Herewith Nixon takes great strides in assembling his retrograde cast of trolls, thugs, and shills — Pat Buchanan, Bill Safire, the Haldeman/Ehrlichman ‘twins’, Maurice Stans — the Merry CREEPSters who would do so much damage to our country for the next forty years and counting.
But I didn’t know that the smart money, or at least the large money, was going to the media-friendly figurehead and grinning sociopath now known as St. Ronnie as early as 1966:
Nixon… wanted Ronald Reagan to be in his debt should Reagan win the [California] statehouse. At the same time, conservatives were already talking about Reagan as a presidential prospect — so Nixon stood to benefit mightily if Reagan pledged before the national political press corps not to run in 1968…
__
Reagan dashed off a note thanking Nixon for “your very good suggestions”, then jetted east. In Pittsburgh he was the guest of right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. In Gettysburg his host was General Eisenhower — who said “you can bet” Reagan would be a presidential prospect if he beat Pat Brown. (The bastard, Nixon had to be thinking, kicking Dick Nixon once more.)
If we didn’t know what horrors he’d be responsible for, you could almost feel sorry for Tricky Dick, once again out-maneuvered by a fellow Orthogonian with just enough pretty-package “charm” (and so little of Nixon’s prickly self-respect) to sell his favors to the hateful Franklins for all the plaudits denied to RMN no matter how hard he worked or how dirty he was willing to fight…
What say you all?
Teri
I thought it was rather smart to get Reagan in his debt, it would be unlikely he would run for president before serving out at least one term as governor.
Rick Perlstein
First!
Sitting here in LGA, I’ll hang out and chill with y’all for 45 minutes before cabbing it into the city.
Teri
@ Rick Perlstein what struck me in reading these chapters was the fact that the political pundits haven’t changed. Do these people have no long term memory? The political climate today is very similar to that of 1966
Rick Perlstein
They have none.
“Don’t forget. America is a center-left country.” /1966 pundit.
Linda Featheringill
The antiwar movement. I guess I need to get this off my chest.
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
[Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth]
I guess most people were honestly horrified that some of us were criticizing the government. That struck me as quite odd at the time.
For one thing, I thought the antiwar movement had a sound religious basis. In the Bible, the Old Testament is filled with stories of righteous people telling their leaders that certain governmental actions were immoral. Yet it seemed that the world was full of “good Christian people” who were truly indignant at us for doing the same thing.
In the second place, I thought that the movement was protected by the constitution. People had the right to assemble peacefully and petition their government to do this or that. But the “constitutional conservatives” were not standing up and defending our honor.
I was raised by very conservative people in a fundamentalist community. But when I expected them to live up to their own words, I was spat upon, yelled at, shunned, threatened with physical harm, and tailed by the police. And I was participating in the movement in a rather out-of-the-way place, where the media didn’t even recognize that such activity was taking place.
Thus began my journey away from Christianity and conservative politics.
Okay. Now I can talk about Reagan and Nixon.
geg6
This is my second time reading this book and it still astonishes me how the cast of characters fucking up the country for fun and profit is almost exactly the same bunch still doing it today. And holy fucking Jeebus, Broder was as stupid then as he is now.
General Stuck
This is not a center left or center right country.
It is a center white country
Teri
@Linda Featheringill: I remember my Dad, fresh from surgery, in his scrubs picking up my Mom and us kids to go to anti-war rallies. He then went to anti-war rallies in 2003 (in his 70’s) with a big sign, “What part of “NO MORE WAR” didn’t you understand?”
Little Boots
I gotta say, Broder comes off pretty well. A reminder that he wasn’t always a completely mush headed centrist forever bullshit artist. Sad.
Omnes Omnibus
@Teri: Yes, I think Nixon had to have known that 1968 was his last shot. Any potential rival he could have both off the table and in his debt would have been huge for him.
Linda Featheringill
The long hot summer:
A lot of people were truly frightened by the prospect of organized black folks. Remember Chicken Run? “They are organizing!”
I think that Freud and a bunch of other folks would say that this was guilt. People were afraid they would have to pay for stuff that they did that they knew was wrong.
But they really were frightened by the prospect of some sort of racial war.
Rick Perlstein
People say that about Broder’s cameo in the book, but that was actually him being very smart. Everyone else was ignoring Nixon as a political has-been. Broder was the only one taking him seriously as a presidential prospect. That was Broder before he became an addle-brained idiot–back when he was an exceptionally sharp and well-informed political reporter.
That would soon change.
Teri
There are times I just want to jump up and down and scream and yell “DIDN’T WE DO THIS BEFORE?” Talk about Deja-dumb.
Mary G
I always remember my dad during the Cuban missile crisis – shaking the newspaper at me and saying “YOUR FRIEND (JFK) is going to get us all killed.” I liked JFK, much to my parents’ chagrin, because he had a little girl my age. Who owned a pony!
My dad said that Nixon would have “nuked the hell” out of Russia but since we were stuck with the bleeding heart liberal we were all going to die. For weeks I waited to be killed until I finally had a fit of hysteria, then they told me it had all been resolved.
I always thought Nixon felt like Ronnie was JFK in Republican clothing – just an undeserving pretty boy who got all the breaks.
Teri
@Omnes Omnibus: The fact that Nixon was a poker player “Iron Ass” poker player made me realize that he was in it for the long haul. There were times in the 80’s when people would bring his name up and there was a lot of respect among the political operatives for his long game.
BChang
I am struck by how much of what I am reading in the book sounds like what’s in today’s news media. Isn’t there a lot of difference in the news media today–compared to the 60’s? Lots more TV, reporters,more local news, etc…but the level of analysis/reporting doesn’t seem to improve. Maybe it’s worse.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
It’s amazing how the same names keep coming up over and over and over again.
No wonder it feels like we keep having to fight the same battles — we are, and with the same people who we had hoped lost the last time we waged them.
I’m too young to remember Nixon, but I am very interested in the upcoming Reagan book and seeing how it matches up with my memories from ages 11 to 19.
Linda Featheringill
@Mary G:
If he did think that, he had a point. That pretty much sums up my opinion of Ronnie.
Teri
@Linda Featheringill: I think they still are. The fact that our society is the great melting pot was okay when it was mostly white europeans, but now that it is more widely diverse they are afraid of losing their power.
Rick Perlstein
@Mary G, yes, Nixon definitely thought of RWR as a Franklin.
Little Boots
@Rick Perlstein:
That’s what I always suspected about a Broder. That he started as a good reporter, than somebody started touting him and he became Villager in Chief. Then they called him Dean of Pundits and all hope was lost.
Mary G
Sometimes I just want to scream – we keep fighting the same stupid culture war. Get over it, we won.
chmatl
Lurker here, but I’ve decided to crawl out into the sun and comment. This is the second time through this book for me.
I was born in 1962 into a conservative southern family. MLK’s name was taken in vain in my household. My parents loved George Wallace and later RMN and Reagan. That should give you some idea of how I experienced the 60s.
In general, I am stunned by how much violence was perpetrated by the police, and how frequently violence against protesters was advocated by elected officials. I only heard about the violence on the part of the protesters. Of course I knew about the Kent State shootings, but until I read this book, I didn’t know how widespread vicious police violence was. Really eye-opening.
This is very cool, especially having Rick Perlstein here to add to the discussion. Thanks, Anne Laurie and regular commenters for making this happen.
Back to lurking.
BGinCHI
Is the film “Zombieland” based on Rick’s book?
There are an amazing number of parallels.
geg6
Watched the Reagan doc on HBO this week and it was a fascinating companion to this book. Reagan was basically manufactured, a product of the millionaire wingnuts. Poor Tricky Dick had to work hard for everything and had none of the charms that made those millionaires want to invest in him the way they did St. Ronnie. It’s one of the things you have to admire about Nixon, that work ethic and persistence. I’ve said it before, but I have always loathed Reagan to a much higher degree than I do Nixon. I have found nothing about Reagan that is admirable in any way.
licensed to kill time
That man did more to make government untrusted than any long-haired hippie ever did.
I guess he would have preferred S.P.O.N.G.E (the Society for the Prevention Of Negroes Getting Everything) to take care of things rather than the government.
