Split Screen

This past week gave us a tragedy which shows how divided, by way of the country's reaction to it, the United States really is.  Oddly, it gives me a little hope that we're now at the point where we're going to start the process of overcoming it as well.

I'm writing, of course, about ICE agent Jonathan Ross's killing of immigration protester Renee Nicole Good.

Body cam footage of Renee Nicole Good seconds before she was shot by ICE Officer Jonathan Ross, a ten year veteran of ICE.  Prior to ICE, he served with the U.S. Border Patrol from 2007 until 2015, and before that he served in Iraq in the Indiana National Guard.  Contrary, therefore, to my suspicions, he wasn't a new or green officer.

Or, at least, I'm writing about it, somewhat.  What I'm more particularly writing about is the reaction to the killing and the instant polarization surrounding it.

Let's start with the killing itself and what we actually know if it.  

Good was killed by Ross on January 7, 2026, a few days ago.  ICE was operating in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a quite liberal Minnesota city in which ICE was undoubtedly wholly unwelcome.  Donald Trump has used ice in various municipalities, but he's sent it into liberal bastions as what may be regarded as a sort of taunt.  ICE, moreover, has acted like a pack of Brownshirts everywhere it's gone.  Not only as militarized police, but as Sturmabteilung, stormtroopers really, for Trump.

Good was there as a protestor, and she was blocking their way with her car.  To the extent we know much about her, she was a classic Minneapolis lefty.  Apparently originally from Colorado, she was graduate from Old Dominion with an English degree, she was a poet.  She had a daughter who was 15 years of age and sons who were 12 and 6. While not alway so identified, she presently identified as a lesbian and was "married" to another woman.   

On January 7, what was known to Ross was none of this at all, other than that she was blocking the road.  Another ICE officer went to confront her in the typical heavy handed ICE fashion, a fashion that no trained municipal force, and I've worked a lot with municipal police forces, would have used.  A trained municipal force would have, rather, simply walked up and said, "ma'am would you move your car?"  Based on her last words, she would have.

ICE, however, does't operate that way.  Like SA in German streets in the early 30s, or, if you prefer, like strikebreakers at Ludlow in 1914, they hit or strike first and ask questions later, having been given license to do just that. 

Colorado National Guard, many just newly recruited, breaking up a crowd with the flats of their sabers, Ludlow, Colorado, 1914.

This always leads to the loss of innocent life sooner or later.  Good had no legal right to block ICE, but what she was doing is a time honored, and mild, form of protest.  

Good appears to have turned her car wheel to the right, in compliance with ICE's wishes, but not in compliance with being drug out of her car, which an ICE agent was stupidly, but typically, trying to do.  I wouldn't have done that either, and frankly I have actually been in a vehicle, by accident, at the wheel, in the midst of a huge urban protest.  I wouldn't have gotten out my truck in that for anyone, including the police.¹  Ross, inexplicably, got in front of her car.  He drew his sidearm, and as she moved forward, armed as he was with a 9mm, a fine police weapon, he shot her three times, exhibiting the training that's carried over from the Armed Forces where the anemic 9mm is a known complete dud, necessitating multiple shots to kill.²   As a police weapons, supplaning the old .38 revolver round, which doesn't kill either, it was perfectly adequate.

Shot three times, she died, probably instantly.

There's a lot to break down here. ³ 

The thing, however, it reminds me of, is Kent State, in 1970.

Student Alan Canfora waves a black flag before the Ohio National Guard shortly before they opened fire at Kent State, May 15, 1970.

Which might give us a slight bit of hope.

For most Americans today Kent State doesn't mean anything at all, or if it does, that's because they're a student of history.  For some of us yet, however, Kent State is both a prescient moment in history, and a personal memory.

I was only seven years old or so when Kent State happened.  I feel like I can remember it, but that may be a false memory.  In 1970 we had a television and my father and mother watched the news every night.  The television, which we had only had for two years, was by that time located in the kitchen, moved from the living room in our 1958 vintage house which was not designed to house a TV.  It seems to me that I can recall this event from them, but I might not be able to.   Having said that, I can remember seeing some of the rioting of the 1960s on television, and seeing Jimi Hendrix on the news on the last morning of Woodstock, so my memory goes back to my early years.

Kent State was a pivotal moment in the Vietnam War and in the ushering in of the liberal 1970s.

