Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

By Sue Bergeron

Young people, their summer shorts and tank tops bloodied and torn run back towards Grant Park to escape Molotov cocktails flying through the hot Chicago night, desperate to escape the grip of hostile and heavily armed police. No, this is not an update on one of William G. Barr's Secret Stormtroopers' attacks on a major American city's peaceful protesters. I'm describing a scene captured for all posterity by the TV news journalists of 1968.

I have reflected in recent days on how just such a scenario might have unfolded during the 2020 DNC Convention, had it not been cancelled. Sad as I am about missing out on a political junkie's dream of a lifetime, I am grateful that the DNC made this wise decision. What a lot of people didn't know was that there were not enough rooms in Milwaukee to accommodate all the conventioneers. The DNC's original plan was to bus the overflow delegates and staff to Chicago, where ample hotel rooms were available. Delegates would be assigned hotels by the Committee. It's a ninety minute trip by bus from Milwaukee Fiserv Center to Chicago and with busses running at 50% capacity so as to ensure proper social distancing, I feel fairly certain the waits for busses would have been overly long, never mind taking into account the detours necessary to skirt protesters blocking the streets. The hotels were all in the area that rings Grant Park, a ripe ground for launching demonstrations. 

Recently, CNN ran a four part series entitled "1968" and I was reminded just how similar of a situation we find ourselves in fifty-two years later. If you drill down into the events leading up to the explosive violence that erupted that summer, one wonders where the term "Summer of Love" ever came from. After the assasinations of King and Kennedy in the spring of 1968 there wasn't enough Flower Power in the whole world that could overcome the violence and civil unrest that was raging in the streets that hot summer.

In a prelude to what would become a three-way race between Richard Nixon and Alabama Governor George Wallace (a segregationist who ran as an Independant), LBJ's Vice President Hubert Humphrey was fighting for his political life inside at the DNC Convention while those infamous riots raged outside on the streets of Chicago. Things got almost as hostile inside the crowded Convention Center as outside. There was pushing and shoving, arguing and a long embattled platform vote over whether or not to support the Vietnam War.

In 1968 our nation was a roiling cauldron of racial unrest, an uprising against the unpopular Vietnam War and a culture clash between Nixon's so-called "Silent Majority" and the newly emerging generation of Baby Boomers who were rebelling against the status quo. The Greatest Generation fought back by electing Nixon. With that victory came more tear gas, more National Guardsman, more beatings, and more killings.

Today, you could substitute the World Pandemic for the Vietnam War. Trump has certainly called himself a "Wartime President" enough times. The Covid-19 virus is a global enemy that seems to have stymied this administration just as surely as the Vietnam War continued to plague each successive White House administration that grappled with the endless death and destruction it wrought. 58,000 American troops were killed by the Vietnam War. Trump seems stymied as to how to stop the spread of our current enemy, which has vanquished almost three times  the amount of those lost in Vietnam--- 145,000 souls to date, with 4 million Americans infected---that we know of. Some scientific experts estimate the number of cases could be ten times what we've officially recorded. That's what I call losing a war.

You could certainly compare the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Blacks alleged to have been murdered at the hands of police to the assasinations of Civil Rights leaders of 1968, as well. I would argue that although the victims of 2020 were ordinary citizens who were not directly involved in today's Civil Rights Movement, their unjust deaths were so egregious they sparked worldwide demonstrations and civil unrest the likes that have not been seen since 1968. 

Nixon advertised himself as "The Law and Order Candidate" in 1968. By August 9, 1974 he was boarding a helicopter to depart the White House after resigning in shame, having been caught in various schemes to cheat the American people out of a free and fair election. Forever dubbed "Tricky Dick," he was considered to be the most corrupt U.S. President ever. That is, until Donald J. Trump was elected 45th President. Trump's schemes to enlist the help of foreign countries like Russia, Ukraine and China, in a bid to throw the Presidential Election in his favor, in retrospect, make Nixon look like a naughty Boy Scout. 

Today, Trump has started to brand himself the Law and Order Candidate. Almost daily he goes into Capslock Caligula mode tweeting LAW & ORDER. He has told us many times how much he admires Nixon. So what does this have to do with Law & Order? Watch carefully how Trump is about to pull a few pages out of Nixon's playbook.

Trump has begun to double down on his threats to send Federal paramilitary forces into major U.S. cities for various reasons. First it was under the guise of "protecting Federal property" and then it was to "protect U.S. citizens." Standing before twin podiums at the White House on July 22nd, he and The Cowardly Lion William G. Barr laid out a nefarious plan to take over the enforcement of law and order in five major U.S. cities, none of these cities having requested it. A.G. Barr has announced he will deploy Customs Border Patrol Agents, DHS Agents, Hostage Rescue Teams and DEA riot squads, among other scary agencies to "restore order" in cities where there are demonstrations. If you were not scared before, America, you should now be very afraid.

For the most part, protesters in Portland, Oregon and other cities have been peaceful. There will always be parasites that attach themselves to peaceful protests, looking to create chaos. Trump's goons are lumping them all together and that's part of the problem fanning the flames of violence. None of these so-called Federal agents have identification. They have no insignias or name badges. They are illegally throwing people into unmarked cars on the streets of our nation and driving them away and we don't know where these goons are taking them. Trump wants the riots. He wants escalation. That way, he "alone can fix it." He envisions everyone cheering him on for doing such a tremendous job of restoring order to our flaming cities. That he set on fire. This is another barrier of lawlessness that Trump has broken down and smashed. Will he use these goon squads to try and disrupt the election? Could this be a dress rehearsal for an unhappy outcome on November 3rd? Like I warned: Be very afraid, America.

It's not likely that anyone will ever want to name 2020 anything resembling The Summer of Love. This summer has just been too embroiled in raging conflict, murder, riots, political mud-slinging and an avalanche of lies and deceit. And likewise, it's impossible to summon any Flower Power during this pandemic pandemonium. There are few flower gardens in the Summer of Plague. To shop in a garden center is to take your life in your hands. The summer of 2020 does, however, certainly resemble the atmosphere of the changing world of 1968. It's my fervent hope that our world has changed enough over the past fifty years, due in no small part to the work of Civil Rights icons like the late John Lewis, that our people will not be fooled this time. This time, I pray they will be wise enough not to fall for fear-mongering and manufactured war. We must not re-elect Donald Trump, a corrupt lawless threat to our constitution. Incredibly, as it turns out, Trump is many times over a worse crook than his hero Richard M. Nixon ever was.