In all honesty, I don’t know why I remember this date every year ... being all of eight years old when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on Kent State student protestors, killing four and wounding nine, I certainly can’t claim to have understood the event and its repercussions at the time. And yet ... when I was considering Ohio universities to apply to, only two were off the table for me: Antioch, because my mother forbade me from it (for reasons that she carried to her grave); and Kent State. More than likely hearing the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song Ohio with the refrain “Four dead in Ohio” seared the event in my mind more than the news of the day did.
However it happened, seared I was ... and while I usually just make mental note of the date, this year I’ve been thinking about the incident and its aftermath, in the context of today’s police state activities.
Again, I have never made even a casual study of the shootings; I do recall being exposed to local and national news back then, and being concerned about the war and protests and all, but the best I can conjure from the recesses of my memory is a dislike of it all, accompanied by the childish wish that people could just get along. I wish I could say that I hated the draft back then, but even though I had uncles old enough to be taken, that didn’t happen and I don’t recall any conversations with them or their sisters about the issue. So, I doubt that I thought about it much. The retelling of the story, and seeing it so much on the news—plus the fact that it happened in the place I called “home”—along with the song gave it personal relevance to me. It may well be a prime source of my intense desire to leave Ohio, now that I think about it ... Despite the lack of research, I found the aforementioned essay on the shootings interesting, but it offered me little that was new, beyond specific details of the engagement. However, it also contained what I think was the seed for my deeper reflection this year. From the concluding pargraph, all emphasis mine:
The May 4 shootings at Kent State need to be remembered for several reasons. First, the shootings have come to symbolize a great American tragedy which occurred at the height of the Vietnam War era, a period in which the nation found itself deeply divided both politically and culturally. The poignant picture of Mary Vecchio kneeling in agony over Jeffrey Miller's body, for example, will remain forever as a reminder of the day when the Vietnam War came home to America. .... Second, May 4 at Kent State and the Vietnam War era remain controversial even today, and the need for healing continues to exist. .... Third, and most importantly, May 4th at Kent State should be remembered in order that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. The Guardsmen in their signed statement at the end of the civil trials recognized that better ways have to be found to deal with these types of confrontations. This has probably already occurred in numerous situations where law enforcement officials have issued a caution to their troops to be careful because ‘we don't want another Kent State.’
I doubt I’m the only one who suspects that whatever lessons were learned back in 1970, they have largely been forgotten. How else to accommodate Ruby Ridge and Waco, to name just two prominent examples of state thuggery? How else to explain the escalating violence—against humans and other animals—that cops use in low-risk situations? The state may have pulled back for a time, and in some situations may keep the Kent State scenario in mind, but it is far from a universal consideration, and the steady increase of brutality speaks for itself. Park Service rangers or EPA agents with guns is not a way to help defuse interactions with non-government individuals. Taser deaths are not more benevolent than gunfire deaths. To paraphrase the writer who put these words in Mal’s mouth, “They have swung back around to the idea that they can control people” ... an ominous trend.
So far, the only way this country seems to be dealing with Vietnam is by letting that generation vent, briefly, and then die ... Has Iraq really “come home to America” yet? Has Afghanistan? If the state were merely one quarter as caring as its advocates claim it is, those actions would not have started, much less gone on as long as they have. Official policy would not turn those who die on foreign fields into ghosts, invisible to nearly all but the families to whom they will never return ... forgotten so quickly except by those who face empty chairs at the dinner table, and empty beds at night. How can we not see, and wonder at, the disparity of treatment between World War veterans and Vietnam veterans and Iraq/Afghanistan veterans?
Like 1970, this country is deeply divided again. This time, the divisions include economically, as far too many of “we, the people” see how rigged laws and regulations are in favor of those with wealth and power. The state’s actions seem to be furthering the divides, rather than mending them—which in my view is a given, since its interference sets individuals and groups against others. Those who see the state as a savior—or at least a steadying hand through challenging times—might do well to consider this question: when its actions diffuse responsibility, encourage irresponsibility; when its policy is to hide the truth; when its powerful tell us they’ll do one thing yet do another, how can you continue to place your faith and trust there? How does the change of bodies in its putrid halls hide the bald fact that the system is and has been rotten to the core?
