The Facebook Memories tab becomes especially relevant on
some days more than others. Today is one
of them, because today, May 4, there’s a BK and an AK (explanation of terms
forthcoming in a moment). Curmie has
written more than once (in 2015,
2022,
2024,
and 2025) about how the murder (yes, murder) of four Kent State University
students by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970, was a life-changing event for
him.
It wasn’t so much what had happened. That was terrible enough, and the now-famous
photograph of Mary Vecchio screaming over the body of Jeffrey Miller brought
everything home in dramatic fashion. No,
it was the aftermath: the explanations and excuses by government officials and
even the allegedly left-leaning media.
They’d have had us believe that the dead and injured students were somehow
to blame for their own victimhood. Even
at age 14, Curmie smelled bullshit, and came to understand something profoundly
important: those in power will employ whatever means necessary to maintain their
privileged position.
The lies, deceptions, and evasions came fast and
furious. Curmie quotes himself from last
year: “Of course, the political leaders at the time didn’t wait for the facts
to emerge before blaming the victims. President
Nixon called them “bums”; Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes described them as
“the worst type of people that we harbor in America”; Ronald Reagan, Governor
of California at the time, said that “if it takes bloodbath” to deal with
campus demonstrators “let's get it over with.”
These characterizations, intended to excuse or even to extol the actions
of the Guardsmen, had precisely the opposite effect on Curmie.
There was just something not right about all of the claims
that the Guardsmen were fearful of their own lives and just trying to defuse a
tense situation. These guys with military-grade
weapons were afraid of a bunch of post-adolescents armed with… um…
flowers? As Curmie wrote four years ago,
he knew very quickly that “[what] happened in that early afternoon in eastern
Ohio wasn’t self-defense; it wasn’t inevitable; it wasn’t triggered by the
actions of radical peaceniks. And it sure as hell wasn’t a small
sacrifice worth making to restore law and order.”
Curmie learned to distrust—or, rather, not to trust
uncritically—any pronouncement from government officials, the news media, or any
variation on the theme of someone in a uniform carrying a gun. It was life-changing. What happened wasn’t a huge shift in
perspective; it was a change in the grounding for that perspective. What had been an unfocused adolescent
rebelliousness morphed into a more mature skepticism. Curmie may or may not have become a
14-year-old curmudgeon, but he was well on the way.
You will note, however, Gentle Reader, that Curmie had this
blog for over five years before ever mentioning Kent State, His personal Facebook page has one brief
mention on this date in 2010, outnumbered prior to 2015 by variations on “May
the 4th be with you.” There was a Star
Wars reference in 2011 on Curmie’s FB page, too. But things changed in 2015. Curmie was lucky enough to have been selected
as one of 36 scholars from a host of academic disciplines to attend an
NEH-sponsored Summer Institute on translation theory. The organizers were both faculty members at
Kent State, so that’s where the sessions were held in June.
My first experience of the campus was driving into a parking
lot near the dorm where I’d be staying for the three weeks of the Institute. There were four columns, perhaps four feet
high or so, in that lot. They were
memorials to the students killed about 100 or 150 yards away a little over 45 years earlier. They had flat tops, and each was topped with
several pebbles; I learned later that these were placed there by visitors as
tokens of solemn remembrance and respect.
Yes, Gentle Reader, Curmie added a pebble to each column before leaving
campus.
As noted in the 2015 post linked above, “the university
appears to have been quite adept at walking a very fine line, simultaneously
commemorating the chilling events of [then] 45 years ago and moving on with the
academic mission of the institution.” There
are a few memorials, and the university has since added markers to honor the wounded as well as the dead.
Curmie does not adhere to the MAGA perspective that it’s not
a problem unless it affects him directly.
But anyone with even a modicum of empathy will inevitably be affected
more when there’s a personal connection, even an indirect one caused by
physical proximity to the site where something significant occurred. Still, it wasn’t just being on the Kent State
campus that changed Curmie’s life again.
It wasn’t even the visit to the May 4 Museum that precipitated that 2015
essay, written in a dorm room only 150 yards or so from where those students
were gunned down. Yes, that visit was significant
in and of itself, but it catalyzed something more important: it inspired not
merely sorrow and anger, but curiosity, that essential element for any search for the truth.
Prior to that visit, Curmie was aware only of the generalities:
that the students were not a threat, that the government was more interested in
protecting the reputation of the killers than of the victims, that sort of
thing. But the museum also provided some
specifics. Curmie spent a couple more hours of research before writing this:
It turns out, of course, that my suspicions were correct. The Guardsmen, seemingly retreating to avoid further confrontation, turned in unison to fire into the crowd. The nearest of the four students fatally shot by the Guard was about 85 yards away and simply observing the activities, not even taking part in the protest. And this is according to Nixon’s own appointed commission, headed by former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton. The nearest of the nine students wounded in the 13-second fusillade (a total of 60+ shots fired from 28 military-grade rifles) was 20 yards from the Guardsman; the furthest was nearly 250 yards away. Think about that. 250 yards away, and he was shot in the neck… by the alleged good guys? Only two of the 13 casualties were shot from the front. They were the aggressors? I don’t think so, criminal acquittals of the killers notwithstanding.
No. The Kent State killings (and the disingenuous aftermath) were indeed the ultimate declaration of war by the authorities on my generation, and I knew then, with my 15th birthday still nearly five months away, not only that I’d have to take sides, but which side I’d have to take.
Today, the average person is unaware of just how egregious
the events and the cover-up were. Over half
of today’s population wasn’t born yet, and a good many others were too young to
understand. Kent State resonated with
Curmie because it was the first major event in which his reaction was truly his
own rather than a version of his parents’ thinking. Someone even a couple of years younger
probably wouldn’t have been ready to take that step. But there are plenty of folks old enough to
remember, but who bought the spin instead of the facts.
And we are once again in a period in which heavily armed and
under-trained federal forces are given virtual carte blanche to attack
protesters. Nixon may have intentionally
mis-characterized what happened at Kent State, but even he appointed a
commission to find out the truth. Their
findings were under-reported, but at least they existed. The Trump administration has not only lied
about the actions of ICE and similar goon squads; they have repeatedly refused
to cooperate with Minnesota authorities regarding the shootings on Renee Good
and Alex Pretti. Need Curmie remind you
that murders are state rather than federal offenses?
Back in 2015, Curmie expressed the fear that there couldn’t
be another Kent State because of the political apathy of the college-aged population. That’s still true: the median age of No Kings
participants is probably in the 40s. But
the spirit of resistance lives on, and the violence and mendacity of the administration
have not gone unnoticed. When the likes
of Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene have jumped ship, things aren’t
looking good for the long-term prospects of the regime. Curmie is not unhappy about that.
Unprovoked violence by those in power suggests their
inability to make a reasoned argument. Their
obvious lies undermine their presumed authority. And, as the banner above suggests, they
can’t kill us all. What happened at Kent
State 56 years ago today was horrible.
But if there was a silver lining to that dark cloud, it was the clarity
it brought to the fore about the Vietnam War and its proponents. Whether Nixon knew it or not, it was the
beginning of the end… or at least the end of the beginning. Clarity about the advocates of the Iran War
(and so many other remarkably stupid policies) is also emerging. To quote a line attributed to Mark Twain, “History
doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.”
For some of us, May 4, 1970, was a turning point. Curmie is wearing his Kent State t-shirt today. It seems like the least he could do.
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