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Warning: "continue" targeting switch is equivalent to "break". Did you mean to use "continue 2"? in /home/www/iqbal.wiki/languages/LanguageConverter.php on line 773 http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worseBelieve it or not 1968 was worse - Revision history2026-04-06T13:43:36ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.31.0-rc.0http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=23183&oldid=prevShantellHelbig at 20:44, 19 July 20182018-07-19T20:44:59Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 20:44, 19 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.martindale.com/Results.aspx?ft=2&frm=freesearch&lfd=Y&afs=surprise </del>surprise<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">]</del>? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Harmony would be nice </del>- <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br</del>><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I've  [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] </del>been <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains </del>one of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">greatest works about that troubled conflict. (</del>Herr <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">also contributed to the screenplays of </del>two <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">iconic Hollywood movies about </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">war, </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Apocalypse Now</del>" and "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Full Metal Jacket.</del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">)<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"There was such a dense concentration </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American energy there</del>," <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s</del>. "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything </del>more than <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thousand years</del>."<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>I can't think of any other </del>American <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">so much disdain for the folly in which</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in </del>that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">instance, it was engaged</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Another passage in "Dispatches" also came </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mind last week. Herr describes </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and ended up caught in a fire-fight</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hugging the ground for hours, "listening to </del>it <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">going on, </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">moaning and whining and the dull repetitions </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whump whump whump </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">dit dit dit, listening to </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and thinking 'Oh my God</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this f-ing thing is </del>on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://Www.britannica.com/search?query=</del>demanded <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">demanded] </del>by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">tolerant than it was a half century ago </del>- <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968, the nation </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">still adjusting to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">U</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">S. Supreme Court's </del>wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans as </del>a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">there no longer was a place for human servitude</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And, in doing so, changed the nation</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Memphis church on April 3</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1968</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Martin Luther King Jr</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">reflected on the possibility of his own death</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had  [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm] </del>been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn/cam-nang-du</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] over the world</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br</ins>><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But bear in mind that it has always </ins>been <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>I've been thinking about </ins>one of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">my favorite 1960s writers, </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael </ins>Herr<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, who died </ins>two <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">weeks ago. He covered </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Vietnam War for </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Esquire</ins>" <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in 1967-68, </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his book, </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dispatches,</ins>" <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(Herr also [http://www.ehow</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">com/search.html?s=contributed contributed] to the screenplays </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">two iconic Hollywood movies about the war</ins>, "<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket</ins>."<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">)<br><br>"Dispatches" is </ins>more than a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s</ins>. "American and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">essentially adolescent</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">if </ins>that <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"</ins><br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I can't think of any other American writer who has managed </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">folly in which</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in that instance</ins>, it <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first time he went on a mission with a company </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Marines, </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ended up caught in </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">fire-fight</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hugging the ground for hours</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is </ins>on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn] tolerant than it </ins>was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a half century ago - when </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's </ins>wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.ehow.com/search.html?s=Americans Americans] as </ins>a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm] there no longer was </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">place for human servitude. And</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in doing so</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">changed the nation</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Nor in the 1960s</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">reflected on the possibility of his own death</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had </ins>been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>ShantellHelbighttp://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=23115&oldid=prevGregorioNevile at 17:01, 19 July 20182018-07-19T17:01:40Z<p></p>
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<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 17:01, 19 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains </del>one of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (</del>Herr <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">also contributed to the screenplays of </del>two <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">iconic Hollywood movies about </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">war, </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Apocalypse Now</del>" and "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Full Metal Jacket</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a </del>war <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">memoir</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">however</del>. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] the ground for hours, </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of </del>whump whump whump <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </del>dit dit dit, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging</del>, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here</del>'s <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">last week's loop</del>: <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground </del>by police <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">officers then shot to death</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Wednesday</del>, "dit <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">dit </del>dit," <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">another black man</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this time in Minnesota</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shot and killed </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">front seat </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seat beside him</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">her young daughter </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the back seat. Thursday night</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"dit whump dit</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://dictionary.Reference.com/browse/vengeful%20rooftop?s=ts vengeful rooftop] sniper</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">disturbingly graphic detail via cable news </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">social media</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?</del><br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And all this </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">context </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in the midst of </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">presidential campaign running off </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">tracks</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">with one candidate in particular displaying an ability </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">loop, are we back in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?</del><br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Not likely</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Fifty years have indeed changed America</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The country is more diverse</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ethnically</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">racially and religiously</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(While </del>at the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">same time the problem of black poverty</del>, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">for that matter white poverty</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seems more intractable than ever</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">noise generated by polarizing politicians</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the United States is more tolerant than it was </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation was still adjusting to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nearly one</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">third of American states had such laws on their books</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and the trend is expected </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">expand as millennials</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">all Americans about race</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">reach marriage age</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Reminded by </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Iraq invasion </del>of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">consequences </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground" scenarios for remaking </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world in their own image</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The fact that this skepticism</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">absence of </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">draft</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is shared across </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<</del>br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Washington and corporate board rooms</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">that have increased income inequality </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">levels not seen since </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1920s. Americans as a people</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">many </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">them anyway</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">are more self-aware and thoughtful </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this second decade of </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">21st century than has been the case for some decades</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">great again</del>" <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">by turning back </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clock to the imagined splendor of an era </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shouting and posturing</del>, there <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">will come </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">great moment of clarity</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">diverse population of America votes</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Speaking of clarifying moments </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American history</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in his first speech as president in March 1861</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first Republican president </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the United States beseeched </del>his <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But just two and a half years later, </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a November 1863 address at Gettysburg</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">History was not on a loop </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther </del>King <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] </del>recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.martindale.com/Results.aspx?ft=2&frm=freesearch&lfd=Y&afs=surprise </ins>surprise<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">]</ins>? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] been thinking about </ins>one of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael </ins>Herr<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, who died </ins>two <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">weeks ago. He covered </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Vietnam War for </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Esquire</ins>" <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in 1967-68, </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his book, </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the </ins>war, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however</ins>. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, </ins>"whump whump whump<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "</ins>dit dit dit,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" another black man, this time in Minnesota</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shot </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver</ins>'s <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">license [http</ins>:<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">//Www.britannica.com/search?query=demanded demanded] </ins>by <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a </ins>police <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Thursday night</ins>, "dit <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whump </ins>dit," <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">streets </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">America?<br><br>And all this </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice</ins>, in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a nation beset by repeated acts of violence</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">both random and targeted</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in the midst of </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">presidential campaign running off the tracks</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">with one candidate </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">discord as possible</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">If history is on a loop, are we back </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ethnically, racially and religiously. There is </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">problem of black poverty</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">half century ago - when </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.</ins><br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Virginia</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued the previous June</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today </ins>at <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least 12 percent of all new marriages in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States unite interracial couples</ins>, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the trend is expected to expand as millennials</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Reminded by </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs</ins>, a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are again skeptical of "boots on </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground" scenarios for remaking </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">absence of a draft</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is shared across </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">generational spectrum - and is</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to some extent</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bipartisan </ins>- <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is another important difference between 1968 and today</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">that have increased income inequality </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">many </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">them anyway</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It's true that </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">presumptive presidential candidate </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">party </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clock to </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But come November</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">after all </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shouting and posturing, there will come </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">great moment of clarity</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">diverse population of America votes.