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>>But I know the republic with survive. And as to the deep division and our unprecedented drop in world esteem etc. - does anyone remember 1968? This is very mild by comparison.
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>Thanks for your comments. As far as 1968 is concerned - I cannot present a viewpoint - I was five years old at the time ....

It was an unsettling time. And the country was far more divided than it is now in far uglier ways.

Gene McCarthy almost beat a sitting President - LBJ in the NH primary and LBJ announced he would not run for a second term. RFK declared for the nomination. The country was awash in Panthers, Weathermen, KKK, SDS, Maoists of very strange varieties being taken seriously on college campuses. Revolution was not just a slogan. 500,000 troops - including a very large number of conscripts - were involved in a Vietnamese civil war fighting under rules of engagement that were madness trying to prop up a regime that was corrupt and unpopular against would-be regime that was totalitarian and barbaric. The Tet offensive - though a failure for the North Vietnamese - had convinced pretty much everyone the war was unwinnable.

In March the My Lai massacre happened in Vietnam.

In April MLK was assassinated and there was rioting all across the country.

Riots in Germany. In England Enoch Powell makes the famous "Rivers of Blood" speech. Student take over the administration building of Columbia Univ.

All graduate school deferments end.

In May students rioted in Paris and then all across France until DeGaulle called out the army. The 2,500 from the SCLC camped out on the Mall in DC for a month.

June 5 RFK was assassinated and within hours the LAPD had declared it the work of a lone, crazed assassin and began destroying all evidence to the contrary.

In August the GOP nominated Richard Nixon. At the Democratic convention in Chicago there were pitched battles in the street with police. Over 100 went to emergency rooms. Gene McCarthy stood on the statue in Lincoln Park and said, "It is my priviledge to be here addressing the government of the people in exile."

5,000 Russian tanks roll into Czechoslovakia backed by 200,000 troops - ending the Prague Spring.

In October police fired on and killed students in Mexico City.

At the Olympics black atheletes on the medal stand gave the black power salute during the national anthem.

In November Richard Nixon is elected President - with Spiro Agnew as VP. George Wallace gets 13% of the popular vote.

And over all this hung the on-going spectre of possible nuclear annihilation of one of the proxy wars went bad.

And that does not even begin to capture the atmosphere.

"Sometimes a light's all shinin' on me
Other times I can barely see.
But lately it's occured to me
What long, strange trip it's been. "