Rough and Tumble

For John, BLUF:  We are a lucky nation. lucky in the blessings of God and lucky in the common folk who help right the ship of state when it starts to list.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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America Is Often a Nation Divided

Here is the sub-headline:

U.S. politics today is ugly and broken, true enough.  But the good news is that it was worse in the past, and it will get better again.

From The Wall Street Journal, by Political Analyst Karl Rove, 25 August 2023, 3:03 pm ET.

Here is the lede plus two:

America is deeply divided. Our politics is broken, marked by anger, contempt and distrust.  We must acknowledge that reality but not lose historical perspective.  It’s bad now, but it’s been worse before—and not only during the Civil War.

Let’s look backward and start with the mid-1960s to early ’70s.  The nation was bitterly divided over civil rights, the “sexual revolution” and an increasingly unpopular war in Southeast Asia.

The just and peaceful civil-rights protests of the 1950s and early ’60s were often met with state-sanctioned violence.  Then Harlem exploded in 1964, followed by a riot in Philadelphia.  Watts went up in flames in 1965; Chicago, Cleveland and San Francisco the next year.  A total of 163 cities—including Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, Newark, N.J., New York and Portland, Ore.—suffered widespread violence in the “Long Hot Summer” of 1967.  On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. Riots broke out in more than 130 American cities, with 47 killed in the ensuing violence. Two months later Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.

I remember the Watts riots.  My then Girlfriend and I were driving back from The Desert, enroute to her home on the other side of Watts.  We stopped at my Father's place in Long Beach and he cautioned caution.  We spent the night in Long Beach, her in my bed and me on the couch.  In the morning things were calmer and we proceeded on to her place.

The Rove article goes back through our history, even to the Election of 1800, between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.  The election was ugly and the aftermath was ugly, including a dual and, eventually, a former Vice President arrested on the charge of treason.♠

Colonel George Everette (Bud) Day was shot down over North Viet-nam on this day in 1967.  Upon his return he said:  "I have faith in my country, and am secure in the knowledge that my country is a good nation.”  That is the hope with which I go foeward.  Shelfish people, even in high places, do selfish thing.  But, eventually Americans do the rught and proper thing.

Hat tip to the Patrick Devine.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  He beat the charge, twice.