Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming

[AthenaAwakened]

Four Dead in Ohio

 

[skepticalbip]

Was the OP meant as a memorial to Kent State or is it just that you are a Neil Young fan?

 

[untermensche]

How many people of a similar age were we killing in Vietnam at the time?

Or do those people we were killing in Vietnam count as people?

Sure, the outrage was four students.

Those were lives that mattered.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

How many people of a similar age were we killing in Vietnam at the time?

Or do those people we were killing in Vietnam count as people?

Sure, the outrage was four students.

Those were lives that mattered.

Do we remember the students or do we remember the song?
Or maybe we remember the shooting, as if real people didn't die, just symbols?
Maybe there is no tragedy until the right people die. But even then, do we mourn the death of the people or our own illusions

 

[laughing dog]

How many people of a similar age were we killing in Vietnam at the time?

Or do those people we were killing in Vietnam count as people?

Sure, the outrage was four students.

Those were lives that mattered.

FFS, there was enough outrage to go around. Those unfortunate four were symbols of that outrage.

 

[arkirk]

How many people of a similar age were we killing in Vietnam at the time?

Or do those people we were killing in Vietnam count as people?

Sure, the outrage was four students.

Those were lives that mattered.

Do we remember the students or do we remember the song?
Or maybe we remember the shooting, as if real people didn't die, just symbols?
Maybe there is no tragedy until the right people die. But even then, do we mourn the death of the people or our own illusions

That's the problem with ALL of the senseless killing we see, from Ferguson to Kabul. If we divorce ourselves from some in order to somehow feel closer to others, we all do some discounting of the value of some human lives. In the process however, we discount ALL human life. That is why we will never perhaps get it right and understand that fairness is the necessary ingredient when dealing with those we know and those we don't. It means that meritocracy and just deserts are poor substitutes for empathy and compassion.

Everybody wants a simple life, free of excessive worry and it is that which one cannot ever hope to have. Our culture seems to aggravate the already natural frictions between people and some have learned to use both for profit and their own simplification of life. We will inevitably have frictions, but there has to be a better way to smooth things out than the killings we seem to always be seeing. In Kent State. What if the soldiers had gone there not with rifles, but perhaps something to eat or something to let the kids know they understood what they were saying? Neil Young characterized the situation beautifully.

 

[untermensche]

How many people of a similar age were we killing in Vietnam at the time?

Or do those people we were killing in Vietnam count as people?

Sure, the outrage was four students.

Those were lives that mattered.

Do we remember the students or do we remember the song?
Or maybe we remember the shooting, as if real people didn't die, just symbols?
Maybe there is no tragedy until the right people die. But even then, do we mourn the death of the people or our own illusions

These students became a symbol that others joined together around, mainly in the anti-war movement.

It was huge and turned the country.

But ultimately, when it was Vietnamese or Cambodian students being killed by the thousands, Americans didn't care very much.

 

[skepticalbip]

Do we remember the students or do we remember the song?
Or maybe we remember the shooting, as if real people didn't die, just symbols?
Maybe there is no tragedy until the right people die. But even then, do we mourn the death of the people or our own illusions

These students became a symbol that others joined together around, mainly in the anti-war movement.

It was huge and turned the country.

The anti-war movement protests declined, not increased, after that. Not because of the incident but because the US had already began reducing our involvement (Victimization of the war) starting in 1969 and the change in how the draft was conducted to a risk of being called up only once a one year lottery. After the draft was ended in Jan. 1973, the protest movement petered out.

But ultimately, when it was Vietnamese or Cambodian students being killed by the thousands, Americans didn't care very much.

When, where, and why were thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian students killed?

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

I Am Curious to the Reaction if This Had Been The Report

We have received word of an armed clash at Kent State University. Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on demonstrating students, killing four. Student militia returned the fire killing twelve guardsmen and wounding twenty and routing the National Guard. The City of Kent is now under control of the Kent Student Militia, the police have been disarmed and reduced to traffic patrols.

Eberhard Boedigheimer, commander of the Kent Student Militia declared today, "Let the pigs understand that the days of going limp, the days of sitting passively while we are beaten are over. We will meet force with force, violence with violence. We are armed and we will defend ourselves."

Student militias paraded in Berkeley, California and Madison, Wisconsin. In the latter city five thousand armed students paraded, accompanied by homemade armored vehicles, anti-aircraft weapons and a battery of artillery.

In every case the armed students cited the Second Amendment to the Constitution and the right of the citizen to 'Keep and Bear Arms."

Eldarion Lathria

(BTW Eberhard Boedigheimer is fictional)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, a bunch of middle class college kids with guns. I'll be sure to get around to being terrified any day now.

 

[untermensche]

These students became a symbol that others joined together around, mainly in the anti-war movement.

It was huge and turned the country.

The anti-war movement protests declined, not increased, after that. Not because of the incident but because the US had already began reducing our involvement (Victimization of the war) starting in 1969 and the change in how the draft was conducted to a risk of being called up only once a one year lottery. After the draft was ended in Jan. 1973, the protest movement petered out.

I'm talking about the immediate aftermath in 1970. That was huge.

And the Kent State protests were not about Vietnam. They were about Cambodia. And in 1970 Americans thought the war was winding down but it was spreading into Cambodia. This re-energized the anti-war movement.

But you are right about the effect the draft had on the anti-war movement. It was a major factor there were so many young people out protesting in the streets.

When, where, and why were thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian students killed?

Do you think massive carpet bombing that killed millions didn't kill any students?

 

[skepticalbip]

The anti-war movement protests declined, not increased, after that. Not because of the incident but because the US had already began reducing our involvement (Victimization of the war) starting in 1969 and the change in how the draft was conducted to a risk of being called up only once a one year lottery. After the draft was ended in Jan. 1973, the protest movement petered out.

I'm talking about the immediate aftermath in 1970. That was huge.

And the Kent State protests were not about Vietnam. They were about Cambodia. And in 1970 Americans thought the war was winding down but it was spreading into Cambodia. This re-energized the anti-war movement.

But you are right about the effect the draft had on the anti-war movement. It was a major factor there were so many young people out protesting in the streets.

The bombing was primarily in the mountains of Laos. And it wasn't new. The Ho Chi Minh trail was bombed throughout the war.

When, where, and why were thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian students killed?

Do you think massive carpet bombing that killed millions didn't kill any students?

Wrong war. carpet bombing was WWII. The trail called for strategic bombing. And no, it didn't kill millions, only the NVA that happened to be there moving supplies along the trail at the time and at the place on the trail that happened to bombed at the time they were there... and there weren't millions of NVA troops even involved in the war. There were no schools or universities (or even villages) in those mountains so there was no reason for thousands of students to be there.

 

[untermensche]

For those obviously ignorant of events.

Operation Freedom Deal was a U.S. Seventh Air Force interdiction and close air support campaign waged in Cambodia (later, the Khmer Republic) between 19 May 1970 and 15 August 1973...

The area in which the bombing took place was expanded to include most of the eastern one-half of Cambodia.

During 1973 Freedom Deal aircraft dropped 250,000 tons of bombs (primarily high explosive), topping the 180,000 tons dropped on Japan during the Second World War...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal

I suspect a few students were killed in this massive and mindless bombing of Cambodia.