1968/2008

Re-Create ‘68?
by Ira Chernus

The coming of 2008 has triggered a spate of articles about how we were 40 years ago, in 1968. 40 seems to be a magic number, packing some powerful symbolism. Maybe it goes back to the Bible. Have we been wandering, since 1968, 40 years in the wilderness? Is there some promised land at hand? It hardly seems likely.

But lots of writers are finding it instructive to reflect back on how things were 40 years ago. Or perhaps, like me, they just can’t resist the temptation to draw comparisons.

The 1968 reflections in the mainstream media generally focus on the three most memorable events of that year: the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, and the Democrat convention in Chicago. Most of the reflections find a common thread connecting those events: violence. 1968 is remembered as the year that three sudden outbreaks of violence shook America to its core.

That’s a particularly convenient way to remember 1968. It suggests that these were three isolated events, connected only by the fact that they were so unexpected, like thunderbolts of violence bursting out of the blue. Such things were supposed to happen in third world banana republics, not in solid, stable, peaceable America. It all seemed so inexplicable, so senseless.

Read more here http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/02/6112/

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