<</ins>br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">March 1861</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen </ins>to the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mean the end </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">slavery</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">at least </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">short run</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">new birth of freedom,</ins>" <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">carrying on and transforming </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">meaning </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American experiment</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in which </ins>there <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">no longer was </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">place for human servitude. And, in doing so</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">changed </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Nor </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1968</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">possibility </ins>of his <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">own death</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm] been nearly killed by a deranged assailant </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1958</ins>, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"I wouldn't have been around here </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960," </ins>King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>GregorioNevilehttp://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=23092&oldid=prevCarinShipley0 at 15:36, 19 July 20182018-07-19T15:36:47Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 15:36, 19 July 2018</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html vtr.org.vn] we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">like 1968</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions</del>, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of </del>whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">idea </del>that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and the notion </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">gay marriage [http://dict</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Leo.org/?search=unimaginable unimaginable].<br><br>In 1968</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation was still adjusting </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Virginia," issued the previous June</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until </del>then, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nearly one-third </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American states had such laws </del>on <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States unite interracial couples</del>, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the trend </del>is <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">expected </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">expand as millennials</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">international affairs</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are again skeptical </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"boots on </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground" scenarios for remaking </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world in their own image</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The fact </del>that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this skepticism, even in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">absence </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a draft, is shared across </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">generational spectrum - and is, </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">today</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1920s. Americans as a people, many </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">them anyway</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">are more self-aware and thoughtful </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this second decade </del>of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">21st century than has been </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">case for some decades</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><</del>br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">great again</del>" <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">by turning back </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clock to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">after all the [http://Www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Newsweek</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">com/search/site/shouting shouting] and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<</del>br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Speaking of clarifying moments </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American history, </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his first speech as president in March 1861, </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first Republican president </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">That did not</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a November 1863 address at Gettysburg</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln proclaimed a </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And, in doing so, changed the nation</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King </del>recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">we seem to be reliving</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">A nation of several hundred million people</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">drawn from all over the world</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Creeds differ</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">values clash; rival factions</ins>, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of </ins>whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://dictionary.Reference.com/browse/vengeful%20rooftop?s=ts </ins>vengeful rooftop<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">] </ins>sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June, which overturned laws </ins>that <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">banned interracial marriage. Until then</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nearly one-third </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American states had such laws on their books</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">trend is expected </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a lesson learned and </ins>then <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">forgotten after Vietnam</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are again skeptical </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"boots </ins>on <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">absence of a draft</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is shared across the generational spectrum - </ins>and is<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">some extent</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Washington and corporate board rooms</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">21st century than has been </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">case for some decades</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>It's true </ins>that the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">presumptive presidential candidate </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">party of Abraham Lincoln wants </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ethnic homogeneity</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But come November, after all the shouting </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clarifying moments in American history</ins>, in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">looming Civil War</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<</ins>br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">new birth of freedom,</ins>" <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">carrying on and transforming </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">meaning of </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American experiment</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in which there no longer was a place for human servitude</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And, in doing so, changed the nation</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><</ins>br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">History was not on a loop </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1860s.<br><br>Nor </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his own death</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"I wouldn't have been around here </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960</ins>," <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">King  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn] </ins>recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>CarinShipley0http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=23064&oldid=prevBeatrisWallen59 at 13:40, 19 July 20182018-07-19T13:40:34Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 13:40, 19 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://En.Search.Wordpress.com/?q=</del>hugging <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hugging] </del>the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] </del>consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] </del>this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] </del>America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] </ins>we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] </ins>more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://dict.Leo.org/?search=unimaginable </ins>unimaginable<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">]</ins>.