from Iraq before the end of his presidency.

From the beginning, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the whole lot of them currently
sitting in the seats of power in Washington, have done nothing but lie to
the American people about Iraq. Whether it was weapons of mass destruction;
the toppling of Saddam's statue; the predictions of a cakewalk with candy
and flowers for liberating American troops; to the depiction if Iraqi
fighters as "deadenders;" claims that the Iraqi resistance would fade away
following the death of Saddam's sons, the capture of Saddam himself, the
killing of al-Zarqawi; Operation Forward Together [5] and its recent
abandonment [6]; all we have gotten from our leaders are lies.

When morons like Thomas Friedman spout nonsense that claims our media are
handing a propaganda victory to our enemies by reporting on the heightened
violence in Iraq, when a tinpot would be dictator like George Bush repeats
the claim that "They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the
American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause
government to withdraw," all they are really doing is condemning thousands
of more people to violent and bloody deaths in the name of preserving their
own power. And that power is only used as an end in itself. As in 1968, the
meaning of the recent escalation of violence in Iraq has nothing to do with
territory, casualties, or other measures of the success of earlier era
conflicts. Its significance is that it puts the lies of the Bush
Administration front and center for the American people to see. Although
Americans have a tendency to believe in their leaders longer than is
justified, once the understanding that we've been lied to penetrates the
popular consciousness, it's there for keeps.

The American adventure in Iraq, predicated as it was on lies, greed, and
manipulation, has already failed. Recovering from it will take a generation
or more. The sooner we start, by removing at least some of the levers of
power from these criminals on November 7, the better.

--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson