"The Kids of Today Should Defend Themselves Against the 70's"

At certain airports, one will come across sections of the concourse and find himself/herself suddenly transported back to the the early 1970s. It is an architectural vision of the future that is blank, invisible, non-partisan. No expectations. I must say I love this feeling when it happens. Because, now, today the future is all filled in, and it is dystopian.

Benjamin Mueller and Nina Bernstein had an article, "Targeted Attack on New York Police Officers Reopens Wounds From the Militant 1970s," in Tuesday's paper, not the first one by the Gray Lady, stoking fear of a Big Apple returned to the violence and upheaval of the bad-ass Black Power early 1970s. Fear of the 1970s. This is a preoccupation of the power elite. When change is in the air and it looks like people aren't going to take it anymore, the '70s are dangled in effigy as a time of chaos and death and failure.

For some members of the New York Police Department, the ambush killing of two officers over the weekend roused memories of a far darker chapter in the department’s past, the 1970s, when violence on the streets and anger at the police erupted into the deliberate murder of some officers. 

There were other similarities — public protests roiling the city and the nation; the police blaming politicians for fomenting antipolice sentiment; and city leaders scrambling to defuse a dangerous divide between law enforcers and the communities they serve.

The drug dealing and rampant crime that characterized that era have faded, but the shooting of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos on Saturday shifted the Police Department into the kind of defensive pose more reminiscent of decades past.

Then, as now, officers were being told to take precautions against the risk of targeted attacks, even though the threat from the Brooklyn gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, appeared to stem at least in part from a history of mental illness and recent expressions of despair.

Forty-six police officers were killed in the line of duty in the 1970s, and 41 more in the 1980s. Before Saturday, the last time an officer was killed in the line of duty was in 2011. 

Some of the assassinations of police officers in the early 1970s were stoked by a militant strain of the black liberation movement, including the explosive killing of Officers Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster in 1972. 

Officer Foster, 22, of the Bronx, and Officer Laurie, 23, of Staten Island, who had fought together as Marines in Vietnam, were shot dead after walking out of a diner in the East Village just before 11 p.m. on Jan. 27, 1972. They had asked to be placed on patrol in the East Village because it was riddled with crime. 

Killings of police officers have dwindled, and the city has sought to rub out the stain of drugs and violent crime, but people in the law enforcement community say the fatal shootings on Saturday ripped open old wounds. 

“The drive to Bellevue Hospital, the chaos, and the sea of uniforms in and out,” Officer Laurie’s wife, Adelaide Laurie, recalled.

“Please don’t let it be that we are retrogressing to that horrible time in the ’70s,” Ms. Laurie said in an interview on Sunday. She added: “It’s the same idea. No one trusted the police; they were called pigs. I’m just kind of reliving that tragedy all over again.”

The text of story refutes the headline, a sure sign that we are dealing with propaganda here. There is very little that is similar between now and then. Drug use and crime is not the issue it was in the 1970s. I can't remember the last time I walked the streets of a big city and was either hassled or felt menaced. Police are not nearly as at risk. But the theme of the piece nonetheless is "Poor, poor police," and its underlying message is, "The police are feeling afraid and maligned. So don't protest."

Pitiful and woeful as this reasoning is, it will definitely have an impact on the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. The question becomes, Will the murders of NYPD's Liu and Ramos mark the beginning of the end for the Black Lives Matter upheaval much the same way that Bloomberg's razing of Occupy Wall Street's Zuccotti Park encampment spelled doom for the global Occupy movement?

I don't think so. Why? The political system is non-functioning; it is not providing society a way to release steam through legislation. The U.S. political system is completely captured by money. Money is brittle, inflexible; it wants to maintain or increase dollarocracy even if it is the costliest of all options.

Obama was able to capture, to a large extent, Occupy. Hillary will not be able to yoke Black Lives Matter.