The real lynchpin in the decline of American support of the Vietnam War was the Tet Offensive of 1968.  The American military reacted to the Tet Offensive brilliantly and completely crushed the North Vietnamese effort.  NVA and VC gains were temporary and despoiled by atrocity.   Only in Hue did the NVA hang on, and to their everlasting discredit by their horrific actions against the civilian population there, which should disqualify the current regime in Vietnam from evcen existing.  But in spite of that, the American public was shocked and horrified, feeling, really, betrayed by promises and assurances broken.

Much like some are now about the end of "forever wars" when the regime that promised the end to them kills Venezuelans for some reason, and then entertains oil executives in the White House shortly thereafter, while also acting as Putin's agent, for one reason or another, in making claims against a NATO Ally.

1968 saw the American public abandon support for the war in Vietnam, but not for the American soldier. A new Republican President came in promising to end the war with a secret plan.  Richard Nixon was going to make things better in some vague, undescribed, way.

The war hung on and 1970 arrived.  By that point college campuses were solidly opposed to the war.  The working class, in contrast, remained behind it, sort of, with it supplying the troops.  University students who didn't want to serve in Vietnam found ways towards deferrements, with people like Dick Cheney, and Donald Trump, finding ways not to serve. Working class people, on the other hand, largely served, and in many instances joined the National Guard and ARmy Reserve, something that rich people like Donald Trump would not condescend to do.

This was the situation in Kent, Ohio, in 1970.  Often missed in the analysis of the terrible events that happened there, the students at the university were neither serving in Vietnam, or serving in the National Guard.  Those in the Ohio National Guard were from the town.  Blue collar men who didn't go to college, and because they were in the Guard, were not in Vietnam.  They were likely in the Guard as they didn't want to go to Vietnam, although that wouldn't univerally work for everyone who joined the Guard, contrary to what's commonly imagined.⁴

The Cold War National Guard was trained for the Cold War, not riot patrol, and in 1970 it would have had a lot of older soldiers in it who had served in World War Two and Korea.  Even when I joined the Guard a little over decade later we still had one soldier who had served in World War Two, and a lot who had served in Korea.  Soldiers do not make very good policemen as they aren't trained to be police and are trained to react to a threat with aggression.

Perhaps for that reason, it's always surprised anyone familiar with this role of the Guard that the Guardsmen at Kent State had been issued ammunition  That alone would have predisposed them to believing that they were going to need it.  What occurred such that they used it has never been clear, and there are of course conspiracy theories associated with it.  What's clear is that rocks were thrown and shooting started.  Allison Krause, age 19, an honors college student and anti-war activist,  Jeffrey Miller, age 20, a psychology student who was participating in the protest,  Sandra Scheuer, age 20, a speech and hearing therapy student who was walking to class, and William Schroeder, 19, a psychology student and ROTC member, also walking to class, were all killed by National Guard bullets.

It's the reaction to the event that causes our long winded recollection of it here.

In 1970 Americans were still divided over the Vietnam War, but the mass of American people had pulled away from strongly supporting it. The 1968 Tet Offensive had been an American tactical victory and a NVA disaster, but the public was so shocked it no longer supported the war or trusted the Government.  In the 1968 Election the Democrats paid the price and Republican Richard Nixon, with a "secret" plan to end the war came into power.

If Nixon ever had a "secret" plan to end the war, we don't know what it was, but it quickly became pretty unmanageable for him.  His basic strategy seems to have been to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese, and let them fail, which he ultimately did, but in trying to get breathing room to do that he ended up having to occasionally expand the war or the war's violence. The Kent State protests were over the invasion of Cambodia, which had just occurred.

Young college bound people had turned against the war.  Middle Americans, however, were hoping in Nixon to find a way out.  Kent State turned a lot of those people against the war as well.  Americans moved to the left.  By 1972  and 1973 they'd moved substantially to the left.  The collapse of the Nixon Administration with Watergate brought a wholescale distrust of the Republican Party that had come in to power as it was perceived that the Democrats had no solution to the war.

Sort of like Donald Trump and the GOP coming in as it was perceived that Biden was senile and Harris a bad candidate, and they were all responsible for COVID era inflation. . . 

The shift was massive.  Large elements of the American population went from weakly opposing the war to strongly opposing it, and strongly backing an increasingly left wing Democratic Party. The military, both active and reserve, was held in open disdain.  Law enforcement also was.  The active duty military would not recover its reputation for well over a decade and the Guard for two decades. Contempt for policemen remained widespread into the 1980s.

