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The Shootings at Kent State: The Search for Historical Accuracy (1998)
- Convolutional 4y agoNot even mentioned is Sihanouk, who had ruled neutral Cambodia since 1941 under various positions, was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup in the days before the US invasion of Cambodia. This had the effect of destabilizing Cambodia for the next couple of years.
- skyyler 4y ago“ Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” -the late, great Anthony Bourdain
- birdyrooster 4y agoAfter reading this I knew he was aligned with Christopher Hitchens and sure enough…
- Paul-Craft 4y agoVery true. Fortunately, however, there are enough reasons to want to beat Kissinger to death with your bare hands that you don't have to actually go to Cambodia. A trip to the library, or a google search or 3 ought to be enough.
- oh_sigh 4y agoIt's not clear to me why Kissinger gets the blame for that, when the US was bombing Cambodia since 1965, and when increasing bombing of Cambodia was part of Nixon's own madman theory.
- xhevahir 4y agoWhile I don't defend American adventuring in that region, I think you're overestimating the stability of 1960's Cambodia. This article goes into it: https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/ojpcr/ojpcr_1_1/ojpcr_1_1c.html https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/ojpcr/ojpcr_1_1/ojpcr_1... .
- jufiydk 4y agoMay 4, *1970*
- Paul-Craft 4y agoI'm surprised the article doesn't show "the picture": https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/05/19/kent-state-shooting-miller https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/05/19/kent-state-shooti...
- shadowgovt 4y agoGiven the source and the picture's content, I'm pretty sure they'd really prefer not to. There are probably still faculty and staff working there who met that kid.
- Paul-Craft 4y agoYeah, I missed that the url goes to kent.edu. Still, that photo is out there, and it's actually more present by its absence here IMO. Given it was published in 1998, you might be right about the latter point, but I doubt anyone is still hanging around from 53 years ago today.
- renewiltord 4y agoThe Vietnam War really wrecked America's sense of self, eh? Out in Vietnam, American soldiers were busy burning innocent people in My Lai, back home armed military were shooting students, and then to cap it all, America lost. Absolute hammer to the national identity. For a nation that has prosecuted so many wars before and since, it is quite interesting that this one was such a cultural blow. Even Iraq, fought on the basis of fraudulent WMD claims, had no such effect. Wild.
- localplume 4y ago[dead]
- shadowgovt 4y agoThe major factors after Vietnam that changed the scenario (such that, as you note, Iraq does not impact the national psyche like Vietnam and Cambodia did) are 1) Vietnam broke the back of the draft system. In the aftermath of that war, after realizing force of law had been used to force Americans to kill and be killed in an invasion for no gain, there has not been the political will to reactivate the draft for any reason other than a direct military assault on home soil. Even after 9/11, calling up a draft for Afghanistan or Iraq would have been absolute political suicide for those who tried. The consequence of this in the American psyche is that soldiers who die in our foreign campaigns are "volunteers" and "knew what they signed up for," so it puts the consequences at arm's length; nobody carrying a rifle into a war zone with an American flag on their armor is doing it despite desperately not wanting to, and Americans are sort of fine with a self-feeding military-industrial complex that generally leaves the home front alone. (This is, of course, not entirely accurate or true, but it's true enough that most Americans sleep at night while some of their children are stationed in Iraq). 2) The US hasn't lost any subsequent military engagement nearly as badly as it lost Vietnam. Afghanistan comes closest, but the 2,400 soldiers dead in over a decade of Afghanistan operation doesn't hit the psychic shock from 58,000 pressed servicemen dead in the 8 years of Vietnam. During the whole Afghanistan campaign, the US consistently lost more troops to injury and accident (across the whole service) than to enemy action; one doesn't get the same moral outrage of "bodies sent into the meat grinder" if most servicemembers dying while serving are dying in car crashes. And the fundamental shift of rules of engagement away from boots-on-the-ground and towards air supremacy and air-to-ground strikes lowered the body count to the point where far, far fewer Americans personally know a Johnny who didn't come home.
