you may not believe this, it's hard to explain sometimes, time pulls a veil even for people who do remember, but in 1967-68 it was horrifically worse in many of he cities. but america survived.
if you look for information on those now you will see that they were all allegedly "unplanned" and "isolated" outbreaks of violence. this is balderdash. they were connected and coordinated various ways, just like the ones this year, and people knew it then as now.
large swathes of cities like detroit and washington were completely destroyed. in places like that, the landscape of 1960 and 1970 were worlds apart. 1960 wouldn't look so strange to someone stepping off a bus from the 1940s, but 1970 was the destroyed urban hellscape we now think of as the 'inner city'.
that 'inner city ruined desert' landscape we can all just close our eyes and call up now, i don't think someone in 1960 america could even picture it as something in his own country. it would seem like one of the bombed cities of europe after the war.
so let me give you hope if i can. we came back from that, we will come back from this. america is tough.
let me put it this way too. all fire engines have roofs and fully enclosed rider cabs now. this came about because of the 1960s riots and general unrest. not only would the rioters smash, burn, shoot, and kill, they would bombard firemen with rocks and concrete to prevent them from fighting the fires they had set.
before the 1960s though closed cabs were not unknown, the typical fire truck had a fully open, roofless cab, and many firemen rode to calls on the outside running boards, hanging on to the truck's handrails. the enlarged closed rider cabs weren't a fashion change, they were armor. in the FDNY this change was particularly drastic, and i think there are still some surviving pieces of equipment in collections that have improvised protective cab shields and canopies applied.
here's some pictures as well, in an article on washington. important to remember is that after this devastation these buildings were removed, and many of these places were scarred urban deserts as late as the 1980s.
the hate and division weren't as bad in america as a whole, this is true. my statement was about the amount of destruction to the inner cities in 2020 compared with the 1960s. minneapolis is comparable in scale to what happened during the 'summer of love', but back then, every large eastern city had a 'minneapolis' scale event. and a lot more people died.
but in the sphere of politics and psychology you are absolutely correct, the 2020 air is poisonous.
i think a large part of the difference is simply that there was no internet back then. i don't think the actual numbers of violent 'antifa' brownshirts are as large as the weather underground. but the weather underground was more, well, underground. the internet gives our modern red guards the ability to instantly transmit their propaganda to millions, and this makes a difference.
peaceful protest is a lie now, in the 60s it was real. the peaceful elements in the left have allowed themselves to be shouted down by the modern equivalent of the weather underground. which is, in fact, not quite detached from the actual weather underground.
currently on the left, it appears that nearly everyone is either a violent revolutionary (though these are very few) or sympathetic with their cause, or at least willing to share their propaganda. i believe this sympathy is largely an illusion, because the left tends to be cowardly in the face of potential cancellation, when it comes to revealing their true beliefs. the 'silent majority' yes i know, but i think the brownshirts are going to feel the bottom side of the bus soon.
you may not believe this, it's hard to explain sometimes, time pulls a veil even for people who do remember, but in 1967-68 it was horrifically worse in many of he cities. but america survived.
if you look for information on those now you will see that they were all allegedly "unplanned" and "isolated" outbreaks of violence. this is balderdash. they were connected and coordinated various ways, just like the ones this year, and people knew it then as now.
large swathes of cities like detroit and washington were completely destroyed. in places like that, the landscape of 1960 and 1970 were worlds apart. 1960 wouldn't look so strange to someone stepping off a bus from the 1940s, but 1970 was the destroyed urban hellscape we now think of as the 'inner city'.
that 'inner city ruined desert' landscape we can all just close our eyes and call up now, i don't think someone in 1960 america could even picture it as something in his own country. it would seem like one of the bombed cities of europe after the war.
so let me give you hope if i can. we came back from that, we will come back from this. america is tough.
let me put it this way too. all fire engines have roofs and fully enclosed rider cabs now. this came about because of the 1960s riots and general unrest. not only would the rioters smash, burn, shoot, and kill, they would bombard firemen with rocks and concrete to prevent them from fighting the fires they had set.
before the 1960s though closed cabs were not unknown, the typical fire truck had a fully open, roofless cab, and many firemen rode to calls on the outside running boards, hanging on to the truck's handrails. the enlarged closed rider cabs weren't a fashion change, they were armor. in the FDNY this change was particularly drastic, and i think there are still some surviving pieces of equipment in collections that have improvised protective cab shields and canopies applied.
here's some pictures as well, in an article on washington. important to remember is that after this devastation these buildings were removed, and many of these places were scarred urban deserts as late as the 1980s.
https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/03/30/dc-riots-1968-then-and-now.html
the hate and division weren't as bad in america as a whole, this is true. my statement was about the amount of destruction to the inner cities in 2020 compared with the 1960s. minneapolis is comparable in scale to what happened during the 'summer of love', but back then, every large eastern city had a 'minneapolis' scale event. and a lot more people died.
but in the sphere of politics and psychology you are absolutely correct, the 2020 air is poisonous.
i think a large part of the difference is simply that there was no internet back then. i don't think the actual numbers of violent 'antifa' brownshirts are as large as the weather underground. but the weather underground was more, well, underground. the internet gives our modern red guards the ability to instantly transmit their propaganda to millions, and this makes a difference.
peaceful protest is a lie now, in the 60s it was real. the peaceful elements in the left have allowed themselves to be shouted down by the modern equivalent of the weather underground. which is, in fact, not quite detached from the actual weather underground.
currently on the left, it appears that nearly everyone is either a violent revolutionary (though these are very few) or sympathetic with their cause, or at least willing to share their propaganda. i believe this sympathy is largely an illusion, because the left tends to be cowardly in the face of potential cancellation, when it comes to revealing their true beliefs. the 'silent majority' yes i know, but i think the brownshirts are going to feel the bottom side of the bus soon.