but he raised an interesting question when he said tentatively that the current round of riots and protests were a version of those in the 1960s, they would pass, and we would "blow them off". However, he was born in 1957, and he more or less asked if those who'd lived through the sixties with more awareness could substantiate this.
Well, just weeks before I graduated from college in 1969, several dozen people I knew quite well took over the administration building as part of a Viet Nam protest or something. One of my closest acquaintances was among those jailed, and he spent commencement in a cell. (I spent my final year just anxious to get out of there and had no role in it.) But I know a thing or two about the sixties.
There were two separate movements that drove protests and riots in the sixties, on one hand, urban black riots and the non-violent civil rights movement, and on the other, student riots and academic protests against the Viet Nam war. The first was based to some degree on legitimate grievance, the second was an extension of mostly pure hedonism, and it was ephemeral. The sixties ended with the Altamont "Gimme Shelter" concert, the Manson LSD murders, and the deaths by overdose of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. They haven't returned, and they won't.
One big difference between the sixties unrest and what we see now is the complete absence of clergy in any protests or demonstrations. If any are there at all, they certainly aren't spokespeople, and the media doesn't feature them. A major figure in the sixties, though, was Dr King, whose role throughout was as a Baptist pastor. Bernard Law and Paul Moore Jr rose to become prominent bishops in the Catholic and Episcopalian hierarchies by marching with Dr King at that time. Other Catholic priests, like the Berrigan brothers, played prominent roles in Viet Nam protests, and Ven Fulton Sheen was publicly against the war.
There is nothing like that now. Catholic and Episcopalian bishops expressed disgruntlement that President Trump should walk across Lafayette Park to a burned-out church holding a Bible, but that's about it. They didn't join protests otherwise as far as I'm aware. They certainly didn't march in clericals at the head of a parade, arms linked for the cameras like Paul Moore or Malcolm Boyd.
A feature of the current round of protests, in fact, is a minor strain of anti-Semitism but a much more visible anti-Christian, primarily anti-Catholic pattern of vandalism and destruction. Over the past weekend, three churches were burned, two of them Catholic, including the historic Mission San Gabriel. Two statues of the Virgin Mary were vandalized. Statues of St Junipero Serra have been pulled down or hidden for safekeeping.
A continuing conflict persists in St Louis, where Catholics have been praying the rosary around a statue of St Louis (Louis IX of France) to protect it from vandalism or destruction by rioters who want the city renamed. It's clear that some Catholics are defending their heritage, but media coverage makes this problematic, as the protesters will insist they're protecting "white privilege".
There's one, not entirely direct, similarity between now and the sixties, which is that the draft, used to support an escalating war that had gotten out of the generals' control, was increasingly seen as an abuse of the conscription power of the state. This led to generalized dissatisfaction among the plebs, which in turn fed protests. When Nixon mitigated and then ended the draft, it relieved a lot of that pressure.
One thing Scott Adams does get more or less right in the link above is that he sees the COVID lockdowns and the protests as related. People were cooped up with not enough to do, so they rioted. I think it's more closely explained by saying the lockdowns were seen as an abuse of emergency powers of the state, especially when predictions amounting to mass graves in public parks and morning cries of "throw out your dead" never materialized, but the lockdowns persisted, partly persist, and may return in fuller form.
A major source of pressure will come from continued restriction on religious activity. There is simply no end in sight for limited attendance, social distancing, masks, and no singing. Maybe this is why religious leadership hasn't been playing much of any public role anywhere now. This will need to change.