I try to maintain a reasoned, positive perspective, but on days like today I find it a challenge I cannot meet.
Remembering May 4th, 1970
So far, the only way this country seems to be dealing with Vietnam is by letting that generation vent, briefly, and then die ...
We aren't all dead yet. I remember the Kent State killings very well. I was just the right age for the military draft but had gotten lucky with a 1Y classification (at least until they eliminated that, and then I lucked out with a high lottery number).
Today, in the event of "public unrest" the State has actual Army military forces back from Iraq, while many National Guard units fight overseas. Perhaps that's what the State learned from May 4th, 1970.
“Bring out yer vets”
I’m glad you were able to avoid going, Tom—and this also reminds me to recommend a neat movie, Across the Universe. The story is hung on Beatles songs ... it isn’t entirely a musical, but much of it is. And some of the covers are extremely well done.
Anyway, back to the point ... I do take your point, Tom, but still I wonder where those voices are. It could be I just don’t encounter them, since I do not frequent the military section of bookstores; but I don’t think that’s the entire story. And your “lesson learned” may well be (disturbingly) right.
thoughts...
two thoughts in response:
If the state were merely one quarter as caring as its advocates claim it is, those actions would not have started, much less gone on as long as they have. Official policy would not turn those who die on foreign fields into ghosts, invisible to nearly all but the families to whom they will never return ... forgotten so quickly except by those who face empty chairs at the dinner table, and empty beds at night.
Even worse, I say, that official policy and the thinking of many if its advocates turn the foreign victims into less, even, than ghosts. Into unpersons, to be forgotten, not even counted in statistics, and to rot in the fields.
Additionally, a reasoned perspective may well be a rather negative one.
Foreign victims
You bring up another subject, Mike, that my youthful brain had difficulty teasing out. I recall writing a paper on World War II in fifth grade (the choice of subject was left to each student); I don’t recall what my sources were but I do remember seeing some of the anti-German and anti-Japanese propaganda. The German stuff was especially bothersome to me, because my father’s side of the family has a fair bit of German/Germanic blood. Was I supposed to hate part of myself, because of those ties? If so, how was that supposed to work? I couldn’t puzzle it out; and I think that this and related lines of thinking were what led me to become an individualist at a fairly young age: I simply couldn’t find another way around the issues.
More to the point, I was an avid watcher of news and related programs, and rarely missed 60 Minutes back in the day; I saw that monster Madeline Albright state that the price of half a million children killed by sanctions against Iraq was “worth it” [YouTube link], and was immediately sickened by it. I was not a libertarian at that time, best as I can recall, but I was somewhere in my awakening; and hearing that callous disregard proffered as state policy horrified me. But that is what the state does, no? It usurps cultural/ethnic/tribal identification with its own brand, then sets those groups against one another, sometimes via political and economic policies, and other times via outright war. It seems that, with very few exceptions, the state is willing to accept that any cost is worth achieving their aims ... which are often too barbarous for civilized individuals to contemplate.
True, but that isn’t what I’d intended to communicate: I meant that I prefer to have a rational basis for a positive perspective, rather than baseless hope or belief in fairy dust and unicorn tails.
1970
I was 23 that year, married and with two very small children. I remember Kent State, but it is more or less blurred into all of the horror of history, both what went before and what I've seen in the nearly 40 years since.
I recently saw graphic, close up photos of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombs in Japan. I was nauseated for hours, and can get that way easily if I dwell on the memory. Same for the photos of the stacks and pits full of murdered men, women and children in Germany, Cambodia, etc.
So many "lessons." So little learned.
And what can we really do about it? We can only order our own lives and attempt to influence our immediate circles. We can't convince, or convict the world.