Kent State Anniversary...so?

[Fenris]

Yes. It was a bad thing. Yes. It was sad. :(

It was also 4 kids nearly 40 years ago.

I'm sick of the ponderous pundits intoning every goddamned year "It's the X anniversary of Kent State....what have we learned?"

The answer to that insipid question is "Don't throw rocks at people with guns." and "Don't riot.*" Generally not that complicated a life-lesson.

I'm honestly sorry those kids were shot--especially the one kid who was just walking past the chaos--but it's been 40 years. And frankly, if we're gonna honor protesters who were killed protesting, we'd be better off remembering Tienanmen Square-at least those kids were engaged in a protest a little more noble than "Waaah! If I'm drafted, I can't go to the Spring Mixer." and "Woo! Burn down the town, man!".

I dunno--I know I'm coming across sounding like Cartman from South Park here, and to a degree, yeah, I suppose I do feel a bit that way. But the one-sided, maudlin, brainless reporting of a complex issue by boiling it down to "Armed soldiers shoot innocent kids who were just talking peacefully about luvvvv" every year pisses me off.

*People tend to forget that the reason the National Guard was there was because there was rioting for like 3 days prior, people breaking windows, looting, burning down a building, attacking firemen who were trying to put out the fire (hospitalizing several, IIRC), wounding 10 guardsmen and they ignored a court order to disperse...it wasn't a peaceful hippie love-in.

[ASAKMOTSD]

Those were some sad times in this country, regardless.

[Sgt. Max Fightmaster]

I think the incident - rightly or wrongly - is taken as epitomising the whole sordid mess of discontent and aggressive attempts at suppression that characterised a lot of that period.

[Khampelf]

"Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming"
We're finally on our own
This summer I heard the drumming
Four dead in Ohio."
Neil Young - "Ohio"

I used the above lyric to illustrate how the event was perceived. It was a watershed moment in the growing distrust of the government. There's a lot of hyperbole on both sides. The burning of the ROTC building was days earlier. The primary protest was over Nixon ordering the invasion of Cambodia, seemingly in contrast to his election promise to wind down the war. Ironically, the May 4th rally was to protest the presence of National Guardsmen on campus. Guardsman and campus officials were operating under the assumption of a state of emergency that the Governor talked about, but never issued. Some protesters were throwing rocks, and ignored an order to disperse. Some guardsmen fired into the air, or into the ground when the protesters advanced. Others didn't wait to see if that would be effective, and fired into the crowd.

It was a very sad chapter, and H.R. Haldeman has written that it was the start of the slide into the Watergate scandal. Does it need to be mentioned every year? Maybe not, but I certainly see how it was an important event in American history.

Tianaman Square and the Tlatelolco massacre are also powerful events demonstrating government over-reaction to (peaceful) protesters, but we don't memorialize those as much, they weren't Americans.

The anniversary of the Kent State shootings will get more press attention on slow news days. Never underestimate the morbidity of the public.

[The Second Stone]

I wouldn't have remembered it if it hadn't been for this thread. But, hey, Fenris, fuck you for mocking the students who were shot by the government. Hope it happens to you someday.

[Andrew Jackson's Hair]

Fuck those hippies and that whole generation. I'm sick of them also.

No seriously, it's trite as fuck. The continued memorial of the day reeks of 60's-era self-importance. Boston Massacre helps galvanize the formation of the entire fucking country, but a couple hippies catch a bullet and guess which one gets more airplay. Because all the ex-hippy asslord fuckface dickweeds on their treadmills at the gym are insufficiently ironic to savor their own selling out. They want to nod solemnly like that shit was important.

Because things really changed after that. No. Wait...useless wars? Check. Lying, piece of shit presidents? Check.

Dumb hippies smell like patchouli. Give them the bayonet and save bullets next time.

[cormac]

devo formed because of that incident

[Zeener Diode]

devo formed because of that incident

Interesting concept. I read that while the members attended Kent State in the 60s, they didn't form the first incarnation until 1973, at the Kent State Performing Arts festival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devo

ETA: Not the final word in historical accuracy, but a good starting point.

[cormac]

according to one of their interviews, thats what put the idea into their heads - the de-evolution of mankind

[Fenris]

I wouldn't have remembered it if it hadn't been for this thread. But, hey, Fenris, fuck you for mocking the students who were shot by the government. Hope it happens to you someday.

As ever, the carefully thought out sort of rebuttal I'd have expected from you.