On the other side, however, right wing Americans backed cracking down on protestors and what happened at Kent State, regarding the use of arms as justified.  I can remember this still being discussed in the 1980s.  The right's hard drift in this directly helped shit it out of politics for the rest of the 1970s.  The pre 1973 Republican Party never fully recovered and in order to come back into power in 1980 the Republican Party had to seduce Southern Democrats who were hardcore right wing populists, thinking that they could control them.  The entire event went a long ways towards giving us the modern Democratic and Republican  Parties.

We are starting to see history rhyming right now.

Donald Trump was elected in no small part because most Americans eligible to vote, don't.  He's massively unpopular with large elements of the American public.  While his supporters do not like to acknowledge it, and some cannot believe it, the majority of Americans do not like or support him.  Trump himself, who is not a smart man, and whose been coddled by wealth his entire life, can't grasp why he isn't loved.

But there is no doubt that the Democrats helped bring his rise about due to ignoring many issues that we've referenced here for years.  Immigration is certainly one of them.  In reality, even though nobody wants to portray it this way except for those on the Republican hard right, most Americans have had enough of largescale immigration.  Frankly, most Americans would like to see the country have a smaller population than it does.  It's not just illegal immigrant that upsets people, it's immigration.

People wanted something done about that, but they did not want the Sturmabteilung in their cities, just as people wanted an end to the Vietnam War, but didn't want to bomb Hanoi and invade Cambodia to get there, and they didn't want National Guardsmen killing college kids on campus.  In short order, they'd make it pretty clear that they didn't want a President who covered up a paranoid breakin, although they did return him to office in 1972.

We're seeing the same thing now.

People don't want militarized police at all, and they don't want masked policemen patrolling their cities dragging people out of cars. They don't want men who have been trained as part of ICE special units shooting women in the street.  No amount of excuses as to why this occurred are going to matter at all.  Middle American started shifting this past week, which it already was doing.

The right in turn is making the classic mistake on doubling down on the shooting, trying to justify it.  The officer had PTSD, we are told in which case he shouldn't have been there and in which case it means, implicitly, if he had fully had his faculties he wouldn't have shot.  The shooting was justified as it wouldn't have occurred if she wasn't there protesting, which is true but is true about every government act of violence wherever it occurs, from Tehran to Kent State.  The film shows he was justified, just as, we were told at the time, the film at Kent State, which is in fact much more dramatic, shows that the Guard shooting was justified.  No, it shows the opposite.  

And finally, and not too surprisingly in our current era, there's the character attacks, which nobody who has participated in this discussion here has engaged in.  Renee Nicole Good was a lesbian flake.  She was woke. Well, she was a lesbian and she may have been a flake, but that doesn't mean, as is implied by those statements, that it was okay to kill her.

Nixon's managed to get elected, and handily, in 1972.  Part of the reason for that is that the Democrats, as they tend to do, just flat out botched the election.  They botched the election of 1968, and they did it again in 1972, although their 1972 candidate was better than 1968.  Had they run from the center, Nixon may well have lost.  It was all unraveling already however, and by 1973 he'd bring himself down in scandal.

Before he finally resigned, those around him were extremely concerned by his mental state.  He was drinking heavily and impairing himself accordingly.  Trump's becoming impaired quite rapidly by dementia.

Trump is unraveling, politically as well as mentally, right now.  Americans are already upset by his continual weirdness, and a man elected on the promise of no more wars seems really eager to start them, while openly admiring some of the worst foreign powers that exist.  Sending Guardsmen into the streets, as he has done, has been no more popular in 2026 than it was in 1970, and the same thing is beginning to occur. A National Guard that worked hard to avoid the errors of the 1960s and recover its reputation is finding it besmirched, and ironically by one of the very people who didn't serve in the 1960s.  ICE and the Border Patrol, which most Americans had no opinion on before 2025, are regarded, and rightly, with suspicion.  Now they're going to be disdained.

If there's any hope in any of this, it's this.  The country did get over the events of the 60s and 70s and start to recover, although it would really take into the mid 1980s to do it.  Looking back, almost everyone agrees that both sides were too extreme at the time.  Part of the reaction in 1970s was that Americans didn't want a government that would kill American kids, and after the completion of the Nixon regime it didn't want one that foreign kids either.  We're probably headed in the same direction.

Footnotes:

1. In my case I happened to accidentally drive right into the middle of a Nation of Islam protest on Martin Luther King Blvd in Denver.  It was large and I was the only person of my demographic on the street, and was driving a pickup truck with Wyoming plates at that.