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://Www.Newsweek.com/search/site/</ins>shouting <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shouting] </ins>and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>BeatrisWallen59http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=23030&oldid=prevDaleBianco88511 at 11:57, 19 July 20182018-07-19T11:57:31Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 11:57, 19 July 2018</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] bloody mayhem in the streets</del>, 1968 is <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of </del>bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.martindale.com/Results.aspx?ft=2&frm=freesearch&lfd=Y&afs=decided decided] </del>who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hugging the ground for </del>hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] for that matter white poverty</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seems more intractable than ever</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">) Although it</del>'s <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">sometimes hard to remember with all </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">noise generated by polarizing politicians</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea </del>that <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay </del>marriage <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">unimaginable</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the nation was still adjusting to the U</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws that banned interracial </del>marriage. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then, nearly one-third </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American states had such laws on their books</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples</del>, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the trend is expected to expand as millennials</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Iraq invasion of </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">consequences of national hubris </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The fact that this skepticism</del>, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen </del>to the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"better angels </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">their nature" </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">avoid the looming Civil War</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">That did not</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln assured Southerners, mean </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">end of slavery</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">at least in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">short run</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later</del>, in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a November 1863 address at Gettysburg</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">meaning </del>of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1860s</del>.<br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church </del>on <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">April 3</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1968</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Martin Luther King Jr. reflected </del>on the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">possibility </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his own death. He had been nearly killed by </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">deranged assailant </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1958</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and he [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Houzz.com/?search=explained explained] why he </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">glad to have survived - and </del>not <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">just because he loved life</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"I wouldn't have been around here </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960," </del>King <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">recalled, "when students all over </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">South started sitting in at lunch counters</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" What those students were doing</del>, he <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">said, </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">making America great again by setting out </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">challenge </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the American dream</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and taking </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whole nation back to </del>those <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the Constitution.</del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Lincoln and King lived </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">difficult times</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">as we do</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It is in just such eras </del>that Americans have <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] </del>rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>This year</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">like </ins>1968<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </ins>is <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">certainly one of </ins>bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">decided </ins>who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://En.Search.Wordpress.com/?q=hugging hugging] the ground for </ins>hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago </ins>- <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the nation was still adjusting to the U</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">S. Supreme Court</ins>'s <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws </ins>that <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">banned interracial </ins>marriage. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">reach </ins>marriage <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">age</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the  [http://www</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] consequences of national hubris in international affairs</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a lesson learned </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then forgotten after Vietnam</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are again skeptical </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"boots on </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground" scenarios for remaking </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">their own image. The fact that  [http://www.vtr.org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] this skepticism</ins>, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] America "great again" by turning back </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clock </ins>to the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">imagined splendor of an era </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">racial </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ethnic homogeneity</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But come November</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">after all </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shouting and posturing</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">there will come a great moment of clarity, when </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">diverse population of America votes</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Speaking of clarifying moments in American history</ins>, in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his first speech as president in March 1861</ins>, the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first Republican president </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"better angels of their nature" and avoid </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run</ins>.<br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br>His appeal fell </ins>on <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">deaf ears. But just two and a half years later</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying </ins>on <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and transforming </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">meaning </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the American experiment, in which there no longer was </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">place for human servitude. And, </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">doing so</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">changed the nation</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>History </ins>was not <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">on a loop in the 1860s</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Nor </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther </ins>King <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Jr. reflected on </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">possibility of his own death</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and he explained why </ins>he was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">glad </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">have survived - </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" King recalled, "when students all over </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">South started sitting in at lunch counters." What </ins>those <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">change its injustices: </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">They were really standing up for the best </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the American dream</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras </ins>that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>DaleBianco88511http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=22709&oldid=prevDantePaspalis7 at 18:56, 18 July 20182018-07-18T18:56:51Z<p></p>
<table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface">
