"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"
William Wordsworth, The French Revolution as it Appeared to its Enthusiasts at its Commencement, 1809
1969
We had discovered a great injustice.
We had clarity. We were sure we understood the situation. Our cause was just and the evil we opposed was so evident to us. The generation in power, having won World War II, was now carrying out an unjust war. They were lying to us. They said the war in Vietnam was in self-defense --dominos -- but they were pursuing a colonial agenda. They were wantonly killing helpless people, dropping bombs and celebrating body counts. It was wrong. And our government was trying to draft us.
Hell, no.
We could protest. The universities were close at hand and complicit, so we protested there. End ROTC!
Many young people today think they have uncovered a great injustice and a great hypocrisy. The generation in power is allied with a country whose hands are not as clean as they had been taught to believe. Trump is hopeless, but Biden knows better and is doing it anyway, so put pressure on Biden. Protest at the universities. They are close at hand and complicit. Divest!
I do not trivialize my earnest sincerity in 1969, nor the earnest sincerity of young protesters today. I am acknowledging it. There is nothing trivial about the passion of young people to be part of something great and good, nor indignation over the hypocrisy of their elders, nor of the blossoming power of young adulthood, nor of springtime. I was there.
Everything was new and exciting. I was healthy. Women found me attractive. I was letting my hair grow longer. I could get a red fist silk-screened on a T-shirt for free at a table in Harvard Yard. A size-medium tee shirt fit comfortably, and I wore it to classes under a sport-coat. I was sure that the pressure we were bringing on Nixon would end the war soon. We were changing the world. It was springtime and warm after a long, long winter. Best time in my life.
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I was unfamiliar with that Wordsworth poem. Thank you.
I recall that era well; and I was, I suppose, as much a Libra then as now: I was in ROTC and did protests, and went Clean-for-Gene, and did protests, and shined my Army boots. Decades later, I did my job in uniform, and on weekends, protested (in mufti) against the pending invasion of Iraq. I have a great deal of sympathy for protesters who decry the horror of Gaza--so long as they decry the atrocities of October 7 and the vile Hamas itself.
Absolute, Manichean certainty is deadly.
It's a reason the French Revolution ultimately failed and consumed so many of its leading lights.
"We had clarity. We were sure we understood the situation. Our cause was just and the evil we opposed was so evident to us." Amen! I deeply understand that, and I remember it well; losing that certainty is a huge, huge loss*. But that loss is necessary for us to mature individually and as a society.
Nice pic, to. Thanks.
*"We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun...." (Terry Jacks/Rod McKuen/Jacques Brel)
In 1968 I remember favoring violence to stop the war. I was not alone.