From Vietnam to COVID-19, the Arrogance of Ignorance Keeps Killing Americans

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/from-vietnam-to-covid-19-the-arrogance-of-ignorance-keeps-killing-americans

The bitter divides in the United States are not new, and unfortunately neither is the multiplication of error that can turn wars—or pandemics—into quagmires.

Clive Irving
Updated May. 26, 2020 6:07AM ET / Published May. 26, 2020 4:07AM ET

On the morning of May 8, 1970, around a thousand mostly young people gathered at the junction of Wall Street and Broad Street to honor four students who had been shot on the campus at Kent State University four days earlier by the Ohio National Guard during a demonstration against Richard Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War.

I was in Lower Manhattan that day and watched as the streets became a battleground that foreshadowed the sort of political polarization in America that remains to this day.

The student demonstration was disrupted suddenly by about 200 construction workers who materialized from nearby sites. Their response had flared up spontaneously from atop scaffolding. They'd shouted derisory taunts of “commies and pinkos” and hurled debris down at the students.

The construction workers in their hard hats yelled “All the way, USA!” with the passion of men who felt that the long-haired war protesters not only were an affront to patriotism but an offense to the commitment of their own families, who had willingly sent their sons off to war. There was a palpable blue collar sense of national duty versus a middle class that was educated and felt entitled to question the logic of war—and also was able to defer the draft, or to dodge it entirely.

There was no reconciling the two factions. The hard hats easily broke through the police lines and set about beating any students they could catch.

</snip>

[raging moderate]

1. But not all of us were middle-class.

Last edited Tue May 26, 2020, 09:50 AM - Edit history (2)

People often forget the large number of people who have traditionally been paid VERY LOW wages for white collar work, and many of the people in these families actually hold blue-collar jobs for much of their lives. Most of the blue-collar people you describe had access to public libraries, and some of them chose to go in and read some books sometimes. And then there is the fact that some public schools offer an excellent education for kids who are willing to pay attention instead of continuing family traditions of bullying, catcalling, spitball throwing, and general disrespect for books and quiet kids and verbal skills. My mother started work as a servant (washing dishes for a nearby affluent family), and then became a dime store clerk. She worked her way up to typist and then secretary and then legal secretary. My father started work as a newsboy, and then became a tailor in a fur coat factory. Later he worked as a busboy and then as a maintenance man, eventually becoming a supervisor of other maintenance men. My parents both went hungry and cold during much of the Great Depression, and so did I during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Part of that was so I could work my way through school, very gradually. At home, our TV set often did not work. We walked to our library and brought home books. Some of these books described different groups of people in different far away places. In my social group, we were mostly from poor families, but we all read books, and we all disliked bullies, and that is why we opposed the Vietnam war.

[Lucky Luciano]

2. The white working class has always been the shittiest demographic.

[RVN VET71]

3. I remember the attacks.

I'd been back from Vietnam less than a year when they occurred.

I refuse to credit the construction workers' mayhem to their plight in life. They were thugs and bullies who made me, quite frankly, ashamed to share citizenship with them. There were reports of truckloads of these douche bags roaming the city and -- this is true, I swear it -- beating up any blonde haired male they saw because they assumed him to be Swedish -- Sweden being a country that was welcoming deserters and draft dodgers. These are the bastards whose sons would go on to set fire to homeless men and use the same lame excuse "Hey, I work hard, my father works hard, so these bums can make our town filthy and ugly."

So don't pull that crap about how these thugs felt their "patriotism" and "sacrifices" were offended by the students. Screw them and their progeny. They were just pissed off bullies looking for a reason, any reason, to beat the piss out of someone. And the students -- and blonde haired males! -- provided that excuse.

"Palpable blue collar sense of national duty" my ass.