[GIGObuster]

I'm going to make later only one post directed just at the OP as I was requested to mod this.

[MODERATOR HAT ON]

So far I'm not giving any infractions, just the advice that insults do not make a good argument, and they are even less effective when one hopes for the death of the opponent.

So cool it The Second Stone and grossbottom or the box is coming if you guys continue to attempt to derail the discussion, insults and treats are not much of an issue now, but attempting to derail the discussion with no proper rebuttal is.

[/MODERATOR HAT ON]

[Veb]

Anyone who thinks that shooting was simple or black-and-white is willfully deluded. Anyone interested in facts could do worse than read the university's own analysis of the shooting (http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm).

Fair disclosure: I took one of my masters degrees at Kent State, though years after the shooting. The scars were still very much there, including a huge hole drilled through a steel sculpture from where a Nat'l. Guardsman fired down the hill into the crowd. Most people on campus, students and faculty, were pretty sick and tired of the shooting being dragged back up, year after year. There still exists a very small cadre who make a 'thing' of the shooting. The worst, IMO, was Alan Canfora, who has been a Professional Victim since he shot in the wrist. Those injured much worse, and the families of the dead, did not play up "May Fourth Day".

The account above very much white-washes the university's responsibility in the shootings. There was plenty of blame to go around, for all parties. The ever-popular 'outside agitators'? Absolutely true. Kent State wasn't a radicals' school. Antioch in Yellow Springs and OU in Athens were the radical centers. Most of the Kent students were friendly and supportive of the Guardsmen until the occupation--and I don't use that term lightly--intensified. Even then, many of the students just wanted to wrap up the term and go home.

Was the town (such as it is) of Kent trashed the night before? Sure was. Again, a very small percentage of students participated but mix inflammatory rhetoric with enough beer and a lot of damage was done. Closing the bars wasn't popular but I think it was justified.

How much did the University encourage what amounted to an armed occupation of the campus? The story on that one changed. Did the Guard commander or the University President lie after the fact? You decide. Make no mistake, feelings ran high over that damned war, among wide segments of society: the lies and the torture and the patently absurd-to-the-point-of-obscenity rationalizations. (Sound familiar? It should.) But once the situation escalated, most students weren't so much angry over the war as suddenly living under what amounted to martial law.

Did the Guard overreact? Big time. Some students threw rocks, no doubt about that one. Getting hit with a rock, especially when wearing combat gear that includes a helmet, does not present an imminent threat of death. They were basically on riot duty but they carried rifles and pistols with live ammunition. And they turned and fired into a crowd. A few students who were struck took part in the demonstration. The others were just walking to class. One of the girls who was killed died as she crouched behind a car. The bullet was powerful enough to pass through the body of the car and hit her.

The National Guard was also misused. They were kids themselves, for the most part. Kids trained and entrusted with weapons, but still young. They were also tired as hell. They had just served a tough stint on strike duty (in Youngstown, IIRC). Not a popular gig either, where they caught ill-will. It was hot weather, they were already tired...it mattered.

Who escalated the situation to the flashpoint? IMO, James Rhodes, the governor of Ohio who had more political ambition than sense. What started as a (for then) fairly routine bunch of meatheads yowling slogans became flammable when Rhodes used the situation to grandstand. Law! Order! Love it or leave it! He made an emergency of something that could and should have been finessed. He also specified that the closest National Guard unit be deployed--the ones just coming off strike duty.

Do I think it should be remembered? Sure. It wasn't a huge tragedy, as body counts go, but it was a scary reality check for just about everyone involved about power vs. civilians and the path the country was taking. Does it need to be dredged up every.single.year? Hell, no. Not IMO.

But it sure doesn't deserve mockery either. Let me tell you, it can be creepy walking past that hill, still. 'Blanket Hill', the perfect spot to plop under a tree and get in some fresh-air studying. I walked past it several times daily, from the grad dorm to the academic buildings. Whether you approve of their supposed politics--as if you even know--those students were civilians. But for those who are waxing all righteously Rightish: what would think, right now, if suddenly your city was taken over armed National Guard? That you were issued a curfew by the military? That your governor suddenly labels you an enemy of society and basically scum, just because of where you happen to be at the time. That you weren't supposed to walk where your normal routine took you, outside of curfew hours, but you didn't know that? And suddenly you're under fire from pistols and high-powered rifles?

What's your politically appropriate reaction to that? Think hard about Waco first.

