Recurrence
To those who follow “Current Events” in the US, crime and illegal immigration are two of the top issues in the coming 2024 Presidential Election. For those over 60, “Current Events” seem eerily familiar. Just 56 years ago, the country went through some of the same problems. As my saintly mother-in-law always said, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
So it is today. The country follows a path similar to that of our fathers in the late 1960s. ‘Law and Order’ issues are at the root of the problem in both eras. This article could have been written in June 2024 by changing several names and historical event names.
Read the following 1968 Time article of past Law & Order concerns and apply it to the present. The past and present are intertwined – Recurrence
The following article was copied from TIME Magazine, Date: October 4, 1968, US Section, Titled: “The Fear Campaign“
THE presidential campaign of 1968 is dominated by a pervasive and obsessive issue. Its label is law and order.
Its symptoms are fear and frustration and anger.
Everyone is for law and order, or at least for his own version of it. Few Americans can define precisely what they mean by the term, but the belief that law and order is being destroyed represents a trauma unmatched in intensity since the alarums generated by Joe McCarthy in the Korean era. The issue has virtually anesthetized the controversy over Viet Nam. It has distorted debate over pressing urban problems. It has perverted the presidential election, the closest thing in this secular republic to a sacred collective act.
For millions of voters who are understandably and legitimately dismayed by random crime, burning ghettos, disrupted universities and violent demonstrations in downtown streets, law and order is a rallying cry that evokes quieter days. To some, it is also a shorthand message promising repression of the black community. To the Negro, already the most frequent victim of violence, it is a bleak warning that worse times may be coming.
