and I completely disagree with her statements about this situation vs. 1968.
She characterized the 1968 gathering as "a colossal
clashing of people who had a completely different view about the War and how we go forward." The two political environments have "nothing in common," she said, and conflating the contests is "ridiculous."
The Bernie campaign IS a completely different view about wars and about how we go forward. No matter how the establishment tries to convince us that we're all on the same page, we're not, not even close.
Corporate money makes damn certain of that. It has its own agenda, and infinite resources to convince us to not believe our own lying eyes.
The endless wars, poverty, incarceration, opposition to populist reforms and candidates, the failure to launch a moon-shot or Manhattan-project scale effort (we need one at a much larger scale than either of those) to stop climate change as we are passing unthinkable climate tipping points, the dependence on corporate money and corporate media to astro-turf phony candidates into perceived legitimacy, this is what we're dealing with.
1968 had nothing on this. I have no idea how the Democratic convention will unfold. My guess is the police state will succeed in keeping protesters far away from the site, so that their protests can be mostly ignored, unless they get violent, in which case it will get tons of attention and used to delegitimize the protester's demands. Dissent inside the convention itself will be very heavily managed and controlled. So we may not get a repeat of the 1968 fiasco, but not because of less angst, instead because of greater control structures.
I hope with all my heart that we don't simply accept defeat and move forward with corporate Democratic hedgemony, that is unacceptable, and if it happens, we will have to find another way to continue this fight, which is about everything that matters in this world.