TERRY LEWIS: 2018 isn’t 1968 … yet

Through the first six months of 2018, it’s easy to go online and come to the conclusion that the world is spinning off its axis and America is losing its collective mind.

Trust me, while the country is splintered, we’ll be okay.

To me there are five seminal years in American history that could have gone badly — 1776, 1861, 1929, 1941, 2001 … and 1968. I know that’s six years, but we’ll circle back to 1968 in a few minutes.

— In 1776, 56 brave men put their treasure and blood on the line by signing the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, sparking the Revolutionary War. Had the colonialists lost that war, we would probably be having a totally different conversation today.

— In 1861 the Civil War began and turned into a blood bath. According to battlefield.org, “The Civil War was America’s bloodiest conflict. … Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War (58,000). Hundreds of thousands died of disease. Roughly 2 percent of the population, an estimated 620,000 men, lost their lives in the line of duty.

And in many respects, that war is still being fought today.

— In 1929, the Great Depression began in the U.S. and lasted to the late ’30s. Jobs and fortunes were lost, and in the mid-30s, the American unemployment rate spiked at a staggering 20 percent. It took the Second World War to pull us out of our tailspin.

— That brings us to 1941, when the U.S. finally entered the war. It took four years for the allies to emerge victorious. When it was over, it changed the face of Europe, the middle East and Asia, and established America as a world power.

— Sept. 11, 2001 brought the worst terrorist attack in American history, and four coordinated attacks brought down the World Trade Center, and a strike on the Pentagon killed nearly 3,000 innocents. Those attacks got us into Afghanistan, and we’re still there 17 years on.

How this one ends is anybody’s guess.

That brings us to 1968.

I was 14, and the war in Vietnam was in full swing. The battle of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive began. Anti-war protesters were battling police and National Guard troops in American cities and streets. Even at that young age, I could feel the wheels starting to get wobbly.

Then in April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, resulting in riots in major cities around the country. Two months later, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles after winning the California primary.

The riots involving the Chicago Police followed in August at the Democratic Nation Convention. Reports say more than 10,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters battled authorities for four days, making household names of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.

Absent Kennedy, the Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey, and the country elected Republican Richard Nixon as president.

So here we are today, 50 years later, and there are marked similarities between 1968 and 2018. But the differences are profound. Social media and pick-and-choose websites are dictating a new world of political correctness run amok — Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency is a prime example of the new media’s power.

We have neo-Nazis, fascists, real news, fake news, some guy in China is poking around on my cellphone, the #metoo movement (where allegation is fact and goes hand-in-hand with guilty until proven innocent). We have school shootings, freedom of speech has been twisted into “We are believers in the first amendment until you say something with which we disagree,” BLM, Antifa, and an entire generation of social justice warriors who are attempting to foist their beliefs upon a majority of Americans who just want to live their lives.

This year, 2018, isn’t 1968, and it won’t make the Top 5 year list (yet). But the wheels are starting to wobble once more.

Email Terry Lewis at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Lewis.