That's why the Kent State shooting is worth remembering: because it happened. Because all tragedies take are enough relatively small fuck-ups.

[Fenris]

What's your politically appropriate reaction to that? Think hard about Waco first.

That's why the Kent State shooting is worth remembering: because it happened. Because all tragedies take are enough relatively small fuck-ups.

That's an excellent post and an excellent point (and the Waco thing--or, even more appropriately Ruby Ridge was just a fantastic analogy).

If I heard more commentators saying what you said, I wouldn't have felt the need for the OP.

Once again Veb, you are a calming ying to my raging yang. :p

[Rebo]

Thanks, Veb. I never really knew what that was all about, aside from the Neil Young song.

I feel guilty for not learning about it. Thanks for educating me.

[Veb]

It's not the best picture, but this picture might illustrate the power of bullets--and fuck-ups. (http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM2R8F)

Take a look at the thickness of that steel, then consider what you'd do--and think, and feel--when armed troops topped that hill and fired those weapons at you. Imagine what you'd think--and feel--if you'd had one of those guns in your hand, seconds after the volley of shots. IMO the only real heroes in the whole, tragic mess were the faculty members who walked between the National Guard and the students and talked, fast and for all they were worth. They talked everybody down, and kept the shooting from escalating into a full-bore clusterfuck.

Again, the confrontation should never have happened. I wasn't of college age when those shootings--those killings--happened, but my sister was. She was at another college in Ohio. Her college, Wilmington, was a Quaker school, and vehemently anti-war. They were, of course, more peaceful about it. And lucky. The point about Kent State that it was so entirely unlikely. Even in the first shock and outrage, there was a strong element of, "WTF? Kent State? That can't be right."

I can't emphasize enough how ordinary Kent State was, as were most colleges and universities. Sure, demonstrations got out of hand, college offices were occupied and the usual asininities got all the press. But there was a fairly widespread belief that the government had run amok, and it cut across age groups, economic classes, occupations, etc. But the vast majority of those citizens were peaceful and yes, patriotic. Their response to "America, love it or leave it" was "America, love it and make it better".

I have nothing but contempt for anyone who uses something like the Kent State shootings to score facile points for either--or any--supposed political "side". I hated walking past that sculpture every day. People avoided it because it's a damned chilling reminder of how wrong things can go, and how fast.

[duckster]

If you want a small flavor of what it was like on campus at that time, go watch The War at Home (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080118/).

[Andrew Jackson's Hair]

I'm going to make later only one post directed just at the OP as I was requested to mod this.

[MODERATOR HAT ON]

So far I'm not giving any infractions, just the advice that insults do not make a good argument, and they are even less effective when one hopes for the death of the opponent.

So cool it The Second Stone and grossbottom or the box is coming if you guys continue to attempt to derail the discussion, insults and treats are not much of an issue now, but attempting to derail the discussion with no proper rebuttal is.

[/MODERATOR HAT ON]

I wasn't trying to derail or rebut, I was agreeing with the OP. Why don't you just relax?

[Veb]

I wasn't trying to derail or rebut, I was agreeing with the OP. Why don't you just relax?
Why don't you read? It's not that hard.

Your determinedly tough-guy blather about 'bayonet 'em next time and save the bullets' and 'ex-hippy asslord fuckface dickweeds' isn't even close to the OP's point:
But the one-sided, maudlin, brainless reporting of a complex issue by boiling it down to "Armed soldiers shoot innocent kids who were just talking peacefully about luvvvv" every year pisses me off.

I provided fairly extensive citation that those killed were not 'hippy asslord fuckface dickweeds'. They were ordinary civilians who were placed under martial law, walked the wrong place and ended up shot by stressed, tired Guardsmen.

The Kent State shooting was never accurately reported by the mainstream media, IMO. Which doesn't suprise me either, given the abysmal level of non-reportage in this country. AFAIC, newspapers and television 'news' shows deserve to die, killed by the internet. Absolute rookies don't have any more agendas but often show superior analytical and investigative skills.

Fenris's analogy was closer than mine: Kent State was very close in nature to the Ruby Ridge attack, and for much the same reasons.

Neither should have happened, both were entirely preventable and your asinine 'so what, it didn't change anything' is exactly the point. The potential more bloodbath clusterfucks is still real. You may view that with complacency but I reserve my anger for the bloated, candycane 'media' in this country that continues to dumb down and package their 'news' like casting a made-for-tv-special.