I'll say, however, that the protestors were very gracious.  I could see them looking at me, but as Wyomingites often find, I was protected in part by my cluelessness.

2.  People hate it when this is stated, but the 9mm is a worthless military round.  

A military sidearm serves one of two purposes, use or ceremony.  If its to be used, it actually should stop the opponent immediately, keeping in mind that an armed combatant in war is a much different target than those the police normally face.  Most of the time when a policemen uses a firearm a single bullet from a light weapon will stop the opponent who is much less motivated than a soldier in war.

For that matter, in most trained police forces the first resort anymore is to a taser, not a sidearm.

9mms were a Continental European round in armies which at first used pistols as sort of a gentleman's thing.  Officers carried them, and rarely used them. By World War One that had changed, but the 9mm had set in.  By World War Two any soldier who had the option to carry a .45 ACP rather than a 9mm did, which is why you see British Airborne so frequently armed with M1911s.

The 9mm hung on, however, and by the 1980s those armies used them had gone to the multiple shot, "double tap" technique, acknowledging its deficiencies.  The round spread to the U.S. at the instance of NATO which wanted the service to play nice on this topic.

3.  Ross wasn't green, so that doesn't explain what occurred.  What might, however, is that he's seen too much service, quite frankly.

4.  For much of the Vietnam War the National Guard was hard to get into.  

The history of this isn't very well remembered.  The Vietnam War was a big war, for the U.S, from 1965 until 1972.  Contrary to what's popularly imagined, the majority of soldiers who served in Vietnam were volunteers, which is in fact somewhat complicated by the fact that people facing conscription often volunteered prior to being drafted.  Conscription itself had been in place since about 1948, after briefly terminating after World War Two.  Setting that aside, the U.S. had conscription pretty continually since 1940.  Most men expected to be conscripted form 1940 forward and therefore, for that reason, they planned on military service as an aspect of their immediate post high school life.  Those going to college and university obtained deferrements, up until the late Vietnam War period, which were just that, deferrements.  They entered the service after they were done with university, which was the case for my father and two of my local uncles.  Usually, although not always, that meant that they entered the service as officers and chose their branches, none of which was the case for men who were simply conscripted.  Added to that, as conscripts only served two years, the service often assigned them to Reserve units following their active duty service, which was the case for one of my uncles.  Indeed, men who were part of ROTC units often found that they were assigned to hometown Reserve units rather than active duty units, which was often to their frustration as it mean six years of Reserve duty rathe rather than two years of active duty.

As a lot of working class men who didn't intend to go to college didn't want to do two years away from home and disrupt their post high school lives, the Guard and Reserve were already popular options before the Vietnam War.  That meant that it was nowhere near the case that men who were in the Guard were avoiding Vietnam.  At the time a hitch in the Guard for an enlisted man was at least four years (it might have been six).  Therefore, men who joined the National Guard as late as 1965 and prior to the Marines being deployed at Da Nang were still in the Guard in 1969.  The war itself did not really start being unpopular until 1967 meaning that somebody joining the  Guard in 1967 was still it at least until 1971.  And the war would have had no impact on retention as the service was never going to call up anyone who had completed Reserve or Guard duty.

This does not mean that nobody joined the Guard to avoid Vietnam.  I know at least one person who in fact did just that.  But getting into the Guard was hard.  Getting into the Reserve also was, although I know one person who joined the Reserve in order to avoid going to Vietnam.

People who really wanted to avoid joining the service, however, were better off finding a doctor who would qualify them as medically unfit, or, up until the end when conscription deferrements changed, staying in university.

Finally, contrary to what people imagine, some Guardsmen in fact served in Vietnam.  Not many, but as the war went on some Guard units were called up and deployed to the war.

Related Threads:

In Memoriam. Renee Nicole Good.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Homicide, In Memoriam, police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Zeitgeist

Additional Labels:

Split Screen, additional labels.

Sunday, July 8, 1945. The Camp Salina Massacre.

Private Clarence V. Bertucci murdered nine German POWs at the POW camp at Salina, Utah.  He fired a Browning M1917 into their lodgings, only stopping when he ran out of ammunition.

Nineteen were wounded.

Bertucci, who had a previous court martial from his time in the UK, did not deny the killing and was court martialed and found insane.  The New Orleans native died in New Orleans in 1969 at age 48.

Australian troops landed at Penajam, Borneo.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—July 8, 1940 & 1945: 80 Years Ago—July 8, 1945: Only international sub-to-sub rescue in history: USS Cod rescues crew of stranded Dutch submarine O-19 in the South China Sea.

