Recreate68’s BodyHammer: Tactics & Self-Defense Manual

As many of us have already noticed, the link to Recreate68 , adorned with the Power Fist icon, has been popping up more and more frequently in places on the internets. It suggests a plan to take a trip down memory lane to the most unsettled era of the last century. Recreate68 intends to descend upon the Democratic Convention in Denver, and God knows where else once the excitement gets into their blood.

The late sixties and early seventies was not a romantic time folks. I somehow envision Bill Ayers being a super-duper advisor to this newly formed bombastic battalion of angsty kids with iPods, whose parents busted their butts to pay for their college education, only to find them moving back home so that they might appear “upscale” via supplemenation from their parents’ rapidly shrinking retirement funds.

I find it more than a little amusing that I have listened to Obama supporters tell us ad nauseum that they don’t want to go back to the 90s and the Clinton Years (a time my financial portfolio sorely misses, I might add), but they have no problem bragging on wanting to go back to the 60s and early 70s. Somebody needs to explain this to me.

It wasn’t more than a week ago when a poster showed up at No Quarter and wrote “REMEMBER KENT STATE”. This caught my eye because, yes, I DO remember. Innocent young people died, not the angsty rebels who attracted the National Guard to begin with. It was not romantic nor was it very cool. Nor did 2008 seem like a very timely year to address it….again. I know this because, unlike so many of today’s Obama supporters, I didn’t just read a book about that era, I was there. I was one of those spoiled brats on campus at the time. So you will excuse me if I find it odd that a board poster would think that the year 2008 was very timely in bringing it up, unless of course you were looking to bring back the “old days” of violence.

The poster went on to tell us how he had an SDS Safe House back in those days and how three of his friends died. He almost sounded as if he was wearing a badge over it and just plain wasn’t finished. Like Bill Ayers, he felt he hadn’t “done enough”. I envisioned him, something we all can’t help but do when we are interacting on an anonymous forum: Once a hippie, now older and balder, and what is left of the hair on the back of his head is hanging down long and stringy. I imagined that his life had been dull, tumultuous and without much joy, mostly because he had spent most of it living in 1970. Excitement for him meant moving backward not forward. What concerned me most was that his content seemed so much in keeping with some of the behaviors I have seen in this election season. A red flag, so to speak. Recreate68 seemed right up this guy’s alley. He would be one of the aged hippies who would show up and turn peaceful demonstrations into dangerous disasters.

Recreate68 presumably plans to do what was done at the Democratic Convention in 1968, which was in Chicago of course. There was all kinds of excitement. The disruptions were discussed around dinner tables all over America. I mean Dan Rather, looking about 12 years old at the time, even got punched in the stomach. You see, the behavior of the demonstrators was getting out of hand and all kinds of security descended upon them and everybody else.

1968 was already a particularly painful and tumultuous year, bringing us the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The last thing America wanted to watch was a bunch of spoiled brats demonstrating at a convention, even in the face of a useless war that practically nobody in his right mind wanted to continue. In short, the youth of America that year frightened Americans more than the war did.

I’m not too sure the young angsty left-of-the-left-cliff Democrats were very successful in 1968, unless you call giving us Richard Nixon as President a success. You would think one would learn from history. Nope. They behaved badly again during the 1972 election year again, only they– myself included–were even more arrogant. loud, pushy, elitist and nasty, thus forcing humiliated Democrats all over the country to watch George McGovern and the Democrats get their asses handed to them on a plate – by Richard Nixon…. again.

In ‘68 and ‘72 they were called “Eggheads”. Today we call them Latte Drinkers, Obamabots, and the currently well-documented “Elitists”. They are the same people basically, just older, stuck in a time warp, recruiting younger people to do what their own old backs won’t tolerate any longer, and trying really hard to screw up the Democratic Party again by scaring the crap out of the entire electorate. I am more than reasonably certain that the McCain campaign will totally adore all of this, because they understand history and know that the “silent majority,” who will be horrified by all the disdain heaped upon them in 2008 by what they perceive to be elitist snobs and wayward childeren, will vote for McCain in November.

While their main web page suggests peaceful demonstrations on every subject save for the price of rice in China, Recreate68 seems to be gearing up for a bit more than that for some odd reason. They apparently are considering the potential of someone getting hurt. Gee, ya think? In preparation for their own protection, they now have a “Shieldbook”: BodyHammer: Tactics and Self Defense For the Modern Protestor, Version 1.1.

I would imagine there will be other versions of this manual once they figure out that, should they decide that Bernardine Dohrn was right about non-violent protest being useless, the National Guard tends to pay a visit when rowdy crowds make everyone feel a bit threatened. Somebody is feeding these young people all the tripe of excitement and forgetting to remind them that people die sometimes when things get out of hand–and things can get out of hand. If I were a parent of one of these people, I would be very very worried. You see, I Remember.

I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the examples set forth in the BodyHammer manual. Imagine how excited they all feel about creating their own body armour and how cool they think they will all look if they get too rowdy and some cop clubs them over the head or busts up their iPod or cell phone or something.

Their parents will be so proud. I know Bill Ayers is.

Take a look at these photos from the Manual and then let me know if you still want to enter the DNC’s Raffle for free tickets to the Denver Convention. I mean, where else can you get all this excitement for $25?

“I will force my body to be my weapon and my statement so…”

‘The Stranglers”-Death & Night & Blood

“Quick to construct, easy to transport…” ” Using inflatable shields gives the disarming appearance that the police are busting up a beach party”.

(Uppity Note: Somebody needs to explain to these impressionable captives that the 1960s was no beach party. And thanks to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the early 70s were even less of a day at the beach).

“Some protestors that have seen this shield employed maintain that it has a disarming affect on police psychology.

The police officers who are unable to see the individual in front of them seem to lose their sense of personal rage against individuals.”

“For personal protection a solid helmet is probably the most important thing one can bring to a demonstration after a gas attack.”

“The ultimate option although quite conspicuous in transporting (ya think?) are military helmets. Modern helmets are made from Kevlar and meant to stop a bullet. These are extremely costly and not necessary.”

“Metal inter-locking barriers are the typical means of blockading marches by the police.”

“When a shield wall approaches a barrier, it must be opened or knocked down prior to penetration by the wall.”…. “If Police resist the movement of a barrier persons in the shield wall should try to advance so that their shields extend over the barriers[sic] protecting hands that are pulling it down and knocking away those of the police.”

Ooops! How did this get in here?