During the last few years of the Vietnam War, I lived near the UCLA campus in Westwood. On some days, driving by it, I could see gaggles of police cars parked there.
That meant there were protests and riots on campus. UCLA was a hotbed for protests against the War.
Flash forward a dozen years or so. I was looking for a possible story to write for LA Weekly. I spoke to a Dean at UCLA about the War. This is what he told me (I’m paraphrasing):
“The day the military draft ended, all protests stopped. It was as if there had never been a war. Instead, students started going into campus counseling offices. They wanted to know about jobs that aligned with their majors. They wanted to know what their prospects were after graduation. These were the same ‘revolutionaries’ who had been railing against the inequities of society.”
“Not only that, conflicts broke out between black and white student groups on campus. During the War, they’d been united. But now they were at odds. Over money. Money that was allocated for student activities. Who was going to get the lion’s share of that money?”
There are a few lessons to be learned there, if one cares to think about it…
(Episode 16 of Rappoport Podcasts — “Destroying the Tyranny; Today’s Rebels, Tomorrow’s Leaders” — is now posted on my substack. It’s a blockbuster. To listen, click here. To learn more about This Episode of Rappoport Podcasts, click here.)
Reprinted with permission from Jon Rappoport’s blog.
