Off-Key, Part Deux… Scott Johnson’s Sunday Reflections.

As luck would have it, Johnson made his usual Sunday music reminiscence about… Columbia University in the year 1969. [Maybe he is actually being followed by gray ghosts, late in the night — robbing him of sleep — the ghosts of his current hypocrisy, when laid out next to his own “youthful protests” profiles.]

His underlying goal this morning, it seemed — was to cluck, cluck about how awful a lawn camp out is, as a protest. How Columbia has gone rotten to the core.

To demonize kids who did nothing violent — simply because they might hold an idealized view — and a simplified view — of the Middle East, here in 2024. But his telling paints his 1969 Vietnam protests as… deeply patriotic. Wow. That’s something, indeed:

…Like so many, myself included, I think our motives constituted an utterly misguided mix of idealism, patriotism, and cowardice. I never hated the United States for one second….

He concludes by lamenting that the current Columbia protestors share no history with his Vietnam ones.

And as to his momentary self-awareness — “the cowardice” he saw in himself, only on looking back — was due to the knowledge that could be drafted to go fight in Vietnam. As so many others were. [In fact, in my tiny mountain town, no fewer than five of my older brothers’ friends came home from Southeast Asia — in body bags. They weren’t college kids; they were miners’ sons — and three of them were not documented. They had come with their families from Mexico. But they died for this nation — whether one agrees with the goals in Vietnam, or not — they paid a price Scott, Paul and John would have never considered paying. Damn.]

Of course, returning to April 2024 at Columbia, on the lawn — in the tents — no one who lives in the US will be “drafted” to go fight in Israel, against their will. Nor to fight for Hamas — if they are living here, they can stay here — in relative safety. They are/were “camping out”. Entirely non-violently.

So it is particularly cowardly, in my estimation that Scott Johnson calls these camp-out kids the “kill the J*ws” crowd. Over and over.

He is an embittered, sad old man now… left awake at night, about his apparent inability to see the shades of gray he used to, as an undergrad. He sees only black and white, in his dotage.

That’s… unfortunate — indeed.