"All Right, Prepare To Fire"

An update to my post on Kent State:

The Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were given an order to prepare to shoot, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event.

"Guard!" says a male voice on the recording, which two forensic audio experts enhanced and evaluated at the request of The Plain Dealer. Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!"

"Get down!" someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! . . . " followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds.

The previously undetected command could begin to explain the central mystery of the Kent State tragedy - why 28 Guardsmen pivoted in unison atop Blanket Hill, raised their rifles and pistols and fired 67 times, killing four students and wounding nine others in an act that galvanized sentiment against the Vietnam War.

The order indicates that the gunshots were not spontaneous, or in response to sniper fire, as some have suggested over the years.

[emphasis added]

On Tuesday, I was reading lots of comments on YouTube versions of the shooting and other commemorations of the Kent State massacre. I was shocked at the level of disconnect with today's youth compared with those of us that lived the moment as teenagers, either in high school or in college.

It really is amazing how many of today's young people have no understanding of what it was like back then, and how deeply divided this country was over the war in Vietnam, not so much divided among the youth, but divided between us and our parents, who simply could not fathom why we did not want to fight in a war. The generation gap was huge back then, and it cannot in any fashion be compared to the division that is apparent in today's America. Today's division is purely political, stirred up by lies and supported by the greed of those who condone the lies in order to prop themselves and their companies up on the pedestal of financial gain.

The divide in the 60's and 70's was prompted by the draft, and the forcing of people (mostly young men), against their will, to fight in a war they didn't believe in, didn't want to die in, and more importantly, not for a president most of them (us) despised. In Iraq and Afghanistan, although our soldiers were lied to in order to get them to go to war, let it not be forgotten for one moment that these brave souls decided to enlist and protect and fight for America, even if it was based on lies and again, prompted by a president most of the world despised.

As crazy as Bush & Co. were, they simply stripped us of our rights and drained the hell out of the country's finances, all the while scared shitless of the people who protested against him, but he was nothing like the paranoid Nixon, who in his most egregious and arrogant days as president, sent in fucking armed National Guardsmen to shoot at (and kill) the protesters he so feared.