Let me describe the early 1970s. There was a mood in the country. A vibe. It was unique.
The nation was coming out of the 1960s, a decade of Vietnam War protests against the decision makers in our government and the newfound enemy referred to as the establishment.
But the country was also processing the most traumatic events of the decade, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King four years later in 1968, and then, just two months after the King assassination, the slain president’s own brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, on the night he won the California Democratic primary and secured a frontrunner’s position as his party’s nominee for president, shot dead in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
So with all of that hanging over our country’s collective heads, the 1970s began with revelations of secret bombings by the US military of Cambodia, the shooting deaths of four college students by the Ohio National Guard during anti-war protests at Kent State University, and the defining event of the early 1970s, Watergate, the presidential political scandal that unfolded more like the live action performance of a spy novel.
Watergate, while certainly no mere straw, was the event that finally broke the back of America’s trust in our political system. Watergate placed new words and phrases and old words with new meanings into the common vocabulary of the American people. Clandestine. Slush money. Dirty Tricks. So many dirty tricks.
Smoking Gun. A secret White House recording that captured a president attempting to use the Central Intelligence Agency to interfere with an FBI investigation of a break-in at the Watergate Office Building that traced back to that own president’s re-election efforts.
This too is a lot, I know. But you have to understand that this was a time of great political and cultural change in this country. Seismic shifting and re-shifting of attitudes and awareness. The truth is, we're all still living with the results of these massive cultural and political shifts that occurred a half century ago.
And so there’s more.
For many college students coming into the 1970s experiencing the tremendous loss of hope of the previous decade, the idealism that characterized their perspectives, now, in the new decade, shifted to seeking out personal stability and calm in their lives.
And corporate America was waiting for them with open arms. And so add to the vibe and mood of the era the rise of the overt image polishing by major American corporations. The adjustments that had to be made from anti-establishment types to the button-down corporate type was not as easy as just getting a haircut and a shave. Young Americans took the jobs but many never quite swallowed the pro-corporate Kool-Aid. People spent a lot of time looking over their shoulders and watching what they said.
Watergate was the event that opened the minds of Americans to powerful entities working in the shadows. We became aware of American intelligence agencies operating in concert with multinational corporations to manipulate the political loyalties and values of the American people.
But we couldn’t know how far these entities would go to control the masses.
How far would they go to secure their positions and desired political outcomes? Would they actually kill American citizens? Could any of this played some role in the assassinations of the previous decade?
The news media, a far different news media than what we have today, revealed the level of illegal manipulative actions of our government and its ties to corporate America. And Hollywood, a far different Hollywood than the one we’re stuck with today, made a series of dead serious films that explored and exploited the mood of the times. These films captured very well the quiet and almost whispered post-assassination paranoia of the era.
Movies like, Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation, The Star Chamber, the film adaptation of the Watergate scandal itself, All the President's Men, directed by Alan Pakula, and, from 1974, another Pakula film starring Warren Beatty, The Parallax View.
And thus, American moviegoers were introduced to the ultimate embodiment of 1970s corporate evil, the Parallax Corporation.
“The corporation itself is a service provider that specializes in the recruitment, training, and deployment of patsies who commit political assassinations.” - Tony Bush, Killer Film Reviews
Patsies who commit political assassinations. Who knew there was such a demand?
Parallax Inc. also specialized in the necessary clean-up after these assassinations, which translates into the quick elimination of the patsy assassins and then, later, any inconvenient witnesses.
With Hollywood producing films like this it should be easy to understand how thick the vibe of paranoia was in the 1970s.
This past Saturday, a 20 year-old loner who was a standout math and history student in high school (stick a pin in that) carrying an AR-15 rifle, somehow shimmied himself onto the roof of a prefab industrial building in Butler, PA in order to give himself an unobstructed sight line and thus a clear shot at an American president, which he quickly took, nicking that president’s ear and coming within an inch of blowing the man’s head off, just as one of his stray shots did an innocent local father sitting in the stands behind the staging area.
Thomas Crooks was, by all accounts, an awkward kid who kept to himself at school. Smart, but often bullied and made fun of by his fellow students, Crooks was immediately shot dead by Secret Service snipers within seconds of firing his shots at former President Donald Trump.
As of this writing, it remains a mystery as to what was behind Thomas Crooks’s actions this past Saturday. Why did he do this?
Theories abhor a vacuum. And political assassinations are the source material for conspiracy theories. And this, albeit failed, assassination attempt and the now endless stream of examples of unexplained security lapses that allowed it to happen has administered a shock to the American political psyche that will be fueling conspiracy theories for decades.
Shortly after the shooting on Saturday, it was found out that Thomas Crooks had been in a commercial for the multinational investment conglomerate Blackrock, Inc.
But it’s not that simple. In fact, it’s much more involved than it sounds. It wasn’t just Thomas Crooks, it was a commercial filmed in one of his actual classrooms, at his high school, the subject of the commercial being one of the school’s best teachers.
So this is a commercial in which representatives of Blackrock would have necessarily been on scene, at the school, in the classroom, while filming was actually underway. These reps would have been exposed to the students and the students to them.
I’m sorry. I have a vivid imagination. I’ve dabbled in screenwriting myself. I have more than one idea for a movie that recalls the great paranoia thrillers I’ve mentioned above.
This isn’t one of them. This is brand new. It’s fiction. Totally made up. I promise.
A corporation is shooting a commercial in an American high school. A representative of the corporation approaches the teacher who is being featured in the commercial.
“Excuse me, Mr. Blank. Who’s your smartest student?”
The teacher points to the awkward quiet boy in the front of the class.
The corporate rep introduces herself. The attractive young woman and the awkward boy eat lunch together in the school cafeteria where he usually eats alone. A budding friendship grows. The fast friends spend more and more time together. The young man swoons at the newfound attention he is receiving and is quickly swept off his feet.
A risk/reward dynamic is introduced into the young person’s consciousness and the programming begins.
Good behavior is rewarded with praise and flirting and suggestions of intimacy. Bad behavior is discouraged by psychological punishments like scoldings and threats to end the friendship. The subject is manipulated to the point where he is willing to do just about anything to maintain the relationship.
I think you all know where I'm going with this.
Again, this is a fictional scenario. It’s a product of my overactive imagination. I don’t believe at this point nor am I suggesting that Thomas Crooks was the subject of this kind of manipulation at the hands of anyone.
But I’m sorry. I am having a big problem believing that some kid from Bethel Park PA was able to crawl up onto a building with no military training whatsoever and assume a military position with an AR-15 military rifle and fire off multiple rounds killing one man and nicking the ear of the once and now likely future President of the United States.
The many failures of the Secret Service is a story that is almost impossible for me to believe on its face. Putting that part of this past Saturday's events together with this kid already being sold to us as just another lone nut gunman seems to me, at this point, something I might never be able to properly reconcile.
I would love to hear what others think. Please comment and share freely. We need answers as to how this attempted assassination could have happened. And we should all know by now that, if we don’t get those answers quickly, we most likely never will.