- DFHippie 4y agoArmed soldiers wheeled and fired en masse on unarmed protestors yet none of them faced legal penalty. The state of Ohio paid compensation. Because the soldiers "feared for their lives." I'm sure it was scary, but maybe we need braver national guardsmen. Official ass covering after official violence is a long tradition.
- mrguyorama 4y agoIt's as american as apple pie to use state violence on innocent and largely peaceful protestors and then just pretend it's no big deal. Remember the time unmarked soldiers were pulling people off the street in Portland? Or when peaceful protestors were disbursed with force so the president could take a picture while holding a bible upsidedown? Or Waco. Or the battle of Blair Mountain. Or the Tulsa Race Massacre. Americans constantly turn a blind eye to peaceful or innocent people getting brutally harmed by agents of the state. You will find plenty of people always willing to blame the victims.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoGovernment abuse is not uniquely American. Practically every state in history has abused its monopoly on violence to shut down political dissent.
- krapp 4y agoAmericans are unique in that they believe their government cowers in fear of the pistols they keep under their pillows, and that theirs is the only truly free nation in the world, where tyranny can never occur.
- shadowgovt 4y agoCorrect. Where in reality if you brandish a gun at the authority for long enough, it eventually responds by dropping a bomb on your roof. (... we still remember it, Philadelphia).
- bena 4y agoI'm sure Kent State University is searching for Accuracy here and not of any shred of possibility that it wasn't culpable for the death of four unarmed students. Honestly, the last group I'd want to hear from about what transpired that day are modern day administrators of the institution trying to distance itself from a particularly shameful day in its history.
- 082349872349872 4y agocf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCS-g3HwXdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCS-g3HwXdc
- Paul-Craft 4y agoVery powerful. That should be the official video for Ohio, if you ask me. It was a bit on the nose that they put up the composite of the four slain students yearbook(?) pictures whenever the song came around to "Four dead in Ohio," but the rest of the arrangement is so moving, I can forgive that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- itronitron 4y agoRather insensitive for them to be using the word 'Accuracy' in the article title.
- pasttense01 4y agoNote the publication date: PUBLISHED IN REVISED FORM BY THE OHIO COUNCIL FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES REVIEW, VOL 34, NUMBER 1 (SUMMER, 1998) PP. 9-21
- Animats 4y agoToday, a school shooting that only killed four people would barely make the news.
- mikestew 4y agoIt would if it were the cops doing the shooting, as is being discussed here.
- neverartful 4y agoIt was not the cops who shot, but rather National Guard troops.
- dragonwriter 4y agoThat would make even more news. I mean, the National Guard being deployed to a campus protest is more newsworthy than the average campus shooting these days, even if no one is shot.
- aschearer 4y agoSome things never change.
- JoeDaDude 4y agoBeing alive at the time, I remember there was a lot of demonizing one's opponents, much like today in fact. I remember anti-war protestors being thought of as free love fornicating, pot smoking, communists and police and soldiers being called pigs and baby killers. Once your opponent is dehumanized in this way, the violence that follows is easily justified, certainly in the heat of the moment. It becomes easy to throw rocks at police and burn ROTC buildings. It becomes easy to shoot protestors who are enemies of the state.
- mehlmao 4y agoThat is a false equivalence. Also, why would someone in 1970 think American soldiers were baby killers? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/the-scene-of-the-crime https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/the-scene-of-t...
- JoeDaDude 4y agoYup, as you noted, the My Lai massacre had made the news and the antiwar faction painted all GIs as baby killers.
- aranarquelion 4y agoI remember, as a student in high school, seeing this event get barely a paragraph in our textbooks, and it made me so angry. My mother was there on that day; she was friends with three of the four people who died. She was passing by on the way to class, and a friend pushed her down and told her to run when the shooting started. On a different day, she was chased back to her dorm by guardsmen with tear gas for walking with a group of three people, who nonetheless fired it directly into the dorm after she and the other students had made it in. She had to transfer away from Kent State due to the trauma of everything, and she has struggled some degree of PTSD ever since. Thanks for reminding me what day it was today.
- stefantalpalaru 4y ago[dead]