The USS Saipan was launched.

She's serve until 1970.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 7, 1945. Japanese killings.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Aircraft, Burma, Catholic, Christianity, Jazz, Kalagong Massacre, Music, New Guinea, Red Cross, religion, War Crimes, Women, World War Two

The amazing ability of the Palestinians to self sabotage.

It's really stunning.

The basic Palestinian cause should be a sympathetic one.  They were displaced from their homes in a war, made refugees, and many have no homes.

And yet, they do everything possible to make themselves detested and/or ineffective and unsympathetic.

In 1970 the PLO attempted to overthrow Jordan, where many Palestinians had taken refuge.

That ended up with them going to Lebanon, which they destabilized.  

The treaty that resulted in them having self governance on the West Bank and Gaza ended up with them electing unrealistic flaming radicals in Gaza, who of course attacked Israel in a shocking manner on October 7, 2023.

The US supported Israel, as it naturally could have been expected to do, which bizarrely lead Palestinians in the US to support Donald Trump for the Presidency, which has to be about the most dimwitted thing they could have done.

And now

2 Israeli Embassy aides are killed in a shooting in Washington, D.C., officials say

This gives Donald Trump his Reichstag Fire moment.  

And cover for the current government in Israel to occupy as much of Gaza as it wishes to.

No matter how wide, or narrow, this act of terrorism was, Palestinians in the US, and immigrant populations in general, are really going to get pounded by the Administration.  This will be the rallying cry for "deport!".  And it'll be the thing which causes the Trumpites to say "See?  There really is a war going on. . . it's an emergency. . . deport them all".

And many rank and file Americans will have no sympathy for them at all.

For that matter, the same feelings exist in the UK, where those cries will echo.

I was a soldier once. . .

Student Alan Canfora waves a black flag before the Ohio National Guard shortly before they opened fire at Kent State, May 15, 1970.

and never as part of that did I ever imagine being used in the US to round up immigrants.  

I have the strong feeling that if Trump attempts this, there's going to be a lot of men leaving the military, and a drop off of enlistment of epic proportions.  

Tuesday, July 30, 1974. Cypriot peace, Articles of impeachment.

Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom signed a peace agreement calling a halt to fighting in Cyprus.  The agreement was mediated by Henry Kissinger.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee adjourned its proceedings for impeachment.  It had passed three articles of impeachment. 

A proposed fourth, asserting, illegal use of power in the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, was rejected.

An election was held in Rhodesia, which had a population of 300,000 whites and 5,700,000 blacks. Voting was segregated. The result was whites took 76% of the seats.

ZZ Top played at the Tulsa State Fairgrounds.

Last edition.

Monday, July 29, 1974. Philadelphia Eleven and Alpha Group.

Labels: 1970s, 1974, Folk Music, KGB, Music, Protestant, religion, trends, USSR, Women

Friday, March 29, 1974. Kent State Indictments

Eight members of the Ohio National Guard were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for violation of civil rights due to the shooting of thirteen students at Ken State in 1970.  Five of the charges were felonies.

All the charges would be dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence on November 8.

The Chinese Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang was discovered.  The massive statuary army was built to protect the Emperor, who was interred around 210 BC to 209 BC in the afterlife.

Speed limits on British highways, which had been reduced due to the Oil Embargo, were restored.

The Volkswagen Golf was introduced as the replacement for the Beetle.

Related threads:

The Tragedy At Kent State

1970, 1970s, Cambodia, Cambodian Civil War, Civil Unrest, Disaster, National Guard, Ohio, Vietnam, Vietnam War

May 4, 1970. Kent State

1970, 1970s, Civil Unrest, Vietnam War

Last prior edition:

Monday, March 18, 1974. Embargo lifted.

1970s, 1974, 1974 at the movies, Arab Oil Embargo, Movies

Friday, March 8, 1974. Exit Brady Bunch

The iconic 1970s television show The Brady Bunch aired for the last time.  It first aired in 1970.

Marcia, Marcia Marcia. . . 

Maureen McCormick, perhaps the most recalled character of the series, as Marcia.

Last prior:

March 6, 1974. Tout-nucléaire

Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.

The Uqair Protocol was signed on this day in 1922, setting the boundaries between Iraq, the Sultanate of Nejd, and the Sheikdom of Kuwait.

Basically, the British High Commissioner to Iraq imposed it as a response to Bedouin raiders from Nejd loyal to Ibn Saud being a problem.