BTW, I think Teabaggers ought to start the Society for the Prevention Of Others Getting Everything, or S.P.O.O.G.E.
Mike E
One little quibble–the JFK margin in ’60 as noted by many historians was (I thought) 1 vote per precinct, but you report it in Nixonland as 0.1 vote per… with a little more than 100,000 precincts at the time, wasn’t that the case?
/anal-retentive hat
gnomedad
@ Rick Perlstein: The early dismissals of Reagan sound eerily like some of those of Palin today. Your take?
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: To me, it seems as if Broder has not gotten past those days, when liberal Republicans actually existed and it truly was possible to find a bipartisan consensus on many issues.
Teri
What struck me was Reagan’s playing to the people’s fears to distract them from his lack of substance.
Rick Perlstein
@Little Boots, have no fear, he’ll show up as an ass-kissing stone idiot by 1969…
Little Boots
@geg6:
And when you think what Reagan actually believed, or rather said he believed in the 40s, it has to have been even more galling. How the hell did this alleged Democrat turn into the idol of the Republicans? It must have driven Nixon nuts, and I kind of hope he took the opportunity of that secret meeting to kick Reagan in the shins.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Weirdly, I just read a couple of books on Dreyfus Affair era France, and the culture wars there almost perfectly match our own. Stunning, really.
suzanne
I have to leave in just a few, so I’m going to have to read all the comments later. But the thing that stands out to me the most is the utter chaos of the Watts riots and the absolute bone-chilling fear they seemed to have instilled in whites.
I think of Sublime’s “April 29, 1992” lyrics about a riot I do remember:
“Cause everybody in the hood has had it up to here,
It’s getting harder and harder and harder each and every year.
Some kids went in a store with their mother,
I saw her when she came out, she was gettin some Pampers.
They said it was for the black man,
They said it was for the Mexican,
And not for the white man.
But if you look at the streets, it wasn’t about Rodney King,
It’s ’bout this fucked up situation and these fucked up police.
It’s about coming up and staying on top
And screamin’ 187 on a motherfuckin’ cop.”
Perhaps I’m really off-base, but the 1992 riots didn’t seem to ultimately have the same effect, and I wonder why. I remember concern, but not utter fear of an impending race or class war.
WoodyNYC
Reading through “Long, Hot Summer”, I could not get Zappa and the Mothers’ “Trouble Every Day” out of my head.
eemom
@Mary G:
Reminds me of the March for Women’s Lives here in deecee in 2004…..I’ll never forget how, just as were setting out, an older lady behind me groaned, “Well, here we are, doing the same goddamn thing AGAIN.”
Teri
@geg6: I think he was the real “Lonesome Rhodes” or manufactured politician. He believed whatever he could sell to get power. Nixon on the other hand did have a point of view that he believed in, albeit a rather self-serving one
Rick Perlstein
@licensed “S.P.O.O.G.E.”–heh heh heh. Note that the actual name didn’t include the word “Negroes.”
@gnomedad I was worried about that when she first hit the scene in her national debut at the convention–people all around me were pointing and laughing, and I warned that she might turn out to be formidable. The way she differs profoundly from Reagan was that he had patience and discipline. He was willing to bide time, make sacrifices, and adjust to situations in his quest for power. Palin lacks those skills. But yes: it’s never a useful first instinct to discount the appeal of demagogues.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
that’s a really interesting analogy. The one big honking difference, though, seems to have been that our traditional anti-Semitism seems to have been forgotten in favor of other hatreds.
gnomedad
@Little Boots:
For the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks, maybe.
Linda Featheringill
@suzanne:
Good question.
Mary G
@suzanne: I lived in LA County at the time of the 92 riots, and I think the consensus was that the rioters certainly had a point.
The Rodney King verdict astonished everyone.
The day after it died down I went to help in the cleanup and I have never seen so many pale people in South Central. By the end of the day we were fighting over who would get to pick up a gum wrapper.
Better media, for sure. The Watts riots came out of nowhere because the TV and papers never covered anything south of Adams Blvd.
