Thurston’s Thoughts
May 4, 1970
Kent State Massacre 2.0
If you live long enough or study history deep enough several revelations will become evident. Time does not repeat itself but circumstances most certainly do repeatedly. A politically imperfect storm brews from the perfect ingredients processed under complimentary conditions applied to heated rhetoric, defective ideologies, and authoritative coercions. Geopolitical agendas supersede rational restraint, humanitarian recognitions, and collateral damage from combustive allegiances to questionable aggressions. The schematic of conflict includes the usual suspects of religion, ideological clashes, and conquest of ulterior motives.
The Kent State Massacre combustive casserole involve students protesting participation in two escalating foreign wars, the military draft to support those wars, and a National Guard mobilization on campus to quell protest. Four students were killed and nine wounded as the National Guard opened fire on students. This single tragedy galvanized students, campuses, and the general public nationwide, magnifying the essence and social force that the shootings had sought to suppress.
Repressing protests on American soil with American military force against American citizens to muffle dissidence and civil rights for a foreign agenda actually increased the protest. Domestic rights were massacred in pursuit of spreading democracy, which was the façade du jour promoted, concealing geopolitical ideologies propagated under patriotism, nationalism, and imperialism. The reheated leftovers of the Doctrine of Discovery and Papal Bulls of cajoling religion, conquest, and dogma always with a splash of righteousness against a competing ideology, were paramount.
Vietnam and Cambodia left a stain on America with Kent State, Agent Orange suffers, heroin addictions, and less than heroic treatment of returning service personnel. Protest against the military draft and conscientious objections to the war signaled the puppet master’s strings being cut, changing the dynamics of the slaughter mill obedience to unbridled compliance. It ushered in a period of social revolution questioning the cocoon of authority.
Albert Einstein stated that blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Blind obedience festers atrocities justified by objective. A military draft removes choice as the embryo of brainwashing and psychological grooming leading to an assembly line of thought submission. Muhammed Ali was vilified for his resistance to the Vietnam War and draft to later become globally beloved. Doing right may not be recognized until later, but if it had not been done, what would there be to celebrate? The American Revolution is the epitome of such a protestive rebellion.
College campuses are the incubators of thought and often the genesis of leadership changing the status quo to generationally sculpt their interpretation upon future policy, procedures, and politics. Our world reflects this clash of old and new. The old holds the advantage of power and experience while the young possess enthusiasm and blossoming ideas. Many old heads were the youth of yesteryear’s protestors now fiercely protecting a current reality they then fought against. Debate by military force is no remedy to settling differing perspectives.
Those making war-mongering decisions are not the ones fighting and dying over them. The same college students are relied upon for military service but not the declaration of their convictions. Reasonably, an invalidation of a disputed position or method does not invalidate the merits. The dismissal of claims as anti-this or that, victimhood, or expired cannot dissolve the culpability or veracity its built upon. The reason breathes even as the method is suffocated.
Many of today’s disputes emanate from an ideological religious crusade poorly disguised as politics. Religious beliefs of dubious veracity other than pure faith should not govern war or politics but they do as well as national and geopolitical allegiances. In addition, nationally during the early 70s, an embattled President Nixon was toppled by the criminality of Watergate, seduced by power and jolted by the prospect of losing it. Hence the crime and coverup.
There appear to be two overwhelming factors humanity must confront and they are inbred religion and absolute power. Both are corrupt and corrupted for dubious and distorted purposes. So by vicarious affiliation of consent or concession, the guilt of silence fuels the locomotive of atrocities as efficiently as purposeful intent. Perhaps the government of the people should listen to the dissatisfaction of the People. This time period of the 70s was deemed volatile by the volume of change and challenges.
The 1973 codified Roe v. Wade recently overturned was enacted by the Pulse of the People. Additionally, BRICS now threatens the default currency status of the U.S. Dollar exploiting the 1971 Nixon removal of the gold standard to stimulate government spending and deficits. Globally nations are returning to the gold standard. Would you rather have a currency backed by gold or a diminishing fiat reputation? Lack of DEI was deemed a liability to productivity and decency shunning the equality of inequality.
C. Everett Koop railed against cigarettes and its 600 ingredients, igniting 7,000 chemicals, leading to the warning on the packaging. The cigarette was vilified but not its producers despite the verified health cost. The matador defense is now against menthol. Albeit smoking sherm, drinking ammonia, or eating rat poison is frowned upon except when consumed in cigarettes. From weapons of mass destruction to the current geopolitical dogma, truth and independent thinking should be encouraged to avoid the spin cycle of history repeating itself. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
There comes a time when it is prudent to take the keys from great grandpa not necessarily by age but by perspective. Over a half of our congressional leaders are over the age of sixty-five. Is there any wonder we are stuck in an ideological and geo-political stone age governed by perspectives of the 1940s and 50s? At the risk of being woke, wake up people it is a self-aggrandizing job for many politicians whose personal agenda trumps the public wishes. A governor who votes for a trans bill because of his child or a Speaker of the House who pushes foreign aid because his son is in the military.
Not to belie the decision but the selfishly subjective motive. This is how we are governed and compromised including the shell game of the Electoral College. So why encourage the youth to pursue an education that we don’t want them to use for critical thinking? If you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, why stop new dogs from performing new tricks? College campuses are the seeds planted years ago bearing fruit into the future. The pruning of this tree instills conformity to past social and political establishments.
The youth are shackled by decisions from people who will not be around to experience the damage. By association or capitulation, the slumber of stagnation cannot be allowed to massacre conscientious change as woke. The youth today will be us tomorrow just as we were them then. Institutions of thought should not stifle the expression of thought either by massacre or militia. History proves it only exacerbates the protest and rebellion.
Look around at the campus protests, two foreign wars potentially devouring our youth in escalated combat, talk of re-instituting a military draft for lack of volunteers, law enforcement/military confrontations with college protesters, abortion ban, voting rights circumvention, de-dollarization, social inequality, and a disgraced former President. With history repeating itself, we definitely do not need a Kent Massacre 2.0. Find another way, might does not make right. It makes martyrs and crusader’s.
