Beth and I went to see A Complete Unknown this afternoon. I won't lie, this was me in the sixties and later. I teared up several times, but didn't need a tissue. I remembered my twenties (and my motorcycle, for some levity).
More than once lately I have wondered, "Where are the kids?" Why aren't they in the streets, blocking traffic, holding up signs, chanting? But I've come to terms with some of it now.
Back then, we didn't affect change. We didn't effect change. It ground along at it's own pace, swelled occasionally by the undercurrents of the time.
That war in Vietnam lasted almost fifteen years, and that was just for us. The French and the Russians had their go for years before that. When I started college in 1961, Kennedy had just sent some advisors. My own children were in school when it ended.
All those students who protested the Gaza war, Columbia, George Washington, California, Ohio State, are looking at passport revocation or worse. As are their parents. At least four of them did not wind up lifeless on a Kent State campus.
When I protested the bombing of Cambodia, wrote letters, joined protest groups at CWRU, the worst that happened was the IRS audited my puny twenty grand tax return. The stakes are far higher this time.
It has been this bad in the past, and cycles around to the next spate of badness. When my grandparents were starting out, there was war, there was poverty, there were oligarchs in charge. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan and Gould controlled supply chains and wages. Men and women organized and fought and died for rights that were gradually built into the law.
We all know the history. The depression, the fight for rights, the fight for the future of the world. Next the triumph of the middle class, the rise of the unions. Love them or hate them, unions made regular citizens of millions of people in this country who could own homes and send children to school, not to the factories at ten years old.
And here we are back to dark days again. It didn't need to happen.
I fear we will stumble in this wilderness long past my life time to sort the current idiocracy. There has been violence for no good cause. Capital police were injured and died four years ago. The men (and women) deluded to think bullets trumped ballots are up for the next round. There is plenty of mental and physical violence to come.
It's just so stupid to do it over and over and over.
I can't fix it. I can only work against it. My grandma used to say "Pull up your corset strings girls, we have work to do."
I see much of northeastern Ohio has ordered ICE not to enter safe places (schools, churches, designated areas) without a search warrant, and they cannot carry guns. It's just a middle finger, but an excellent start.
