Just a couple of years after Ted Bundy kidnapped a woman across the street from where I lived at Oregon State University, I was still in college and it was the same time of year when an events occurred a world away that were barely on my radar, but that changed the world dramatically. Peter Grant, who writes novels and keeps the Bayou Renaissance Man blog lived in South Africa at the time and writes a truly fascinating post about the Soweto Uprising that started on June 16, 1976. Those were desperate times when desperate people took their fates into their own hands because they had reached a breaking point. Grant says this about what happened:
Soweto was crucial in that it was the first time that the leaders on both sides lost control of their followers. The leaders of the African resistance movements could not control the youth, who acted in defiance of their parents and leaders and went wild for the next few years. The white politicians who thought themselves masters of South Africa’s destiny found out the hard way that they could push people so far . . . but no further. On June 16th, 1976, for the first time, they lost control – and they were never again to fully regain it.
The whole article is a great read. We are not anywhere close to that level of desperation in the United States right now, but it surely seems a direction has been established in many parts of the world that could lead to such. The pressure is building across the country–in the last few years we have lived in North Carolina, Oregon and Texas. I do not know what to expect, but as a news, sociology and history junkie, it is hard not to imagine that something ominous is gaining steam.