As someone who came of age during the Vietnam protests, I find the parallels between then and now to be most obvious: Now, as then, this violence and eliminationist meme is being fostered by the more extreme conservative pundits. Now, as then, as the Left begins to win the argument by strength of reason and real world events, the disagreement of the Right turns to anger, the anger turns to hatred, and the hatred turns to talk of violence against the Left. Once this meme of violence is firmly established, each of the pundits then seek to "out-do" each other on it, gradually ratcheting up the description of violence, all the while claiming quite disengenuously that they are not actually advocating for this violence. And yet now, as then, there is no other end possible to this; the times may have changed but people remain the same. Then, it was Kent State. Now, it will be somewhere else, but it will be somewhere. And now, as then, the punishment will fall only upon the victims of that violence as the pundits all creep away to hide behind the red, white, and blue of their faux patriotism.
And the chimp smirks because he cannot smile.
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