Teri
@eemom: But don’t you know women are chattel, to be taken care of but not treated as equals.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: The New York State Republican Women’s Group blew it’s collective gasket with her nomination. You would not have believed the fights we had about “supporting the ticket” because of her being on it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: The Jews were an Other to be demonized. The Other has changed, but the demonization remains.
Teri
@Little Boots: It has become a “Support Isreal” instead
Villago Delenda Est
@Rick Perlstein:
Broder was rewarded for this. Nixon gave him a scoop, one that established him as the “dean” of the Washington Press Corpse.
Linda Featheringill
@Little Boots:
A number of Jewish writers, historians, etc. have said that the US has always had less Antisemitism that other parts of the world. I don’t have any direct knowledge of the issue.
On the other hand, we are quite good at hating all kinds of other people.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
True, but it’s always interesting when the Other changes. Jews have been perennial others, not least here, but that at least has changed. But I think your overall point is interesting, and I will try to find out more about the Dreyfus Affair.
Rick Perlstein
@Little Boots, On RWR’s ideological odyssey, all will be explained–for the first time anywhere, really–in Vol. III>
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots: The hatred of cosmopolitan, secular elites is a big parallel.
Little Boots
@Linda Featheringill:
I think that’s true, but still, all those country clubs, universities, neighborhoods that didn’t want no Jews, and now, it’s definitely different. (Actually, not sure about the country clubs. Those old WASPs don’t change easy.)
Rick Perlstein
On white terror after Watts–Pynchon afficianados may be aware of his one piece of non-fiction journalism, on that very subject, in the New York Times Magazine in spring of 1966. Check it out–it was definitely an inspiration.
Little Boots
@Rick Perlstein:
look forward to it.
Mike E
@Linda Featheringill: Antisemitism, an oldie but a goodie.
Anti-Catholicism, now there’s a rich tradition in the USA! I remember reading in 1776 how Washington just couldn’t get too jazzed up to discipline his officers for burning the pope in effigy, seeing how they were ragged out from fighting the Revolution and all
Mary G
For the hard core “conservatives” I think the other 73% of the entire population is now the Other.
licensed to kill time
@Rick Perlstein:
I didn’t think so, however that is the way it appeared in my kindle version of your book :)
MikeJ
From the chapter:
Have you seen what the Seattle cops write in their newsletter? The Stranger got a few issues and published some of the choice bits. Plus ça change…
Little Boots
@Mary G:
and I’m guessing they’re fine with that. there are always more poor than rich, and the rich are the only real Americans to them. why the poor keep falling for this shit over and over and over again is the big mystery.
Linda Featheringill
@Mary G:
Win. :-)
suzanne
@Rick Perlstein: Thanks, Mr. Perlstein; I will definitely check it out.
Villago Delenda Est
@MikeJ:
A civilian review board is a huge issue in Tracktown USA local politics, as well. We’ve had cases of cops using their uniform to coerce street walkers (and women they THOUGHT were street walkers) into freebies. The city has paid millions in settlements…and the cops continue to fiercely resist any supervision outside of the club.
Mary G
@Little Boots: I know, so frustrating.
Kevin Ray
Reading over this- interesting stuff. @Rick Perlstein: To me, the surprising difference between Palin and Reagan, and what I think will be her ultimate downfall, is the amazing chip on her shoulder. She has a stunning amount of anger, and it’s completely her master. She cannot allow a slight to go unanswered.\
As far as Broder goes, It’s always been my impression that Watergate was the fork in the road for him. What do you guys think?
Rick Perlstein
@MikeJ much more on that front to come.
@Teri Reagan definitely had his own strong point of view–he wasn’t just a hired gun or a front man.
Linda Featheringill
Question for Mr. Perlstein:
As one student of history to another, how long have politicians in this country been playing to the baser instincts of the populace? I know some of the 19th Century elections got pretty rough.
Little Boots
@Kevin Ray:
Good point, Reagan just never came across as bitter. Palin, always comes across that way.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: Definitely have to pre-order your book then ; ) My memory of the Teflon President seemed like he changed his view to which ever way paid the most or disrupted his life the least.
