Kent State, 05/04/70

Something profound changed on 4 May 1970, for me and for lots of other college aged kids then. The massacre at Kent State demonstrated in a very real way that, yes, it was possible that America's young men could be ordered to shoot dead other unarmed young men and women and that the young people with attack weapons would follow those orders. The kid gloves were off. We were now at war with each other. The Kent State deaths followed the murders of Rev. Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy, but these murders were of grown men gunned down by other grown men. It was somehow different that the National Guard, made up of young people not much older than the students at Kent State, could shoot down their own, no matter where they stood regarding the war in Vietnam, or anything else for that matter. I can't think of any other like incident that was as appalling as the murders at Kent State because this was not an act of crazy people or of terrorists; the shootings were from neighbors or friends or cousins or brothers. This was an act of nightmarish insanity. This was American eating itself alive. This was the corner that we should not have turned, but did.

Stumble It!