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<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 18:56, 18 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>This year</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">like </del>1968<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </del>is <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">certainly one of </del>bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lich</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] killed </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">front </del>seat <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">of his car as</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his girlfriend said</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">he tried to produce the driver's license demanded </del>by a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">her young daughter </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media</del>. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago </del>- <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nang</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">du-lich-bac-kinh-5</del>-ngay-4-dem.html <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">tour bắc kinh </del>từ <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hà nội</del>] <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">impossibly remote</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968, </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">still adjusting to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial </del>marriage. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">trend is expected to expand as millennials</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned of all Americans about race, reach </del>marriage <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">age</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the consequences </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">national hubris </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">international affairs</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a lesson learned </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then forgotten after Vietnam</del>, Americans <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">are again skeptical </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"boots on </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground" scenarios </del>for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[https://Www.Google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=decades&btnI=lucky decades]</del>.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh] in which there no longer was </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">place for human servitude. And</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in doing so</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">changed </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>History was not on </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">loop </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he </del>explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội] bloody mayhem in the streets</ins>, 1968 is <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of </ins>bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.martindale.com/Results.aspx?ft=2&frm=freesearch&lfd=Y&afs=</ins>decided <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">decided] </ins>who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer </ins>-- <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">back </ins>seat<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. Thursday night</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"dit whump dit</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered </ins>by a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">brought home </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">disturbingly graphic detail via cable news </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">social media</ins>. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bac</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">kinh</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">5</ins>-ngay-4-dem.html <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm </ins>từ <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Hà Nội</ins>] <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">for that matter white poverty</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seems more intractable than ever</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it </ins>was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a half century ago - when </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">notion of gay </ins>marriage <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">unimaginable</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the nation was still adjusting to the U.S</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws that banned interracial </ins>marriage. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then, nearly one-third </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">all new marriages </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the United States unite interracial couples</ins>, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the trend is expected to expand as millennials</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned of all </ins>Americans <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios </ins>for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">decades</ins>.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in which there no longer was a place for human servitude</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And, in doing so, changed the nation</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Memphis church on April 3</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1968</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">possibility of his own death</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had been nearly killed by </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">deranged assailant </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1958, and he [http://www</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Houzz</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">com/?search=</ins>explained <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">explained] </ins>why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] </ins>rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>DantePaspalis7http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=22678&oldid=prevRogelioKzk at 17:17, 18 July 20182018-07-18T17:17:12Z<p></p>
<table class="diff diff-contentalign-left" data-mw="interface">
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<col class="diff-marker" />
<col class="diff-content" />
<tr class="diff-title" lang="en">
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 17:17, 18 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
<td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno">Line 1:</td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://Mommysavers.com/?s=</del>peaceable <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">peaceable] </del>kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] Herr</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "</del>Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer </del>-- <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">back </del>seat<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. Thursday night</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"dit whump dit</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered </del>by a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vengeful rooftop sniper</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seven others wounded</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Senseless death of innocent victims</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">social media</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Is it apocalypse now in the streets </del>of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial </del>marriage. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">trend is expected to expand as millennials</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least [http://pixabay</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">com/en/new</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">zealand-waterfall-nature-concerned/ concerned] </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">all Americans about race, reach marriage age</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Reminded by </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a lesson learned </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then forgotten after Vietnam</del>, Americans <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">are again skeptical of "boots on </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground" scenarios for remaking </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">world </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">their own image. The fact that this skepticism</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even in the absence of </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">draft</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Washington and corporate board rooms</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">that have increased income inequality </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">many of them anyway, are more self-aware </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the  [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn</del>] <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">case for some decades</del>.