Rick Perlstein
Linda, this was a huge concern of elites in ancient Rome and Greece…
Little Boots
@Kevin Ray:
In what sense was Watergate the fork? Not sure what that means.
MikeJ
@Rick Perlstein: This chapter has almost convinced me I should change my online handle to “Communist Hottentot”.
Damned at Random
I remember the ’66 riots as a (very) naive 12 year old. I grew up in an integrated working class suburb and I remember watching the news and wondering if the “colored” girls I played hopscotch with at the playground secretly hated me.
licensed to kill time
Reagan was Genial Teflon, Palin is Angry Velcro. In her mind, at least, every criticism or question sticks to her like the burrs that were the inspiration for Velcro.
Kevin Ray
@Little Boots – He tended to be an apologist for the administration, defending Nixon against the press, long after most others had stopped. I could really be mistaken here. I just got that impression from things I’ve read.
Mary G
@Rick Perlstein: Reagan played the dirty budget tricks, too. In 1974 I applied to work at the California state park; it paid more than any other job in town and hanging out in nature was way more appealing than surfing the grease on the floor at KFC like I’d done the summer before.
I had faint hope, since they usually hired cheerleaders and football players, not plump, bespectacled, shy science nerds like me.
Much to my surprise, I got the job! Then they explained that the state was out of money, and Gov. Reagan didn’t want to borrow any, I would have to work all spring and summer until the new budget passed, without any pay.
I spent a miserable summer babysitting twin 5-year-old boys from hell to get gas money to go the park, and finally got my money in October from Jerry Brown. It paid for six weeks in Europe the next summer, so it wasn’t all bad.
But every time I saw a Meg Whitman commercial talking about Jerry Brown turning a “surplus” into a deficit, my head exploded. Thank God we didn’t elect her.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rick Perlstein: I am willing to bet that in some prehistoric cave, some guy named Ogg was using some pretty low tactic to beat Thak, his rival.
Rick Perlstein
@Kevin is onto something with that. For the Villagers, Watergate was a serious trauma it demonstrated that those in whom they’d invested their trust might not be worthy of their trust. Fascinating fun fact: Theodore H. White, a true Villager, was about to hand in the manuscript for Making fo the President 1972, which totally gushes about Nixon throughout, when he decided to hold it back for revisions in spring of 1973 because the original draft dismissed Watergate as a nothingburger.
Teri
@licensed to kill time: Ooh can I steal that line…Angry Velcro….hmm I can see the bumper sticker now…
Rick Perlstein
By the way, you all should join Kevin and become an RP Facebook friend. I’m yapping there about this that and the other thing on the regular.
Lurking Canadian
I am finally reading the book thread in real time, so I have a chance to post my thought on the book!
What I found most striking (astonishing might be a better word) is the amount of right wing violence that seems to have disappeared from history. I was born in 1972, so none of this is memory for me, but my image of the 60s violence is all left-on-right. With the exception of Bull Connors, the other right-on- left violence I knew about (Kent State and 1968 convention, maybe) is all portrayed as reactions to DFH provocations.
So, all the right wing violence from the early 1960s (somebody firebombing peace activists, people throwing rocks at Dr King in Chicago etc) came as a complete shock. Down the memory hole I guess.
Rick Perlstein
@Lurking Down the memory hole indeed. I hope I can have some effect on that.
OK, heading to Greenwich Village now. Anyone in NYC who wants to meet me can look for me @ 8:30 at the avant garde jazz gig tonight at the Cornelia Street Cafe!
Teri
@Lurking Canadian: We had to evacuate our house due to a bomb threat cause my Mom and Dad hosted a Black physician and his family….this was in 67 in suburbs of Philly.
Damned at Random
I think Palin’s bitterness is very much in sync with the mood of the country today. When Reagan ran, trickle down economics, the whole “a rising tide lifts all ships” seemed sort of feasible. I don’t think that optimism prevails any more. We are all hyenas, fighting over the scraps the lions leave when they’ve had their fill.
licensed to kill time
@Teri: Absolutamente. Take it for free :)
Mary G
@Lurking Canadian: Wow. Propaganda machine really worked. I remember it as being the left talking about violence without actually using much and the right using quite a lot without talking about it.
