COMING HOME IN BODY & MIND

I came home from Vietnam in 1968, left the Marines and attended City College for a year...and an exciting and vibrant year it was!  My sister was, at the same time, attending UCSD as a member of its first freshman class. Also at UCSD was an obscure German Philosopher named Herbert Marcuse....but he would become, depending on point of view, famous or infamous in that time.

The best explanation I can find is this documentary done by a Danish film maker.  It's almost an hour, but well worth it for a bit of San Diego History:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5311625903124176509#

I thought of this period recently when the Manchester-Lynch SDUT showed their true colors in a hilariously over the top editorial "Obama in 2016" which predicted all manner of catastrophe to come.  In those days the UT was owned by the Copley family, rabid  right wingers in the old "commies everywhere" vein.  Along with the local American Legion, they made Marcuse the most controversial man in America, and provoked numerous threats on his life in the process.  His graduate students armed themselves and the SDPD provided various manner of security.  This was the era of assassination...Martin Luther King & Bobby Kennedy were both murdered in 1968...the threats were real!

I met Marcuse along with Angela Davis after I achieved a bit of notoriety...getting arrested at a Max Rafferty Senatorial campaign event.  Actually I wasn't really protesting the obnoxious Rafferty...I was defending a gal friend from a YAFer (Young Americans for Freedom) in the crowd.  He pushed me, I decked him, and half a dozen cops decked me....wee, my 15 minutes of fame!

I would often go out to UCSD to visit with my sister and her friends....they were "Clean for Gene" types, I was for Bobby Kennedy, but we both lost that nite in June when Sirhan Sirhan pulled a trigger.  The Chicago DNC had happened...we were stuck with choosing between Nixon & Humphrey...the mood was sour.  I met a graduate student of Marcuse who introduced me to their inner circle as "the Vet who was beat up at the Rafferty rally..."  ah well!

Marcuse was a small vibrant man in his 60s...as threatening as your Grandpa...he was a Jewish refugee from Germany, a former OSS (precursor to CIA) employee, and a critic of Fascism, Communism and Capitalism,,,not that I was ready to understand it.  I slogged thru Reason & Revolution but I didn't understand it...I wasn't ready.  I did understand that this man was a good man who was being vilified by the worst of American political inclinations...a return to McCarthyism, pure and simple.

So, view the video when you have time...well worth it!