The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was a hellish haze of violent street battles between self-righteous Commie bastards and self-righteous violent pigs. Forty-one years later, both groups are still self-righteous!

To commemorate the historic bloodshed, the fucking cops got together to congratulate themselves on smiting the lawless hippie menace:

"From the pictures the media showed, it always looked like poor little Jimmy was getting attacked by the police, but what they didn't see was what Jimmy did just a minute before," said Tom Rowan, 65, a retired officer. "Everybody who got hit during the convention may not have deserved it, but 95 percent of them did."

Meanwhile, the anarchist protesters who came to Chicago as college kids to throw bricks and some poor terrified young cop who was just out there doing his job to feed his family are still acting just as outraged about the mere existence of police:

Some among the thousands who had demonstrated in 1968, meanwhile, said they were appalled by the notion of a reunion party, and others who have objected to Chicago police officers' behaviors in more recent years and even months considered the meeting an affront worthy of a protest march, which materialized with signs and musical instruments and old convention photographs just down the block from where the former officers had gathered.

In this way we see that—no matter how passionate our political differences—the healing passage of time can calcify those differences into resolute hatred for one another.

[NYT. Pic via]