It was a weird, wild year. The President was deeply unpopular, and his own party was in an uproar, so at some point, he was convinced by friends, family, and advisors that he needed to step out of the way. He couldn’t win. He announced he wouldn’t seek or accept his party’s nomination for a second term as President at the convention coming up in the summer.

I’m doing all of this from memory, OK? So, I didn’t Google anything to check dates or anything. But as a time traveler, you often have to rely on memory – and everyone knows Google is kinda sketchy anyway.

That year the party convention was scheduled to be held in Chicago, and it was anyone’s guess who the final nominee would be with a lame-duck President watching from the White House.

In the spring, the leading Civil Rights activist in the country was assassinated – and the big cities of the country had riots and looting and burning. It seemed like the wheels were coming off of the world.

Then in June, the leading candidate for the nomination was murdered on live TV.

The country was in a proxy war overseas, and no one was happy about it except the military-industrial complex. The president before the one now in office had been assassinated, some say because he wanted to get the country out of the growing involvement in that foreign war. The current president was not going to accept a second term because he didn’t want to pull out of the war, and he didn’t want to get Kennedied for increasing involvement.

The guy over in the other party, well, he’d been in a previous presidential administration, and he was considered a bit of a wild card – maybe even a kook – by some. No doubt he would ramp up America’s war footing. He was the law-and-order guy. But he looked sane next the bonk-nuttery going on in the Democrat party.

Then there was the convention in Chicago. Riots everywhere. National Guard busting people up with nightsticks dragging people into vans by their hair. The summer was wild.

If it seems familiar, it’s because we’ve been to this particular clown show before.

In the small towns and villages, far from the madding crowds, things weren’t too crazy. There weren’t any riots. Kids weren’t occupying college administration offices. As long as you didn’t stare at the TV too much, things weren’t as bad as they looked. Moms and dads went to work, fed their families, made desserts with Jello molds, and had cookouts and block parties. They even discussed politics without hating their neighbor. They disagreed and laughed and had a beer. The world was in an uproar, and young men were getting drafted to go fight “over there,” but, for most people, if you stopped looking at the world situation too much and just looked at your neighbor and your friends and your family, things still could be all right.

Sometimes things look crazy when you stare at it too long, and maybe it is as bad as it looks. But we’ve been here before, or something like here.

This has been your free history lesson straight form my noggin. My apologies if I got anything wrong.

Have a great week!

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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays on the website.