Teri
@Rick Perlstein: Thanks for being here and enjoy the jazz
MikeJ
@Rick Perlstein: Coastal elitist!
Little Boots
@Rick Perlstein:
I knew they worshiped power, but still, damn, Teddy White gushing over Nixon is just, well somewhere between sad and hilarious.
Linda Featheringill
@Damned at Random:
I was working in a quite integrated company in LA when King was assassinated. Before the event, we all had people we would hang out with, usually some of this and some of that [white, black, oriental, Hispanic]. After the event, the black women [an all-female department] kind of self-segregated. In the afternoon, I left my desk and invaded the black group saying something to the effect of “Let’s talk.”
Anyway, we all agreed that it was a shame because if violence erupted, we would all choose sides and the people that we liked yesterday would be our enemies tomorrow. But we couldn’t see any way to keep that from happening.
It was an interesting discussion. As I remember it, all the ladies in that particular discussion group decided to get the hell out of LA for a couple of days and chill. Not a bad decision, really.
And by the next week, we could be friends again.
Phyllis
I swear, it’s really just the same sh*t, always repackaged. ‘They’ are coming to take ‘your’ hard-earned whatever away from you. ‘I’m’ the only one with the ‘guts’ to say it.
Which isn’t exactly true, either, because none of them have the guts to come right out and say it’s belief in racism/white supremacy. I can’t say I have more respect for the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, but at least he wore his white anglo saxon supremacy beliefs on his sleeve where everyone had no doubt about them.
Villago Delenda Est
Again I’m jumping ahead of the reading assignment, but I think the ultimate in right wing violence in the 60’s had to be the ’68 DNC in Chicago. I was 11 at the time, and what was actually going on, what was recorded on TV, broadcast live during prime time, was unmistakable.
Kevin Ray
@ Lurking: Yeah, that’s the part that blew me away as well. I read about that period obsessively, and this is the first place I had encountered a great deal about it. I have a mentor who was born in Philly in 1937, and was raised there. His attitude towards the town is that he would prefer it burnt, and the ground salted. I never understood this until I started reading about police and civic brutality towards minorities during this period and earlier.
Little Boots
@Damned at Random:
1979? no, this country was definitely on the bitter side, and with reason, but we somehow responded to one of the few people who seemed to bring the sunny.
geg6
@MikeJ:
Heh. Indeedy.
I remember watching the Watts riots coverage on Uncle Walter’s evening newscast. My mom, a big supporter and sometimes activist for civil rights, being just anguished over it. She couldn’t understand why they were burning their own neighborhoods. She got why they were so angry but didn’t get why they didn’t direct their anger at the people and places that were responsible for their problems. It really made her upset that they were only hurting themselves.
NY Expat
First off, congrats on your failed firsties, Rick! The CancerAids is in the mail.*
I have to run to work, but I wanted to ask: Does getting anything done for labor require enough of the country to get past race, and are there any promising signs of that actually happening?
Some links for y’all that made me think of issues in these chapters:
Segregation in Chicago is ongoing. Interesting that now the racial split is 1/3 for each of White, Black and Latino. I live in Chicago, and the silence on this issue has been deafening.
Charmichael’s position that Blacks didn’t just need freedom, but power, made me think of this piece at Echidne’s site:
The sexual revolution wasn’t the right war. The one for equality is. Equality is the supreme political value, with it comes all other rights. Equality is valued less than[sic] liberty precisely because it comes with personal obligations to treat other people as you would want to be treated, and more so if you don’t think you deserve to be treated well.
How do we get people to see that just because we have a Black president, our work towards anything remotely like equality isn’t close to being over?
My apologies if this is overwrought: I’m not claiming to be perfect (I’m blind to my own privilege all the time), but I wanted to get this out to the group, and I have to run to work. Thanks for reading!
*See any Onion AV Club thread for reference.
Moose in Seattle
Memories…
These middle 60s years, my teenage years, are the time I became a liberal for life; equality, free speech, etc. just seemed so obviously right.
The fearful teabaggers of today, who are about my age, seem to have taken a totally different lesson from that time. Are liberals/conservatives born, not made? Or does it depend on what people around you were saying and doing when you first became aware?
