gisambards wrote:I'm really not seeing a difference. What was happening then that isn't also happening today?
Organized terrorism, as was committed by the third KKK and the Weather Underground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_K ... %93present
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_U ... activities
Absentia wrote:Isolated, rogue crazy people who are tangentially motivated by politics aren't what I'm talking about (and it's not like nobody really famous and important got assassinated in, say, 1963). I'm talking about movements that bitterly divided sane, ordinary Americans. I don't think we're there yet, to the extent we were then.
Two questions:
1. What's your definition of "sane, ordinary Americans"?
2. How bitterly divided do you suppose "sane, ordinary Americans" were in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? Even at the height of the violence the overwhelming majority of the country was still more or less living their lives as normal, and the overwhelming majority of interactions between people with personal disagreements over the war or civil rights didn't result in violence or even significant acrimony. Even in Birmingham (aka "Bombingham") where the civil rights debate got hottest, the violence was overwhelmingly between two small minorities of the population: the police/KKK members and the civil rights activists. Most people didn't get involved in that, they just went about their lives. If it were otherwise, the city's economy would have totally collapsed with everyone busy fighting instead of producing.