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] posturing</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">there will come a great moment </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clarity, when </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first Republican president </del>of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">avoid the looming Civil War. That did not</del>, Lincoln <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">assured Southerners</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mean </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">end </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">slavery</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">at least in the short run</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, </del>in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr, who died two weeks ago</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">68, and his book</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"</ins>Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lich</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] killed </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">front </ins>seat <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">of his car as</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his girlfriend said</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">he tried to produce the driver's license demanded </ins>by a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">her young daughter in the back seat</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Thursday night, "dit whump dit</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" five Dallas policemen targeted </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets </ins>of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] impossibly remote</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">notion of gay </ins>marriage <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">unimaginable</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" issued </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">previous June</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Until then, nearly one</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">third </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American states had such laws on their books</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States unite interracial couples</ins>, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the trend is expected to expand as millennials</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">least concerned of all </ins>Americans <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Iraq invasion of </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">consequences of national hubris </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">international affairs</ins>, a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The fact that this skepticism, even </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is</ins>, to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">some extent</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some [https://Www</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Google</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=decades&btnI=lucky decades</ins>].<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the first Republican president </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mean </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">end </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">slavery, at least in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg</ins>, Lincoln <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">proclaimed a "new birth of freedom</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" carrying on and transforming </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">meaning </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the American experiment</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] </ins>in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>RogelioKzkhttp://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=22503&oldid=prevMarcelaHowe18 at 06:51, 18 July 20182018-07-18T06:51:26Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 06:51, 18 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr, who died two weeks ago</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">68, and his book, "Dispatches</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(Herr also contributed to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"Apocalypse Now" </del>and "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Full Metal Jacket.</del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">)<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It offers genuine insight into American history and </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American character. "There was such a dense concentration </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American energy there</del>," <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s</del>. "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br</del>><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I can't think of any other </del>American <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which</del>, in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">that instance</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">it was engaged.</del><br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Another passage in "Dispatches" also came </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mind last week. Herr describes </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html vtr.org.vn] </del>first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://wideinfo.org/?s=religiously religiously]</del>. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] affairs</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a lesson learned </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then forgotten after Vietnam</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important </del>difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">case for some decades</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But come November, after all </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clarity, when </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">diverse population </del>of America <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">votes.<br><br>Speaking </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But just two and a half years later</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">November 1863 address at Gettysburg</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the </del>American <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">experiment</del>, in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">doing so</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">changed </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1860s.<br><br>Nor in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960s</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In a Memphis church on April 3</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1968</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">possibility of his own death</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had been nearly killed by </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">deranged assailant </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1958</del>, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">he explained why he </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"I wouldn't have been around here </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" </del>King <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">recalled, "when students all over </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">South started sitting in at lunch counters</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" What those students were doing</del>, he <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">said, </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">making America great again by setting out </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">challenge </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">change its injustices: </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">They were really standing up for the best </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the American dream</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and taking </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution</del>."<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Lincoln </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">King lived </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">difficult times</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">refashioned </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">best traditions bound up in our national experience</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Can we resolve </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the  [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh] </del>years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://Mommysavers.com/?s=</ins>peaceable <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">peaceable] </ins>kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] Herr</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">who died two weeks ago</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He covered </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68</ins>, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his book, </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dispatches,</ins>" <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(Herr also contributed to </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">screenplays </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">two iconic Hollywood movies about the war</ins>, "<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket</ins>."<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">)<br</ins>><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into </ins>American <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" Herr wrote of Vietnam </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."</ins><br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I can't think of any other American writer who has managed </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr describes the </ins>first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">religiously</ins>. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://pixabay.com/en/new-zealand-waterfall-nature-</ins>concerned<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">/ concerned] </ins>of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The fact that this skepticism</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to some extent</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">bipartisan - is another important </ins>difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn] case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">presumptive presidential candidate </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">party </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Abraham Lincoln wants to make </ins>America <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">after all </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">shouting and  [http://www.vtr</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">html du lịch Bắc Kinh] posturing</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">there will come </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">great moment of clarity</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when the diverse population </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">America votes.<br><br>Speaking </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">clarifying moments in </ins>American <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">history</ins>, in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his first speech as president </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">March 1861</ins>, the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first Republican president of </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">looming Civil War</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mean the end of slavery</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">at least in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But just two and </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">half years later, </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom</ins>,<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" carrying on </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer </ins>was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">History was not on a loop </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Martin Luther </ins>King <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Jr. reflected on </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">possibility of his own death</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and he explained why </ins>he was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">glad </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">have survived - </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">not just because he loved life.<br><br></ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I wouldn't have been around here </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1960," King recalled</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"when students all over </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">South started sitting in at lunch counters</ins>." <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the American dream</ins>, and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">taking </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"</ins><br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Lincoln and King lived </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">difficult times, as we do</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Can we resolve in the </ins>years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>MarcelaHowe18http://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=22407&oldid=prevHermineFeaster at 02:04, 18 July 20182018-07-18T02:04:54Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 02:04, 18 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for </del> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.Shewrites.com/main/search/search?q=</del>ability <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ability] </del>to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] </del>1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">tour bắc kinh từ hà nội</del>] <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the </del>years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation, discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission.<br><br>I've been thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers, the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago. He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict. (Herr also contributed to the screenplays of two iconic Hollywood movies about the war, "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket.")<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into American history and the American character. "There was such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. "American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years."<br><br>I can't think of any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for the folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week. Herr describes the  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first time he went on a mission with a company of Marines, and ended up caught in a fire-fight, hugging the ground for </ins>hours, "listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://wideinfo.org/?s=</ins>religiously <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">religiously]</ins>. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in 1968. (While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] </ins>affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. Americans as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the </ins> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">du lịch Bắc Kinh</ins>] years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>HermineFeasterhttp://iqbal.wiki/index.php?title=Believe_it_or_not_1968_was_worse&diff=22245&oldid=prevVictoria13U at 18:48, 17 July 20182018-07-17T18:48:09Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #fff; color: #222; text-align: center;">Revision as of 18:48, 17 July 2018</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn/cam</del>-<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">org.vn] become </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">peaceable kingdom</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a beloved community. Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">priorities compete</del>.<br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Harmony would be nice - and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe. But bear in mind that it has always </del>been <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as a nation</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">discarding old assumptions and redefining identity and mission</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>I've been thinking about </del>one of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">my favorite 1960s writers, </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael </del>Herr<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, who died </del>two <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">weeks ago. He covered </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Vietnam War for </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Esquire</del>" <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in 1967-68, </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">his book, </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dispatches,</del>" <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">remains one of the greatest works about that troubled conflict</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(Herr also contributed to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">screenplays </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">two iconic Hollywood movies about the war</del>, "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Apocalypse Now</del>" and "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Full Metal Jacket.")</del><br><br><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however. It offers genuine insight into </del>American <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">history and </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American character. "There </del>was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">such a dense concentration of American energy there," Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"<br><br>I can't think </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">any other American writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country </del>- <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and so much disdain for </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">folly in which, in that instance, it was engaged.<br><br>Another passage </del> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội</del>] <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">in </del>"<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dispatches" also came </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mind last week. Herr describes </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first time he went on a mission with a company </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Marines</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and ended up caught in </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">fire-fight</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hugging the ground for hours</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">"listening to it going on, the moaning and whining and the dull repetitions of whump whump whump and dit dit dit, listening to a boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging, and thinking 'Oh my God, this f-ing thing is </del>on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[https://Www.herfeed.com/?s=</del>context <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">context] </del>of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an ability to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1968</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(While at the same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty, seems more intractable than ever</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">noise generated by polarizing politicians</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the United States is </del>more <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">tolerant </del>than <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">it </del>was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.Traveldescribe.com/?s=Americans Americans] </del>as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color: #222; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>By Maurice Isserman<br><br>July 12 (Reuters) - According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.