The earlier chapters have been making me think of Nixon as a born conservative, able to learn and channel conservative concerns because he lived them. But now that Ronnie is in the picture and I am reminded of his apparent liberal past…
Little Boots
Anne, thanks for doing this by the way. I love this interactive book club with the author and fellow readers. Hope there are more.
Mike E
@Teri: My suburb of Philly was west of 69th Street, the White Flight from the city, very racist and totally GOP since Lincoln. It took anger from Watergate to get our 1st Dem Congressman elected, Bob Edgar, and he marked the slow conversion from deep red to solid blue today. I never thought it was possible at the time.
Teri
@Moose in Seattle: I think a lot of the fear/anger is because of the failed implied promise. If you got good grades, went to college, got a good corporate job you were set for life. Then in the 80’s corporations were sold, downsized, outsourced and then pensions were raided for cash, the housing market crashed. Somebody is to blame so blame the other etc instead of the people who set up the “promise” in the first place.
Damned at Random
@Little Boots:
I remember the bitterness of ’79 being more about the hostage crisis and the OPEC challenge, not so much about structural economic change. That’s about the time I started hearing Labor unions demonized, but the sense of social/economic mobility was still alive
Little Boots
@Moose in Seattle:
some of us change teams. Ask John Cole. I don’t think these things are set, but you have to at least try to be awake.
Phyllis
@Lurking Canadian:
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: King was assassinated on my father’s 25th birthday. My father was going to school at the time and was going to go to dinner with some classmates, my mom and I (aged not quite 4). My father was supposed to pick up one of the friends at the house where he lived with all his black militant friends. he pulled up to curb in front of the house, told mom and I to stay in the car, and went up to the door. When he knocked the door was answered by a heavily armed black man who asked him what the hell he wanted. One of the other, and there were many, armed men looked at the door and said, “He’s okay. Let him in” We picked up the friend and left. Interesting times. Of course, I am too young to remember it myself, damn if it did not make an impression on my father.
Teri
@Mike E: We were in Coatesville and people would not even sit in the same church pew with us….
Little Boots
@Damned at Random:
Remember the Misery Index? Inflation plus Unemployment. Of course we can look back now and say not so bad, but at the time, this country was miserable. And those gas lines? We were ready for somebody, but an angry bitter just doesn’t seem like what we were looking for. I think it’s the same with Palin today. She’s got her angry little insane clown posse, but she has no hope of getting beyond it, and since she’s hopelessly lazy and thinskinned, I don’t think she’ll even try.
Mnemosyne
@Moose in Seattle:
It depends on the ever-shifting definitions of “liberal” and “conservative.” The New Deal and Social Security were carefully crafted to make sure that they primarily benefited white men. It was when people started talking about letting black people enjoy the same benefits that people like Reagan started going conservative. As long as liberals were only helping white people, they loved liberalism.
You can’t talk about class in this country without also talking about race, because racial groups are automatically assigned to a social class. A huge part of the story of class struggle in this country has been the concentrated campaign to make poor whites believe that rich whites who share their skin color have more in common with them than poor blacks who share their income and life experiences.
(Edited to fix word choice)
Little Boots
@Mnemosyne:
so sadly true, it’s why Europe can do this kind of thing. Not that they don’t have their own problems, god knows, but the black/white thing makes it so much harder here to do anything for the poor or even the working class, the alleged backbone of this country.
Villago Delenda Est
One of the things that always struck me about Palin’s debut was that she made a point of saying her husband was a proud member of a union, and the GOP faithful didn’t know how to react to that. This was their girl saying something that was pretty similar to “praise Satan!” instead of “praise Jesus!”.
Mike E
@Teri: Upper Darby here, the new darling of national bullying news. Went to Temple U (N. Philly, Bill Cosby’s projects nearby) to find some peace and quiet!
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
This, this, this.
Divide and conquer. Oldest strategy in the book.
