What Begat Trump

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Nepperhan

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In terms of civil disturbances, I believe and a writer has traced back the street disturbances in the late '60s to present Trump supporters. It was the beginning of a working class move to the GOP based on events events near the end of the Vietnam war.

“The Hardhat Riot,” by David Paul Kuhn, vividly evokes an especially ugly moment half a century ago, when the misbegotten Vietnam War and a malformed notion of patriotism combined volatilely. They produced a blue-collar rampage whose effects still ripple, not the least of them being Donald Trump’s improbable ascension to the presidency."


I knew individuals who supported the rioters as men ‘who didn’t take any guff’. Unsurprisingly, those who voiced support for the rioters (who beat any anti-war protester they could find) in '70 I have heard describe themselves as Trump backers today.
 
Oh, it’s the NYT. No surprise, then. Next week, they will probably have an article tracing the Huns forward to Trump supporters. You see, Attila foresaw the Trump presidency and taught his warriors to pretend there was such a thing as Twitter and twiddle their thumbs as if they were pushing keys. The Huns didn’t know why they were doing it, but they found that pretending to push keys strengthened their sword grips. That concept went forward to trigger happy cowboys in later centuries and to white men today.

It’s only a matter of time.

Seriously, this is one of the more fatuous articles I have seen in awhile. Can’t read the whole thing because of the paywall and I wouldn’t pay them to read the full thing. But the fact is that “hardhats” did very little protesting “back in the day”. What little they did was in response to the incessant leftist protests.
 
Having been back in the day, back in the day, and an organizer of conservative student activities and groups, college level, I agree. I can’t read the article either. But I remember that event.
 
The NYT just makes things up. This is an extreme example.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Oh, it’s the NYT. No surprise, then. Next week, they will probably have an article tracing the Huns forward to Trump supporters.
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I don’t think the Times wrote the book. The author is a news analysis for, among others, Fox News. Nice ad hominem, though.

Are you at all familiar with the hard hat riots in '70?
GKMotley said:
Having been back in the day, back in the day, and an organizer of conservative student activities and groups, college level, I agree. I can’t read the article either. But I remember that event.
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Then read the book. The NY Times did not write it.
 
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Ridgerunner said:
The NYT just makes things up. This is an extreme example.
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My! They made up the hard hat riots? I remember them well. I guess I’m just making it up, too.

“Kuhn, who has written before about white working-class Americans, builds his book on long-ago police records and witness statements to recreate in painful detail a May day of rage, menace and blood. Antiwar demonstrators had massed at Federal Hall and other Lower Manhattan locations, only to be set upon brutally, and cravenly, by hundreds of steamfitters, ironworkers, plumbers and other laborers from nearby construction sites like the nascent World Trade Center. Many of those men had served in past wars and viscerally despised the protesters as a bunch of pampered, longhaired, draft-dodging, flag-desecrating snotnoses.”
 
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Nepperhan said:
Nice ad hominem , though.
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Perhaps… but this claim may be as void of merit as this one:
Ridgerunner said:
Oh, it’s the NYT. No surprise,
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No regulars of social media websites, whether here, Facebook, or twitter will have their minds changed within the next 120 days… it’s a done deal…we might as well chill until election results are apparent…only given is Trump will be re-elected or Biden will be number 46…and then we can all argue about whether the nation and world is in peril then.
 
Can anyone extrapolate current events to this?

“A tribal tension had infused downtown,” Kuhn observes. Among the tribes were the police, who were anything but New York’s finest that day. Mostly, they stood aside while the hard hats ran amok; examples of their nonfeasance abound. Some of them even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hard hats moved menacingly toward a Wall Street plaza, a patrolman shouted: “Give ’em hell, boys. Give ’em one for me!” Yet the police were never held accountable for failing to stop the marauding, and “few hard hats owned up to the extent of their violence.”

More than 100 innocent people were beaten in the violence.
 
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I actually recall the event, too. And that, in limited ways, it was quite reminiscent of current events. Down to property damage and injuries. Do you think I would likely be surprised by what this book says? I got my doubts on that. But folks who know me know that I am never hesitant to buy a book (which I did today) or to read same (I’ve read 34 books since 15 April. Fact). So, maybe I’ll get it.

I also recall this as a singular event, not an attempt to overturn a society.

I also recall that Al Capp brought out his HARDHATS BEDTIMES STORIES book shortly there after.
 
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I support and applaud you discussing this, but I’m afraid it’s a thorny issue no one wants to discuss. I trace a lot of our problems to the seventies and often times secularist indulgence of “seize the day for tomorrow we may die.” What I mean by that is overwhelming interest in short term gain with no thought to long term consequences, potentially because these people feel they won’t be around to suffer them. Examples are the same sex, drugs and rock n roll types, becoming yuppies creating the S&L debacle, World Com and Enron of Y2K, the malfeasance in the foreclosure crisis in 2008, then finally at the end of life after they reaped all these gains throwing various fire bombs to society.
 
GKMotley said:
I also recall this as a singular event, not an attempt to overturn a society.
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No, it was this riot, then a protest march and some more stuff. I remember the Times published a long writeup about one of the NJ construction workers.

It certainly was not one incident. What always rankled me is that few of those who supposedly supported the rioters (that I knew) ever served in uniform. Now they all profess support for the military but they do not mention their avoidance of the draft.

Since the days of that riot I have averaged at least one book a month. That’s a lot of books but I already have ordered it!
 
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I don’t particularly want to discuss it, either. But in part, I was in, though not of, the era. And sometimes do so.
 
It lasted longer than a week or two in May? And took place in more areas than NYC?

I also remember the large pro- Nixon parade, sometime around the end of May.

I had, myself, avoided the draft a year or so earlier. By going on active duty. Lasted 20 years, that did.

A book a month is a good average, and certainly my recent total is due to particular circumstances over the past month or two. But true average would be 6-8/month, for many years. And the total in the collection is around 30K, on hand. This obsession began around age 1O. I mention it occasionally.
 
GKMotley said:
It lasted longer than a week or two in May? And took place in more areas than NYC?
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I remember it mostly in NYC but there was a BIG parade after the riot.

I was working retail as a teenager in '70 and I remember the manager in my department had to call for a tow truck for his car. He was doing “Lights on for Nixon” and ran down the battery! That amused me to no end. Thurmon Munson was playing for the Yankees then and stated, after 4 were killed at Kent State (where he went to school) that “They should shoot more of 'em.”

After that period (my draft number was over 250) I had orders to OCS but declined. My current book total is no more than 750 but i do have some 'way back in my Kindle I have yet to get to.
 
We have, it appears, a point or two in common.

Who would have thunk it?

I likely have 10K titles I have yet to get to. This was one point in my recent binge. All those books were among those I meant to get to but just hadn’t quite…
 
The Vietnam war was well justified and a noble cause, so I immediately think the author is a commie for thinking it wasn’t.

Also, I fail to see the connection seeing as it isn’t mobs of trump supporters out beating people or burning down buildings.
 
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Fighting communism wherever it rears it’s head is the duty of every honest man.

My family fled our home in Africa when I was 5 years old after our neighbors were butchered by ZANU communist soldiers. I’ve witnessed first hand the what these people do.
 
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RhodesianSon said:
The Vietnam war was well justified and a noble cause
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It was also unnecessary, avoidable, and botched.

We could’ve dealt with China after WWII. But instead we allowed the Communists to seize control. That mistake led to the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.
 
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