[wring]

The other thing that I'd like to point out was that the protests weren't so much about 'wah, if I get drafted, then I miss the mixer' type of thing - the draft, as it was done back in the 70's was, essentially "draft poor young males". I was in high school back then, and exactly one of my contemporaries was drafted.

One.

We had a graduating class of over 700.

Nearby less afluent schools lost significant percentages of their graduating class.

[Veb]

You nailed another aspect of it, wring. I actually had a long post written about how unrest about the war interesected--and didn't--with the Civil Rights movement. There was a whole spectrum of activists, only some of which saw common interests.

Educational draft deferments changed as the war dragged on but the poor, as always, were the hardest hit. The war accelerated the civil rights protests by the disproportionate toll it took on blacks and the poor. The term 'cannon fodder' was used, with some justification. That's also part of the reason that civil rights militants had scant use for white student 'radicals'. Most of the Weathermen, etc. were basically fairly affluent college students, with student deferments. It was amusing, in a very dark way. The small cadre of student radicals wanted crediblity and partnership so badly with black militants like the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, etc. Mostly they were scorned as privileged asses.

The civil rights movement wove through the anti-war movement but didn't run in tandem with it.

[Moon Dog]

GrossButt is just casting bait and fishing. DNFTT.

[wring]

(you'll note that at no time did I use the term "whippersnapper". :D )

[Merhouse]

Jeffrey Miller's mother was the secretary to the Principal of the High School I graduated from in 1970. Jeff graduated from the school across town 2 years before I did.

While I'm surprised this is still being discussed, it was a bad thing and a very bad time. Just thinking about it now still brings tears to my eyes. Yeah, lots of bad things happen to good people every day of the year, and I'm not suggesting it be made a national holiday or anything, but, FWIW, it still sucks big time.

[Zeener Diode]

Back in high school I wrote a report on the Kent State shootings, and the book I read was James Michener's Kent State: What Really Happened. It gave an excellent account using factual news, eyewitness reports, and interviews with all parties involved (I can't recall if Gov Rhodes was interviewed). After I graduated I discovered Four Dead in Ohio by William Gordon. This book is well-written and presents a different angle on the shootings, but to me it seemed too eager to point fingers at the Nixon administration and all its evils.

ETA: People still read books, yes?

[Sgt. Max Fightmaster]

ETA: People still read books, yes?

Read what?

[Zeener Diode]

You know, um, those squarish paper things with, uh, pages...?

Some even have pictures!

[Falcon]

I went to Kent State as an undergrad in the late 80s, so I have a different perspective than what has been offered so far in this thread. I'll toss in my .02, FWIW.

I was just shy of 2 when the shootings happened, and I mostly grew up in central Ohio, so I was unaware of the significance of May 4th when I chose colleges. I just wanted to go to a smaller school than Ohio State, and Kent was in a good location for me. Plus, I loved campus--it's beautiful there.

From the day I showed up, May 4th was in the student newspaper on a daily (or near daily) basis, because there was a very controversial push to build a memorial. It was kind of odd going there with this big, unhappy bit of history that pre-dated me being such a hot topic. Sometimes, I wished it wasn't like that. I just wanted to go to school, and the past is the past. Why couldn't people let it fade away?

Except I talked to my mom about it, and she told me that the shootings had a chilling effect on lots of people, and that wasn't confined to Kent State. She and my father were students at Ohio State at the time, and she was pregnant with my brother. The National Guard was also at Ohio State then, and she told me she saw a tank come over one of the bridges near campus. After Kent State, she was frightened every time she saw the Guard, and would think "Please don't shoot me. I'm pregnant."

My parents are hardly radicals, and they weren't hippies. I doubt they ever went to a single protest. But that doesn't matter, does it, if your own government's forces start shooting at crowds on campus?

That's when I started to grasp why people didn't want May 4th to be forgotten, and why some people could never forget. I also learned from a display on campus, though, that there were people in the town of Kent who felt more students should have been shot (those were the very words written by one of the townspeople for the display). And there were people in Kent who hated the university and the students to that day.

So I was very torn while I was there. All I wanted was an education, without all these echos of the past. But the more I listened to the different perspectives, the more I understood and accepted why those echos were there. And when the memorial was finally built and dedicated, I was there in the crowd, and I felt chills when Governor Celeste apologied to those who were injured, and to the friends and families of those who died. I'm tearing up a little thinking about it--I can still hear him saying it almost two decades later.