<br><br>This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change. And why is that a surprise? Some things don't change. A nation of several hundred million people, drawn from all over the world, can never exactly <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">become a peaceable kingdom, a beloved community</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Creeds differ, values clash; rival factions, communities and priorities compete.<br><br>Harmony would be nice </ins>- <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and an end to bloodshed is a goal to which most Americans can subscribe</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">But bear in mind that it has always been through conflict that Americans have decided who they are as </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nation</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">discarding old assumptions and redefining identity </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mission</ins>.<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I've </ins>been <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thinking about one of my favorite 1960s writers</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the remarkable Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr, who died two weeks ago</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He covered the Vietnam War for "Esquire" in 1967-68, and his book, "Dispatches," remains </ins>one of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">greatest works about that troubled conflict. (</ins>Herr <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">also contributed to the screenplays of </ins>two <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">iconic Hollywood movies about </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">war, </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Apocalypse Now</ins>" and "<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Full Metal Jacket.</ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">)<br><br>"Dispatches" is more than a war memoir, however</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It offers genuine insight into American history and </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American character. "There was such a dense concentration </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American energy there</ins>," <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr wrote of Vietnam in the late 1960s. </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">American </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years.</ins>"<br><br><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">I can't think of any other </ins>American <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">writer who has managed to pack into one sentence so much love for his country - and so much disdain for </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">folly in which, in that instance, it </ins>was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">engaged</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"><br><br>Another passage in "Dispatches" also came to mind last week</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Herr describes the first time he went on a mission with a company </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Marines, and ended up caught in a fire</ins>-<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">fight, hugging </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ground for </ins> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vtr.org.vn</ins>] <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">hours, </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">listening </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">it going on, </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">moaning and whining and the dull repetitions </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">whump whump whump and dit dit dit</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">listening to </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">boy who'd somehow broken his thumb sobbing and gagging</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and thinking 'Oh my God</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">this f-ing thing is </ins>on a loop!...'"<br><br>Here's last week's loop: Tuesday, "whump whump whump," black man in Louisiana pinned to the ground by police officers then shot to death. Wednesday, "dit dit dit," another black man, this time in Minnesota, shot and killed in the front seat of his car as, his girlfriend said, he tried to produce the driver's license demanded by a police officer -- she sat in the seat beside him, her young daughter in the back seat. Thursday night, "dit whump dit," five Dallas policemen targeted and murdered by a vengeful rooftop sniper, seven others wounded. Senseless death of innocent victims, brought home in disturbingly graphic detail via cable news and social media. Is it apocalypse now in the streets of America?<br><br>And all this in the context of recent years of fervent protest over issues of racial injustice, in a nation beset by repeated acts of violence, both random and targeted, in the midst of a presidential campaign running off the tracks, with one candidate in particular displaying an <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[http://www.Shewrites.com/main/search/search?q=</ins>ability <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ability] </ins>to stir up as much rancor and discord as possible.<br><br>If history is on a loop, are we back in the world of "Dispatches"? Is this 1968 redux? Do we really have to sit through this movie again?<br><br>Not likely. Fifty years have indeed changed America. The country is more diverse, ethnically, racially and religiously. There is a far more substantial black middle class than in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] 1968</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">(While at </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">same time the problem of black poverty, and for that matter white poverty</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">seems </ins>more <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">intractable </ins>than <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ever.) Although it's sometimes hard to remember with all the noise generated by polarizing politicians, the United States is more tolerant than it </ins>was a half century ago - when the idea that there would someday be a black president seemed impossibly remote, and the notion of gay marriage unimaginable.<br><br>In 1968, the nation was still adjusting to the U.S. Supreme Court's wonderfully named decision "Loving v. Virginia," issued the previous June, which overturned laws that banned interracial marriage. Until then, nearly one-third of American states had such laws on their books. Today at least 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States unite interracial couples, and the trend is expected to expand as millennials, least concerned of all Americans about race, reach marriage age.<br><br>Reminded by the Iraq invasion of the consequences of national hubris in international affairs, a lesson learned and then forgotten after Vietnam, Americans are again skeptical of "boots on the ground" scenarios for remaking the world in their own image. The fact that this skepticism, even in the absence of a draft, is shared across the generational spectrum - and is, to some extent, bipartisan - is another important difference between 1968 and today.<br><br>Americans are also asking important questions about economic policies and decisions taken in Washington and corporate board rooms, that have increased income inequality to levels not seen since the 1920s. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Americans </ins>as a people, many of them anyway, are more self-aware and thoughtful in this second decade of the 21st century than has been the case for some decades.<br><br>It's true that the presumptive presidential candidate of the party of Abraham Lincoln wants to make America "great again" by turning back the clock to the imagined splendor of an era of racial and ethnic homogeneity. But come November, after all the shouting and posturing, there will come a great moment of clarity, when the diverse population of America votes.<br><br>Speaking of clarifying moments in American history, in his first speech as president in March 1861, the first Republican president of the United States beseeched his fellow countrymen to listen to the "better angels of their nature" and avoid the looming Civil War. That did not, Lincoln assured Southerners, mean the end of slavery, at least in the short run.<br><br>His appeal fell on deaf ears. But just two and a half years later, in a November 1863 address at Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a "new birth of freedom," carrying on and transforming the meaning of the American experiment, in which there no longer was a place for human servitude. And, in doing so, changed the nation.<br><br>History was not on a loop in the 1860s.<br><br>Nor in the 1960s. In a Memphis church on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the possibility of his own death. He had been nearly killed by a deranged assailant in 1958, and he explained why he was glad to have survived - and not just because he loved life.<br><br>"I wouldn't have been around here in 1960," King recalled, "when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters." What those students were doing, he said, was making America great again by setting out to challenge and change its injustices: "They were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."<br><br>Lincoln and King lived in difficult times, as we do. It is in just such eras that Americans have rediscovered and refashioned the best traditions bound up in our national <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline"> [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] </ins>experience.<br><br>Can we resolve in the years that follow the tumultuous election year of 2016 to listen to the better angels of our nature, and turn the dense concentration of American energy away from waste and pain - and use it instead to light our world? (Maurice Isserman)<br><br>Advertisement</div></td></tr>
</table>Victoria13U