Hyperbole
It’s a morning of hyperbole on my “mainstream media” news program of choice, “Morning Joe”. Joe Scarborough’s a former Congressman from Pensacola, Florida (his seat now held by Matt Gaetz). He hosts, and stands as one of two “former Republicans” on MSNBC (Nicolle Wallace is the other). Joe’s surrounded by what I would consider “moderate” Democrats. But it’s definitely Joe’s show, and it definitely has his biases. Sure he supports Democrats, but also supports what in my younger days I’d call “the establishment”.
This week colleges struck back against the students protesting against Israel in Gaza by “encamping” on the college grounds. After weeks of negotiations, as protestors demanded that the universities divest from investments that support Israel: Columbia and UCLA sent in the cops.
Where does “Morning Joe” stand? When the NYPD went into Columbia, the next morning the Police Commissioner AND the Mayor (a former NYPD Captain) were on air. They talked about how reluctant they were to go onto the campus, and how they worked hard to avoid violence. And the day after, when the LA police moved on UCLA, it was the same story – New York’s Police Commissioner back on, describing how “careful” officers were in moving the protestors “out”.
Distinctions
Joe created “new” distinctions: “kids” (or as Joe would say, the “privileged kids”) protesting on the campus, and the dreaded “outside agitators”. Those are the “shady professionals” of the protest world, with credentials from the Green Movement and Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. It’s as if someone who cared about “left wing” ideas, “contaminated” those “tender young minds” at Columbia and UCLA.
The ” adults” called the students “children”, as if these young adults weren’t really capable of independent thought. It’s all a repeat, the language used to devalue the ideas of those who protest. They can’t be “smart” or “mature” enough to understand the real “depth” of problems: as if kids at Ivy League Columbia don’t get it.
I don’t mind that Joe is “establishment”. I do disagree with the old trope, that “elite kids” go to college, and “working class” kids don’t have the privilege of protesting. It’s the same old line the “establishment” used in the Vietnam War. But there were lots of “working class kids” who didn’t agree with that war, and protested just as much as Joe’s “elites”.
I do resent the condescension. A lot of Americans who support Joe Biden, Americans who usually support Israel (and were horrified on October 7th), Americans who might even be Jewish, are against what’s happening in Gaza today. And they are represented by students at Columbia and UCLA (and Wisconsin, Ohio State and even at that conservative bastion, Denison University). They are expressing the same frustrations many Americans, and even the President of the United States himself, is feeling.
Carte Blanche
October 7th did NOT give Israel “carte blanche” to do whatever they wanted to the Palestinians in Gaza. And Netanyahu’s precarious political position doesn’t either. President Biden knows it. And he’s doing the best he can to “straddle the fence” of supporting Israel without sanctioning potential genocide. So while I don’t sanction either violence or vandalism on college campuses, I realize those students (and the “professionals”) are simply acting on what most of us already know. They, like my contemporaries of the 1960’s, are “prematurely right”.
Being “correct” doesn’t mean “carte blanche” either. it’s not okay to single out Jewish students as symbols of Zionism. Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are in favor of subjugation of all Palestinians. And it’s not okay to sanction terrorists. The students at Columbia and UCLA, Ohio State and Denison, are all capable of making that distinction.
Does the campus unrest signal a return to that dreaded year, 1968? Should we expect riots in Chicago at the Democratic Convention, the seminal event that got Richard Nixon elected President? I don’t think so. I do think Biden needs to address both the campus unrest, and the larger question of what to do with Netanyahu.
It’s not Vietnam. “My” Bobby Kennedy isn’t running for President about to be assassinated. Martin Luther King wasn’t shot down this month. The nation isn‘t rocked by that violence. And, hard to imagine, Donald Trump isn’t a Richard Nixon. He’s so much worse. So 2024 isn’t 1968, it’s different. And all of that doesn’t make those students with the courage of their convictions wrong. They’re just “prematurely correct”.