When I first moved to Minnesota, the topic of where I went as an undergrad came up frequently. People above a certain age, when I told them I went to Kent, would suddenly look haunted. Their eyes would search mine for answers, but I had none for them. People who were a bit younger would sometimes joke, "So are they still shooting students there?" I didn't really know how to answer that one either.

But now? A few years ago, I was grocery shopping and wearing my Kent State sweatshirt. A man approached me and asked if I'd gone to Kent State. Yes, I answered, expecting to be asked about the shootings. Instead, he asked if he could buy my sweatshirt. The basketball team had done exceptionally well that season, and his son wanted my sweatshirt.

Ummm. No.

So really, the OP puzzles me, because from my perspective, I hear very, very little about Kent State anymore. Nobody says anything about it now if I say where I went to school. But every year, as May 4th approaches, I find myself singing, "Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio." And I think about the world and what's been going on these past several years, and I hope we never again experience the government opening fire on a crowd. Because it harms people far beyond those present, and far more deeply than the immediate injuries caused by bullets. And the healing is a long time coming.

[Zeener Diode]

That was a moving response, Falcon. Thank you for sharing.

[Andrew Jackson's Hair]

Why don't you read? It's not that hard.

Your determinedly tough-guy blather about 'bayonet 'em next time and save the bullets' and 'ex-hippy asslord fuckface dickweeds' isn't
...was a joke. Hyperbole? Ha. Ha ha. Jesus Christ, take the internet extra serious much?

even close to the OP's point:
I disagree, my post shows ample contempt, albiet mostly by implication, for a media that caters to its audience and fails to inform. It also uses humor, a difficult concept, to demonstrate my own lack of connection with the event, which was a major theme of the OP.

I provided fairly extensive citation that those killed were not 'hippy asslord fuckface dickweeds'.
Now it's your turn to read. Because I was clearly using that phrase to refer to their now-living former contemporaries, not the shooting victims. Unless, in hippy heaven, dead hippies spend time on treadmills?

Neither should have happened, both were entirely preventable and your asinine 'so what, it didn't change anything' is exactly the point.
That's right. It's exactly the point. MY POINT. That I made. In my post. The one you said wasn't close to the point? Hello? Is this thing on? If my post takes refuge in black humor and a mocking tone rather than futile, self-important outrage, that doesn't make it beside the point, trolling or anything other than something you (and GIGObuster) don't like. Instead of waving the e-peen/modhat, why not release a PPR style guide so we can all make sure we express our opinions in the exact format with which you are most comfortable and from which you are least likely to take umbrage?

[Moon Dog]

Oh the poor Mods are picking on Grossbottom.
I thought it may have taken longer before the victim complex came out.
I've got my money on GrossButt here to be the first to flame out on GB.
Any takers on the bet ?

[Andrew Jackson's Hair]

Oh the poor Mods are picking on Grossbottom.
I thought it may have taken longer before the victim complex came out.
I've got my money on GrossButt here to be the first to flame out on GB.
Any takers on the bet ?
Have you contributed anything relevant to the OP in this thread?

[Moon Dog]

Have you contributed anything relevant to the OP in this thread?

No. But then neither have you.
I haven't been blatant trolling in it though.
So I have no problem claiming the high road.

[wring]

Any chance the two of you could fight elsewhere? jus' askin'.

[Moon Dog]

No problem. The troll can pit me if he likes.

Apologies for the hijack.

[Veb]

Back in high school I wrote a report on the Kent State shootings, and the book I read was James Michener's Kent State: What Really Happened. It gave an excellent account using factual news, eyewitness reports, and interviews with all parties involved (I can't recall if Gov Rhodes was interviewed). After I graduated I discovered Four Dead in Ohio by William Gordon. This book is well-written and presents a different angle on the shootings, but to me it seemed too eager to point fingers at the Nixon administration and all its evils.

ETA: People still read books, yes?
I hope they do.

I got so fed up with the annual "May Fourth" Alan Canfora wankfest at Kent I made a point to read anything I could put my hands on about it. Michener's book is very solid analysis of what happened. I do remember, quite vividly, the shock when Michener wrote it. He was the quintessential Greatest Generation historian/storyteller, very much a WWII-sensibility kinda guy. Heck, he wrote Tales of the South Pacific. Not someone folks expected to take interest in a contemporary shooting where a 'bunch of hippies' got shot.