Kuwait lost 2/3s of its territory in the deal, setting is modern boundaries.  It had no say in the arrangement, resulting in anti-British feelings in Kuwait.  It did establish a Saudi Kuwait neutral zone of 2,230 square miles which existed until 1970 and a Saudi Iraqi neutral zone that existed until 1982.

Country Gentleman had a winter theme, but the Saturday Evening Post and Judge were already in the Christmas spirit, even though this was still the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 1922.

Wednesday January 25, 1922. Creation of the U.S. Army Band.

W. S. Ross of the U.S. Army band in 1924, wearing the Pershing Grey uniform the band originally was equipped with.

On this day in 1922 "Pershing's Own", the United States Army Band, was formed.

The band in its "Pershing Grey" uniform it wore until World War Two.

It was created by a direct order from Pershing, who had admired European official military bands and who thought it contributed to moral and esprit de corps.

The band in 1970 in Vietnam.

After only 32 days in office, Liang Shiyi resigned as premier of China due to disputes with warlords. China's descent into two decades of civil war was well underway.

U.S. Marines were detailed to protect the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua.

September 18, 1970. The death of Jimi Hendrix

The greatest guitarist of all time, James Marshall Hendricks, was a Seattle born bluesman, for all practical purposes, who crossed over into rock music just as rock guitarist were struggling with how to deal with amplification and the full range of the instrument.  Unable to read music, Hendrix (he'd changed the spelling of his last name) embraced the problems that other guitarist had been unable to deal with, principally distortion, and took the instrument far beyond the frontiers it had been in.

A fantastic natural musician, Hendrix has never been surpassed.  Unfortunately, he fell prey to the evils that so often afflict the life of musicians on the road, and which were very much in vogue in the 1970s, drugs being paramount among them.  On this day he was taken to a hospital in London suffering from the effects of a drug overdose and drowned in his own vomit, a fact that was contributed to by the fact that English ambulances typically took patients to the hospital sitting up if they could, which is what they did with Hendrix.

Hendrix had spent his early years in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada and grew up in a musical household.  His father played the saxophone, which he sold when he noticed his boy playing the air guitar with a broom.  Learning how to play the instrument without the benefit of formal musical education, Hendrix learned the blues the way thousands of African Americans had, at home and by ear.  Left handed, however, he learned how to play a right handed guitar upside down, something he did for the rest of his life.  He could, however, play right handed and left handed, and in concert sometimes did.  

After a stint in the Army, in which he was a paratrooper, Hendrix played with a lot of rock bands of the 1960s as a backup guitarist before successfully breaking out on his own.  Teamed by English producers with a backup band that was not up to his talent, dubbed the Jim Hendrix Experience, he came to fame with a series of radically advanced rock music releases, most of which were actually blues based pieces.  Purple Haze remains an emblematic piece of music, but nearly every major song released by Hendrix stands alone.  

Dissatisfied with his English back up band, Hendrix later was backed by fellow black musicians that he'd met while in the Army, and who were schooled, like he was, in the blues.  In that makeup Hendrix toured with the "Band of Gypsies".  A power house of a musician, Hendrix's psyche was increasingly impacted by drugs in later years, in which he freely indulged.  On this date, they took him and the world lost the greatest guitar player of all time.

The War Movies of 1970

1970, we've already noted, was the year the United States participated in an invasion of Cambodia with the Republic of Vietnam, while war protests raged across the United States.  In popular recollection, it was also the year that the nation was increasingly anti war and anti military.

Well. . . maybe, but it was one heck of a year for war movies.

Patton, a movie I've never reviewed here (until now), was released that year.  It goes down in cinematic history as a great movie and one of the greatest World War Two pictures ever made.  George C. Scott's portrayal of George S. Patton, for which he was awarded but did not accept an Academy Award, so defined the controversial American cavalry commander turned armored branch general that Scott's movie Patton is better remembered than the real Patton.  

It's interesting to note that Nixon watched the film in a private showing just before ordering the invasion of Cambodia.

The film is justifiably famous for a fairly accurate portrayal of Patton's personality, although it's portrayal of Omar Bradley is more charitable than Bradley deserved, perhaps because Bradley's memoirs of World War Two were used in part for the film, along with  Ladislas Farago's Patton:  Ordeal and Triumph.  Bradley worked as an advisor on the film which also no doubt influenced his portrayal.  Irrespective of that, it's a great film.  Taking the viewer from Patton's elevation after the Battle of Kasserine Pass to just after the war, it is limited, and wisely, to just his biography as an important American commander during the war.

