Evil Returns 2

 

After seeing Thom Hartmann’s recent video recapping Trump’s intentions when he wins office, I am sincerely frightened for our future. Rise & Fall of the Second Trump Reich - A Cautionary Tale 

For me, the only time that I remember feeling such fear was in 1970 after the Kent State murders and seeing Cleveland TV news reports of some Kent, Ohio townies demanding that the Ohio National Guard bayonet all KSU students. Please see my article: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die

Way back in high school I had already determined that I didn’t want to be used by the “powers that be” as an instrument for killing people. But with the draft board I had no standing as a “conscientious objector” because of my family’s traditional religious affiliation and because of the Selective Service Lottery, I knew I would be drafted after graduating from the University of Akron. 

Seeing no alternative, I enlisted because the Army agreed to let me become a medic after graduating.

In the Army while traveling, we were required to wear our uniforms and I remember people openly hostile toward us, calling us “baby killers”. I also remember one “friend” calling me a coward for not going to Canada to escape the draft. 

The times were troubled and confusing. Yet back then we (the young people) knew that our elders would not hesitate to sacrifice us to the gods of war in order to make themselves wealthy.

Too, on my mind, I remembered that my family members came to the U.S. and fought in the Revolutionary War. One received a land grant in exchange for his service. And. since the 1800s, my ancestors have served our nation in the U.S. military and/or as medical personnel in nearly every conflict or war.

As a result,  I have never thought of abandoning the U.S. and to this day seriously maintain my Army enlistment oath to, “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

Today, I am a worried old man. Should Mr. Trump be re-elected, will I be forced to take up arms to defend my nation, my heritage, and my oath?

God help us all.

Sacrificing Our Children

 

Sculptor George Segal and his sculpture in memory of students slain and wounded at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen, entitled: In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State-Abraham and Isaac.

There are happenings that change everything. 

Occurring in a flash, they are hurricane-like, erasing everything we thought we knew and forcing us into a totally unanticipated, dystopian understanding of our world. Once experienced, we can never go back.

For me, one life-altering moment, 13-seconds long, occurred on 4 May 1970, with the murder of four and wounding of nine Kent State University students. 

Those 13 seconds erased my naïve understanding of myself, my nation, our leaders, and our values. I began to understand that we are a people willing to sacrifice our children for nothing but cult identity membership and feeding our narcissistic egos.

Still, in one way the times have not changed. 

In the 1970s, the “silent majority” willingly sacrificed their children to the Vietnam War god. 

Today, we willingly sacrifice our children to the AR-15 god. 

Only the name of the god has changed. The willingness remains.

This Easter, my prayer is that our eyes and ears will open and that the Peace of Christ, pax Christi, will infuse us all with acceptance for each other.

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you” (John 14:27).

Thousands of students walk-out in protest for gun control
The NewsChannel 5 Network in Nashville

Links in this Post

When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-demagogues-incompetence-rule.html

Closure
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/closure.html

Sculptor George Segal and his sculpture in memory of students slain and wounded at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen, entitled: In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State-Abraham and Isaac.
The Bound and the Unbound: Oedipus, Isaac, and Jesus
http://boundandunbound.blogspot.com/

Here We Are Again - 50 Years Later

John Cleary, who was wounded by Ohio National Guardsman while a student at Kent State University in May 1970, fills the cover of Life magazine published a week after the historic shootings at the Ohio campus. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)

George Floyd dies at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. May 2020. (AP) 

In our time we have tumbled far from the Liberty Tree.

Every day, we witness presidential behavior that is at once outrageous, infantile, narcissistic psychopathic, sadistic, moronic, racist, cowardly, and misogynistic. Then we do nothing about it.

Somehow, we have all fallen to a new low, one totally lacking honor and dignity, as well as faithfulness to our ancestor’s highest accomplishment: the U.S. Constitution. By allowing Mr. Trump’s daily barrage of vileness to continue, we put our stamp of approval on it, conflating it each day with a new standard of low-level of acceptability.

Then, we just go about our daily activities.

Still, this morning, some of us at least, will pray that we have finally bottomed out, and the Trumpian era of chaos is finally showing signs of collapse. Because Mr. Trump’s latest outrage clearly promotes armed conflict. And, that is something no sane person call tolerate.

