How 2020 is different from 1968

 Each January humorist Dave Barry does a month-by-month recap of the previous year. The format has gotten a little stale, but he will have plenty of material for the edition covering 2020.

It’s hard to put in words what a disaster 2020 has been. We’ll be telling our grandchildren about what it was like: The life-altering pandemic. The economic shutdown. Wildfires and hurricanes. The rise of white supremacists. Police shootings of unarmed black men recorded on bodycams. Protests and rioting. The unbridling of a toxic, intolerant, virulent and hate-filled culture. A highly polarizing president and other abominations.

This year has a lot of similarities to 1968, another year of extreme turmoil (and a divisive presidential election) that I remember well as a twelve-year-old. In 1968 the Vietnam War was raging, and two iconic American figures were gunned down – Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was about to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

The war was as divisive as today’s politics. First, it divided those who supported the war and those who opposed it. The rationale for the war was that the fall of South Vietnam to communist forces would be the first domino in a chain that would bring all of Southeast Asia under communist rule. 

But the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations had done a poor job of explaining why we were there, what the scope of work was, how we would know when we had won, and what our post-war role there would be. The nightly news aired disturbing images and body counts, a strange euphemism for killings. And the military and the government systematically lied about how the war was going.

The war also divided those who could, through their privilege, avoid serving in it and those who, if drafted, were sent packing overseas. Draft-aged young men (women weren’t subject to the draft) were terrified of going to war or against it on moral grounds. However, would-be draftees could get deferments if they were enrolled in college – a path not available to the economically disadvantaged, a disproportionate number of whom were black.

Racial disparity was very much a part of the national fabric in 1968. The Civil Rights Act had only been enacted four years prior, and discrimination was still institutionalized in housing, education, lending, and other areas, the law notwithstanding.

The voluble mixture of blacks forced into war service when better-off whites could avoid it and longstanding discrimination was combusted when King was assassinated in April. Two months later, when Kennedy was killed, the United States came unhinged. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago devolved into near anarchy. Rioting destroyed cities across the country (it's hard to tell whether some of the pictures here are from the war in Vietnam or the riots here). Hostility raged between blacks and whites, privileged and disadvantaged, protesters and law-and-order advocates and between people who trusted the government and those who did not.

It’s hard to say whether 2020 will go down in history as more or less chaotic, more or less divisive, more or less impactful to the direction of the United States than 1968. In the moment, it seems to be giving 1968 a run for its money.

Yet in spite of all of 2020’s craziness, it has been an extraordinarily good year for me personally. We are close with our children and their families. I’ve kept my job and have enjoyed the luxury of working from home – a nice, comfortable home – and have been able to spend more time with my wife, best friend and love of my life. We all have jobs, healthcare and good health. While my son and his wife are cloistered in California and we haven’t felt safe flying out to visit, our two daughters and their families are close by.

At the top of this blog I mentioned grandchildren. At the start of the year we had two – Eileen and Andrew’s beautiful and amazing boy and girl. In March they welcomed their third child, Claire Callahan, the sweetest, smiliest child I have ever seen. In August, Kate and Steve had twin boys – a double blessing. For Donna and me, having five grandchildren to love, spoil, pamper, and get to know well is a gift that overshadows any negative nonsense 2020 has or could throw at us.