It's not a very materially accurate film, however.  Armor for the film, as well as the numerous soldiers portrayed in it, were provided by the Spanish Army and the film was largely filmed in Spain.  M4 Shermans were Spanish M47s and Spanish M48s filled in for all German armor, giving the impression of more modern armored combat than World War Two actually featured, although the large scale combat scenes in the movie are very will done.  There's a reason that its recalled as a great film to this day.

In contrast to the material inaccuracy of Patton is the accuracy of the peculiar and appealing World War Two sort of drama/comedy, Kelly's Heroes, was released on June 23, 1970.  Filmed in Yugoslavia, the producers were able to make use of American M4 Shermans and other World War Two vintage hardware that remained there.  Not stopping at that, however, three Soviet tanks were carefully converted to be nearly dead ringers for German Tiger Is.  In terms of ground equipment (but not air) the film is the first materially accurate World War Two film made.  The depiction of the fluid nature of France in 1944 is fairly accurate, and the combat scenes are well done.

It isn't accurate, of course, in terms of the portrayal of soldiers and it wasn't met to be.  Donald Sutherland's portrayal of "Oddball", a hippie tank commander, steals the show but he portrays a figure simply impossible for the time.  The film's main star is supposed to be Kelly, portrayed by Clint Eastwood, but its really Sutherland who shines.  The film portrays an armored reconnaissance unit that goes rogue on a mission to loot a bank behind German lines under the leadership of former, and now demoted, officer Kelly.  The cast in the film is really impressive.

Released in 1970, the film anticipates the changing mood of the time, but it remains today a cult classic and its popular with careful students of World War Two for the reasons noted.  It's odd to realize that Sutherland's portrait of Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H was actually from earlier the same year, as his portrayal here was a risky choice.  It's also odd to realize that Carroll O'Connor's portrayal of an Army general in this film was not intended to be a parody of Patton, even though it seems to be.

M*A*S*H was as noted, released earlier this same year, and its an awful film.  Ironically, it's one I've already gone over, so I'm not going really get into it again here.  I would note, as I did originally:

This movie is probably  the most famous movie set during the Korean War, but don't fool yourself, it's really about Vietnam.

Which doesn't make it a good film.

If M*A*S*H was heavily influenced by the country's developing mood, and Sutherland's Oddball at least had a cheerful character more out of 1970 than 1944, the other great war picture of the year was much more like Patton in nature, that being the great film Tora! Tora! Tora!, which portrayed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Tora! Tora! Tora! is one of the greatest World War Two movies ever made and is far and away the best film about the events of December 7, 1941.  The later effort Pearl Harbor is pathetic in comparison.  Getting the history and the material details correct, and filmed on location, it's a masterpiece which may be free of errors.  It stands as the greatest true depiction, quasi documentary, movie of its era and inspired more than one attempt to follow up in its portrayals of later events that were real failures.  Using a large number of actors and depicting sweeping events, it fits into a series of movies of that time, including The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, that took real big picture and small picture looks at singular events in the war.  It's a great film.

So what does it tell us, if anything, that they were made when they were?  It probably tells us at least in part that our recollection of the country's mood in 1970 isn't very accurate.  M*A*S*H was an anti war film using the vehicle of the Korean War to discuss the Vietnam War.  But none of the three movies about World War Two, which had concluded just 25 years earlier, could be regarded as an anti war film.  Even Kelly's Heroes, which has an element of cynicism, had it only lightly.  So even as the country grew increasingly disenchanted with Vietnam, it didn't feel that way about World War Two. For that matter, of course, the youngest of the country's World War Two veterans were only in their early 40s at the time.

June 11, 1970. Leaving Libya

F100 Super Saber taking off from Wheelus Air Force Base, Libya.

On this day in 1970 the American military presence in Libya came to an end when the U.S. Air Force turned Wheelus Air Force Base over to the North African country.

Few people today would even be aware that the USAF had a base in Libya, but it first started having a presence at Wheelus during World War Two when it took over the former Italian air field in 1943 after it was captured by the British.  It occupied the air field steadily until this date in 1970. During much of that time the US had friendly relations with the country's monarch, King Idris I.

King Idris I of Libya, who reigned from 1951 until 1969. The former king would live out his life in exile in Egypt.