He is now confirming and supporting “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat”, plus calling Minneapolis protesters, “thugs”, then further glorifying violence by declaring: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

For me, Trump’s rhetoric brings back another May, 50 years ago.

Then is was May 1970, when another president labeled university protesters, “bums”. His rhetoric, while more “refined” than Mr. Trump’s, signaled the end of his time in office. Soon, most Americans would find some peace of mind as he boarded Marine One that last time, heading out of Washington, D.C.

Please see:
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-demagogues-incompetence-rule.html and
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/closure.html

Perhaps, Mr. Trump will follow the same game plan.

The Day the '60s Died - PBS - 2015

Silently Sacrificing our Children

Photo credit: Johanne Rahaman for HuffPost

We’ve done nothing since 4 May 1970.*

That’s when our leaders sanctioned the murder of four students and wounding of nine others. 

Many other students died before KSU, thousands died after, and more die nearly every day.

To this very day our leaders are willing to sacrifice our youth for their own benefit.

Sculptor George Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac

It’s a story as old as Abraham and Isaac - the one told in the Bible. Except, today, we the Abraham (s) are not killing our children to prove our love to God. We are killing them, letting them be slaughtered… for… what? Some false sense of security? For money? Or, is it because we really don’t love them? Better our children die than we die?

The Kent State Massacre was a tipping point that sparked outrage on hundreds of college and high school campuses throughout the nation. May 4, 1970 pushed “clean-shaven-short-haircut, youth” into protesting for fear of losing their lives while at school.

Because their kids were fearful of “death on campus”, a multitude of “silent majority” parents and grandparents became fearful, too. Together they melded into a tsunami of change that forced the heartless, bought-out elected officials and unelected war hawks into withdrawing from Vietnam.

Still, the kids made it happen.

We were the kids then.

Future voters at South Broward High School have left classes to protest for better gun control. pic.twitter.com/AgpKRsrNwI

— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) February 16, 2018

Today, our grandkids are forced to fill the leadership and moral vacuum we have neglected.

Please, dear God. Please help these young people. Please give them the strength and determination to do what we have failed to do. Please help them stop the carnage.

“I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours,” Novell said. “It was about guns. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns.” - Carly Novell, 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas high student.

Florida High School Students Stage Walkout To Protest Gun Violence, Ryan Grenoble and Sebastian Murdock, Huffington Post, 16 Feb 2018.

“Now is the exact time to talk about gun control, say students from a high school near Parkland.”

“They’re furious about political stonewalling, and most of them aren’t yet old enough to vote.”

“Two days after a gunman used an assault-style rifle to kill 17 people at a nearby school, the students of South Broward High School protested in solidarity. Just a couple of dozen miles down the road in Parkland, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was still sealed off as investigators pored over the horrors inside.”

“About 50 teenagers gathered on the street Friday, rallying around the common causes of gun control and school safety ? two issues politicians continue to ignore even though polls show most Americans support them.” Please go here for more of the story.

*Why the Kent State Massacre Matters Today

Excerpt from: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die, Ron Baker, Downriver USA, 24 Feb 2017.

In the Trumpian era of “alternative facts” and demagoguery we are ever slipping and sliding deeper and deeper into our own Fascist-American quicksand where our leaders mislead, confuse issues and make up “facts” to feed their narcissistic addiction and never-sated power and wealth appetite.

Kent State offers one more jarring lesson for us here, as well, built on a foundation of innocent blood. It is one which the KSU administration displayed for all to see and hear, if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear (a wish I fervently make for Dan Adamini, disgraced former Marquette County Republican Party secretary and "conservative" radio commentator). That is their decision not to accept sculptor George Segal’s In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac. 

Segal’s sculpture is a contemporary version of Abraham and Isaac “in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard.”

In other words Segal is mirroring our willingness to sacrifice our own children to our gods, whoever or whatever they are. I fear many will continue the practice, cheerfully following the whims of our current president.

After commissioning it in 1977, Kent State refused the sculpture in 1977, saying that it “depicted violence”.

It is now on display outside of the Princeton University Chapel as part of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by a partial gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund.

Please go here for Paul Keane’s illuminating and thought provoking words about Segal’s Abraham and Isaac. 

Lies Too Big To Fail – Kent State PDF version