There was some consternation when his Kent State book wasn't a 'patriotic' gloss job. He took a very fair, balanced look at what happened, and why.

Falcon's memories of Kent were fascinating. Painful and sad, too.

It was a very scary, ugly, sad time. As a slight footnote, it's worth remembering what Jim Rhodes, the governor who sent those tired National Guardsmen onto that campus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Rhodes) said about student protesters the day before the shooting:

""They're worse than the Brownshirts and the Communist element and also the Night Riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America."

That was the voice of the state's highest elected official, the voice of the government. Some of the townspeople did rejoice in the deaths, and wish more had been killed. That was how ugly and divisive and scary it was.

[duckster]

Now that May 4th has come and gone, I wonder how many will remember the event on August 24th from the same year?

I wouldn't think so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing). It would be 25 years more before another case of domestic terrorism shook this country.

[Chacoguy]

Kinda wild to think about a time when there was rioting and bombing going on and we didn't resort to the shit we've seen during the previous eight years.

[The Second Stone]

I'm going to make later only one post directed just at the OP as I was requested to mod this.

[MODERATOR HAT ON]

So far I'm not giving any infractions, just the advice that insults do not make a good argument, and they are even less effective when one hopes for the death of the opponent.

So cool it The Second Stone and grossbottom or the box is coming if you guys continue to attempt to derail the discussion, insults and treats are not much of an issue now, but attempting to derail the discussion with no proper rebuttal is.

[/MODERATOR HAT ON]


[/SELF-IMPORTANT DOUCHEBAG HAT ON]
Oh, this was a serious thread? See, I didn't get that with the mocking of the students who were killed and wounded and the taunting concern for the injured bystanders. I thought it was just dumping on liberals who were against the war and were gunned down like brown people in an oil tyranny. Pray continue.

I didn't realize that a serious debate was raised by this thread for the reason that it isn't a serious debate. It is mocking dead people and the people remembering them. It's your board. If you want to ban or box me, go right ahead, but don't pretend that I've done Fenris or his memory some kind of injustice because he wants to mock remembrances of students who died protesting killing brown people.

The injustice was done to the murdered students by the Nixon National Guard and more injustice was done to their memory by Fenris mocking those remembering them. Hope it happens to you and Fenris. Seriously you morally retarded Fenris ass licker. Yeah, Fenris is the wronged party here, forty years later. As if.

I want you to understand, you fucking douche, that I am defying your stupid attempt to abuse your "mod powers" here and protect Fenris for his trolling celebration of the Kent State massacres. I am metaphorically spitting in your self-important face. Do your damndest. I'd call you a piece of shit, but that would be an unfair comparison as no piece of shit has done anything like what you or Fenris did.

Coward.

[/SELF-IMPORTANT DOUCHEBAG HAT OFF]

[GIGObuster]

[/SELF-IMPORTANT DOUCHEBAG HAT ON]
Oh, this was a serious thread? See, I didn't get that with the mocking of the students who were killed and wounded and the taunting concern for the injured bystanders. I thought it was just dumping on liberals who were against the war and were gunned down like brown people in an oil tyranny. Pray continue.

I didn't realize that a serious debate was raised by this thread for the reason that it isn't a serious debate. It is mocking dead people and the people remembering them. It's your board. If you want to ban or box me, go right ahead, but don't pretend that I've done Fenris or his memory some kind of injustice because he wants to mock remembrances of students who died protesting killing brown people.

The injustice was done to the murdered students by the Nixon National Guard and more injustice was done to their memory by Fenris mocking those remembering them. Hope it happens to you and Fenris. Seriously you morally retarded Fenris ass licker. Yeah, Fenris is the wronged party here, forty years later. As if.

I want you to understand, you fucking douche, that I am defying your stupid attempt to abuse your "mod powers" here and protect Fenris for his trolling celebration of the Kent State massacres. I am metaphorically spitting in your self-important face. Do your damndest. I'd call you a piece of shit, but that would be an unfair comparison as no piece of shit has done anything like what you or Fenris did.

Coward.

[/SELF-IMPORTANT DOUCHEBAG HAT OFF]
Meh.

I was going to make a reply against Fenris for being so ignorant of many historical aspects of it, but TVeblen's replies made it unnecessary and in this case I'm moderating not participating. I understand where your opinions on Fenris regarding this topic are coming from, but as TVeblem demonstrated your method of telling others how wrong they are leaves a lot to be desired.