No matter how much I try to ward it off, a certain curse of my career repeats: Every time protest signs bloom, scribes seek my input for “historical parallels” pieces. Isn’t this just like in Nixonland when …?
My initial response is always the same: Maybe—but there will be time to reflect on that later, and wouldn’t it be better to spend energy figuring out what’s going on now?
I’ve never felt more that way than during these past several weeks. Angry kids setting up tents on university quads, taking over administration buildings, cops dragging them away: The more energy we spend on baby boomer games of compare and contrast, the less we can understand how, this time, the response to students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza has taken shape as a pure product of the interlocking derangements of the Trumpocene. I’m trying desperately here to start that conversation, because what we’re witness to now has the potential to make Kent State on May 4, 1970, seem like a spring picnic.
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