Pols 300 Ass #2: Analyzing Constituency Mail
L R Clenots mailed his concerns to congress on May 6th 1971. In the letter Clenot’s main concern was to emphasize the importance of ending the war since he had spent a year in Korea in 1950 and had a horrible experience first hand. From his tone of voice Clenots lost his faith in government and now trusted and sided with the high school/ college students and their protests to end the war in Vietnam.
In the letter, Clenots states that there were warnings when he arrived in Korea on signs so the U.S. soldiers could see stating that the government and the soldiers should leave. “Your leaders are wonton War mongers”, “Yankee go home”, ‘I believe them now.’ Clenots was a Veteran from the Korean conflict that saw nothing positive from the war and so when he attended the Madison protest, he saw how the government was indeed a blood thirsty entity that fueled the war being that it dispersed the people using military force and tear gas instead of listening to what they had to say. This letter is powerful not only in the way that it was worded but also because of the perspective that it was written through.
Clements was resentful in the letter when he realized how blindly he had obeyed and trusted the government, when he was finally able to see through the lying loopholes of politicians like president Nixon at the time having be that he stated, “I have a plan.” This is a valid and reliable source because the author of the article described how the protest when about and the reactions of the protesters as they threw rocks and he even goes about to make a political cartoon showing how sees, “ A man scuffle(s) with an anti-war demonstrator in front of the Madison Federal Building to wrest protest sign away from her.” This helps give the reader an insight on what Clenots means when he states that he now trusts in the youth and their perspective on the issue of the war because we can see from a 1st perspective what he lived through and why it is that he felt that day when he mailed that letter in.
Primary Source: Chicago Times – http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1971/05/06/page/2/article/madison-protesters-dispersed
At the end of the passage, Clenot states, “If our government and KKK voters persist in viewing life thru Gallup polls and Closed Circuit Tv, then they deserve what is coming to them.” Clenots has taken a resentful view of the government for its actions and although I don’t believe he meant to harm anyone, I do believe he meant the government might suffer economically in the future since war is expensive. An article by Access World News, helps explain KKK voter’s views when the secondary source reports having seen a billboard with KKK’s opinion stating, “Help fight integration and communism.” Clenots states the word Closed Circuit Television in his last paragraph to explain that some supporters of the war like the KKK do not have any idea of what it is like to fight in Vietnam and are supporters only through what they see in their televisions. In this secondary source, Steve Bonner states that these groups such as the KKK are all just racist individuals who spread their ideologies but have no idea the damage they cause to the troops who land in Vietnam and have to do the actual fighting.
Secondary source: Access World News –
http://infoweb.newsbank.com.summit.csuci.edu:2048/resources/doc/nb/news/156F0EFF71187F28?p=AWNB
These two articles help explain the ambiguity seen in the letter to congress by LR Clenots for they give eventful insights of what was happening then and there when the letters were mailed in. Both of these sources are valid and credible because they both come from respected databases.
