A toss of the hat to Hidden Causes, Visible Effects
I’ve been spinning wheels here trying to draft coherent thoughts on the inexplicable year 2016. My earliest election year memories extend to 1956 television: watching people in suits holding a sign with the word Connecticut, someone being handed the microphone and booming out an exact count ‘for the right honorable Carey Estes Kefauver.’
It’s fourteen leap-years later, but I recall none that parallel even the first five months of 2016.
So, citing a fellow traveler who recalls at least as many election years as I:
Hidden Causes, Visible Effects:
“One doesn’t have to be particularly observant to notice that we have entered dangerous territory in our public realm. The fact that the Republican Party will nominate a man who makes openly racist appeals, attacks by name and ethnic background a judge presiding over a case in which his business is a party (in a money case, not even a matter of judicial philosophy), insists that as President he will cut back press protections and “have people sue you like you never get sued before,” refuses to rule out first strike use of nuclear weapons, flirt with authoritarians and dictators, ridicules the disabled, women, protestors…”
Read more: Back to No Future: Daze of Rage
Now that I have stood upon another pair of shoulders I will continue to laze-out, taking just the time to pose a trivia question, which of the Chicago 7/Chicago 8 was a University of Cincinnati alumnus, later to become a stock-market revolutionary? Hint below.
Just for the record, the answer to this trivia question does not help explain 2016. So I shall go back to drawing straws.
And do not hesitate to contact me if you can predict anything by November.
billziegler1947 
Bill:
After Abbie Hoffman emerged from the underground and turned himself in, I became an acquaintance of his. (The first time I went to his apartment to watch an NBA game, he was repeatedly interrupted by phone calls that sounded like he was taking bets. I asked him, “Abbie, you make book?” He replied: “What do you think, you can make a living being a social revolutionary?” Anyway …) Abbie could never mention Jerry Rubin without cursing or unburdening himself with how much he detested him. It was beyond personal and more than just his betrayal. It was something that Hoffman just couldn’t process. As though Rubin had decided to become a cannibal.
I looked up Rubin, because I did not know he had gone to Cincinnati. In Wikipedia it says that their relationship rekindled somewhat. That is definitely not my recollection. It also says that Rubin went to Hoffman’s funeral. Now that is possible; I don’t know that I would recognize him in 1989. But I was in Worcester that day, and I recall Bill Walton, Peter Yarrow (who led a round of “Puff the Magic Dragon”), David Dellinger and some others, but I do not recollect Rubin.
I see that Rubin died about 5 years after Hoffman. (I never kept track of his career.) I fully expect that that guy would today be one of the “reluctant” Trump supporters, like the rest of the self-indulgent, grasping, conscience-less frauds who got us where we are today.
Cheers.
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Thank you for the inspiring article in Hidden Causes.
Cincinnati is a polar town in many ways, an odd place all the time. I was at a Rubin rally at U.C. in 1969 and am glad to hear that Abbie Hoffman had those visceral reactions. Hoffman remained a guardian of integrity to the very end, in stark contrast to Rubin’s spirit of utilitarian expedience.
I was repulsed during the late 70’s advent of Reaganism and remain disheartened by what has become the last 40 years. Omens such as Robert Ringer’s *Winning through Intimidation* were foreboding enough then, Trump’s interpretation of Sun Szu’s *Art of War* unsettle me now.
I read David Dellinger’s autobiography *From Yale to Jail* (1993) a couple decades ago and it became a touchstone, providing a helpful perspective on formative times and the ugly countenances rising from the darkness today.
Remain humane my friend.
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