Idris was overthrown in a military coup led by Muammar Gaddafi, who subsequently ruled the "republic" from that point until is his violent death at the hands of a revolutionary crowd in 2011.  During Idris' reign the nation went from being one of the poorest in the world to being one of the richest, due to the discovery of oil, and at the same time the purpose of the USAF presence in the country declined to the point of irrelevance.  Gaddafi wanted the US out and the US, for its part, was glad to leave.

Wheelus was soon used by the Soviet Air Forces as a base and as a Libyan air force base.  It was hit  in 1986 by the U.S. during it raid on Libya during the Reagan administration.

USAF FB-111 landing after air strike in Libya in 1986.

The air strip is an airport today.

On the same day William Bentvena was shot by Tommy DeSimone, an event, mostly recalled from the movie Goodfellas.  Bentvena was a "made man" of the Gambino crime family and DeSimone would disappear in 1979.

May 9, 1970. Strange Days.

President Nixon visited the Lincoln Memorial and chatted with protestors who were sleeping there in anticipation of a protest organized in reaction to the American and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. The President encountered about nine protestors and chatted with then in the early morning hours.

Protests were occuring all across the country on this day in reaction to the Cambodian invasion and in reaction to the shooting at Kent State.

On this day, about 450 Canadian peace activist crossed into the United States at Blaine Washington, location of the Peace Arch, and committed acts of vandalism in the town.  The presence of Canadian peace activist was completely nonsensical and their act of vandalism contrary to the claimed spirit of their actions.  It reflected more on events in Canada than it did in the United States in which the formerly highly conservative country was rocketing into a state of liberalism in which it remains, although it is contested, that started under the leadership of Pierre Trudeau.  Canada, in the less than one hundred years prior to 1970, had fought in the Boer War, World War One, World War Two and the Korean War.  It opposed the Vietnam War in a way, although it's often forgotten that it contributed a hospital ship to the allied forces there at one time and its contribution in terms of military volunteers approximated the number of American draft evaders who sought refuge there.

Another Canadian protest occurred on the same day on Parliament Hill when Canadian pro abortion activist protested a recently passed Canadian law addressing abortion.  This occurred three years prior to Roe v. Wade in the United States. At the time, just ten years following the advent of birth control pharmaceuticals, the direction things were going in seemed obvious.  Canada would repeal its law eighteen years later and no Canadian federal law has passed since.  Since that time, however, support for abortion in the United States has reversed to the point that the majority of Americans oppose it and its only a matter of time until the weakly reasoned case of Roe is repealed and the matter is returned to the states.  Canada, which is highly liberalized, has been slower to follow but has started to, with there being a small resurgent conservative movement that has come about over issues such as this, but also due to really extreme social speech provisions enacted in Canadian law.

Showing how odd the times were, retrospectively, Vice President Spiro Agnew spoke to a disappointing crowd of 10,000. . . 100,000 had been expected, at Georgia's Stone Mountain Park.  The Park is the location of a giant carving into natural stone depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Stonewall Jackson, all mounted.  It's impossible to imagine an American politician speaking there today.

The memorial had first been proposed in 1914, which was in the midst of the boom in Confederate memorial building across the south. As we've discussed elsewhere, most of the now controversial monuments to Southern rebel figures and to the Southern Civil War cause in general date from this period.  The monument itself does not, however, as its construction had an exceedingly odd history.  

Land for the monument was purchased in 1916 but a sculptor was not hired until the early 1920s, with that sculptor being Borglum, of Mount Rushmore fame.  He was fired over a financial conflict in 1925, however.  Congress got into the act in 1926 with the approval of the sale of commeorative coins for the effort thereafter.

After Borlum departed he destroyed his models which lead to the Association dedicated to the effort seeking to have him arrested.  In a sort of retaliation, the Association had the face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed blasted off of the mountain.  Subsequent sculptors took up the work but it lingered until 1958 when the State of Georgia purchased the area in order to complete it in a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education.  The state park was dedicated on April 14, 1965, 100 years plus one day after Lincoln's assassination in 1865.  The dedication of the monument occured in 1970, with Vice President Agnew appearing for the event, but it wasn't actually completed until March 3, 1972.  It's now the biggest tourist site in Georgia.

Now, of course, a lot of the smaller Confederate monuments have come down, but many more remain.  It's amazing to realize that as late as the 1970s there were still Southern public efforts to put them up, and that they were very associated with protest over desegregation.  The degree to which the support for the war had been lost was demonstrated by Agnew's failure to draw a crowed in the highly conservative south where opposition to the war had not been strong.

On the same day, Jimi Hendrix played in Ft. Worth and the Doors played in Columbus, Ohio.