May 4, 1970…
A reminder from Jean. Sorry I’m late posting this.
In thirteen seconds 4 were dead 9 wounded.
None of the protesters were armed. NONE.
Ed: Keep it mind if you think your government is going to help you out of a jam
The New American Digest
For Followers of Gerard Van der Leun's Fine Work
When any person becomes employed at every level of gov’t a switch is automatically tripped in their brain and that switch lies in wait in every person. That 2 position switch is labeled Normal and Tyrant.
Most people are born with that internal switch in the Normal position. A few are born in the Tyrant position.
No matter how happy-go-lucky a gov’t employee may seem he knows that he ultimately has control over you.
Every.Single.Time.
The most dangerous person on this planet is the common law enforcement officer (LEO), for he knows he has the power to destroy your life with no consequence to his own life. You can double that threat if the LEO is a female and double it again if it is a female negro.
I have arranged my life in such a way that I have not seen a LEO in person in more than 5 years, except in a vehicle at a distance. I have no use for them.
There have been a few times in the past that I needed the assistance of a LEO and every single time it was a complete failure and one instance it cost me a lot of money. A more incompetent lot, I have never known.
I need to disagree with you a little. I’ve been a government employee at times and I don’t think anyone would consider me a tyrant. But I also didn’t hold a bureaucrat position.
Guess I should have put the word “potential” in there somewhere.
When I was a soldier in the army my highest rank was Specialist 4th Class, so I too was never a “bureaucrat”.
But if had been promoted 1 rank, to E-5, a Sergeant, I would have been required to be a tyrant.
I couldn’t stand that lifestyle, where everybody is kissing each others ass on the way up and from the top down everyone is telling everyone else what to do. It’s a sick way to look at life.
When this tragedy happened I was a student at University of Akron, about 15 miles west. I lived in a dorm. When we woke up the morning after, our campus was filled with National Guardsmen, machine guns and tanks.
There, obviously, was no internet back then so we found out about the Kent shootings by word of mouth and eventually local radio/tv news.
When I saw all the military on our campus, it was confusing and shocking. Our school could not have been considered rebellious in any way. WTH were soldiers with weapons doing there?? I was scared to go to class so I called home and told my dad what was happening. He said, “You will go to your classes. We already paid for them.” When I repeated that I was scared, he said, “Duck” and hung up.
There were groups of students (and who knows who else) gathered in front of buildings all over campus. Eventually, I joined them to hear what they had to say. It was a long day. A long week. A painful time that should have never happened.
I was younger than youse guys apparently. I knew something tragic had happened, and I read some stuff about it, I just had this feeling there’s a whole lotta lying going on about it. Well not exactly, in my still-forming and recently self-aware little-kid mind it was hard to know what to believe. I still think that. It was too good of a tragedy to let the truth be known, and everybody was rushing to get their lies into print.
Can it be, that nobody wasn’t doing nothing, it was all the other guys over there that caused the tragedy, our side is blameless? Yeah right, I’m supposed to believe that? Pull the other one. Don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing.
At this remove, everybody believes what they want to believe, the truth is long-buried. What did the young folks who survived Napoleon’s whiff of grape think about that fifty years later when they were telling the story of their heroic stand to the grandchildren?
I remember Gerard writing about the bad days in Berzerkly, when the Oakland cops came to town and started busting heads, and when the National Guard showed up and the shooting started. He said something like it was a very bad scene, he never wanted to be in a situation like that ever again. I guess it really scared him. I wonder, he was a man of his times, did he ever feel that he being a part of it all, that he in his own way contributed to the bad days: was he within the zeitgeist, or an outsider looking in?
Back then it was hidden. Today it’s all out in the open, the scramble for power and money. There’s a group that just wants to steal everything it can, because après moi, le déluge. And another group seeing their long-denied chance and grasping for absolute power as “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.
I ask myself, is this something truly new, or is this just the latest revival of an age-old play? The pace of science and technology is contributing to destabilization in a way not seen before.
The truth is… four young people were dead and nine wounded.
For no reason.
It’s the difference between facts, and reasons. Thirteen casualties is the fact. But the reason(s) this tragic event occurred? It’s complicated. National Guard troops don’t show up on a college campus for no reason at all. Something was going on that forced the Ohio Governor to deploy the NG. That’s what Governors get paid for, to make those judgement calls. NG troops don’t just start shooting for no reason. A long chain of events occurred that led to the killing.
Tragedy happens all the time. Sometimes it’s the random forces of nature. But sometimes we say that the reason the tragedy occurred was because the people were not prepared or behaved foolishly. Competent people behaving wisely minimize their exposure to natural-caused tragedy. And sometimes, no matter how wise and prepared, the random forces of the World crushes people, and it’s a tragedy to those left behind.
When it’s people-caused tragedy, there’s lots of reasons to be passed around. There’s always a chain of events, a chain of judgements and choices. It’s really easy for the onlookers after the fact to say that the judgements and choices were flawed. But they weren’t there, in the moment and in that situation. People always think that “they” would have made the good choices. I don’t believe it. People always want to believe they are smarter than they actually are. If a person hasn’t been in similar situations, and trained for how to react to those situations, their response to that same situation is very likely to be … suboptimal.
When the argument is made that the event occurred “for no reason”, I don’t believe it. It’s just another way of saying “we’re pure as the driven snow, it’s those other bad guys over there that are at fault”.
If a person gets involved or is adjacent to where there are lots of firearms present, the opportunity for accident and tragedy goes way up.
Remus said it, “Stay away from crowds.” And Agent J said: “Don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing.”
I’m creeped out by every interaction with law enforcement and the courts. Those are broken and dangerous institutions. One false or accidental move, and I’m dead, my family is destroyed, and they’ll be high-fiving each other and passing out attaboys and commendations. “If you’re not cop, you’re little people.” Those folks have guns, and they actively deny us the right to defend ourselves. They are never to be trusted.
And I don’t know anymore whether I trust the US Military or NG. Our Nation’s founders did not, they hated what they had seen of the King’s Men and standing armies, and wanted none of that for the United States.