Damned at Random
@Little Boots:
Perspective, maybe. I left Pittsburgh in 1976 with my shiny new Bachelor’s degree because of the lousy economic situation there and wound up in Wichita Ks where unemployment was low so the local misery index was relatively low. I got raises that more than kept up with inflation, in part because the local aircraft industry was hiring nurses away from the hospitals to work on the assembly line for better $$ and benis. SO I was really surprised when Carter went down – I thought life was pretty good
Teri
@Mike E: Dad finished his residency and we moved…often around PA, DE and Maryland. Went to Buffalo for undergrad and Rice for Grad school, back to NY for hubby
Little Boots
@Damned at Random:
I just don’t think most people shared your experience. For most, it seemed like things were crappier every year, at least as I remember it. And they turned to somebody who promised better, although of course it was big lie, for most. What a fraud the 80s were.
Bob Loblaw
@gnomedad:
Only if you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Reagan had charm and people skills. He made people like him. Palin is an ignorant, vindictive bitch queen, who has absolutely zero appeal to an entire gender. That’s the difference.
It’s funny how close Republican operatives must think they came to something special with Palin, though. It was all right there on paper. The directionless woman who through family, religion, and working her way up through small, local, personal government could become a cultural emblem of the right and restore their hopes of electoral dominance in the face of demographic catastrophe. Then it turned out she was mouthbreathingly stupid, and just as mean to boot. And then it all went up in smoke. Should have done their homework better, I guess.
@Damned at Random:
Barack Obama. Heard of him? The guy merging the rhetoric and sunny outlook of Reagan and JFK with the political skills of Bill Clinton to deliver the most successful first term of any president since Lyndon Johnson? Ringing any bells?
Phoebe
@Linda Featheringill: I think that’s what Karl Rove thinks of Obama. Remember when he made that remark about, “He’s the guy at the country club standing there looking down on you” or whatever that was? That was so on-its-face stupid that I think he was actually revealing his true sentiment. They assume that the popular kids have it in for them, or somehow hate them as much as they hate themselves.
Lurking Canadian
@Phyllis and others, yeah I shouldn’t be surprised. The same phenomenon happens today. Right wing terrorism is lone nuts or isolated incidents, but any violence by a leftist or somebody they can claim is leftist is proof of a vast conspiracy. I just thought the 60s were different for some reason.
Teri
@Phoebe: Does Karl Rove think he is an Orthogonian? Did he ever meet with Nixon? That is a scary thought
Anne Laurie
@Damned at Random:
I remember a lot of the complaints about the hostage crisis/OPEC being framed as “they” no longer being afraid of “us” — “America had lost its mojo” and we needed a Strong, Manly, Optimist Leader(tm) to Restore America’s Greatness(tm). (In fact, I believe R.A.G. was one of Reagan’s campaign slogans.) The spinmeisters were telling the media that if Democrats (labor unions, liberals, women, people of color) didn’t have the “balls” (politely: guts) to “show the
ragheadsThird World we could defend ourselves”, then it was by-the-white-christian-god time to replace them with people who could and would! I was in my mid-20s and remember that campaign as the first sign of genuine American appeals for fascism in my lifetime…Villago Delenda Est
@Bob Loblaw:
So successful that the official unemployment rate (the one they’ll ADMIT to) is well above 9%, pushing to 10%.
Little Boots
@Teri:
Karl Rove is sort of the epitome of Orthogonian. And Nixonian.
Little Boots
@Anne Laurie:
What Anne said, plus Misery Index.
Lurking Canadian
Rove’s part comes later in the book among the “dirty tricks” that led to Watergate.
Teri
@Little Boots: Yeah but did little Karl ever sit down to Nixon’s poker table and learn the lessons? It would make a sort of sense in that tactics, strategies etc are so similar.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw:The only thing you are missing here, is that Palin, who lacks Nixon’s brains and Reagan’s charm, also lacks the work ethic and patience that both showed in working up to the big game.
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
As I said, I think she’s just too lazy to be president. The money’s easy on Fox News.
Teri
@Lurking Canadian: Ah…haven’t read ahead. I, unfortunately, don’t have time to read more than two chapters at a time.
Damned at Random
@Bob Loblaw:
I was an Obama volunteer – no because I bought the rhetoric, but because the alternative was so unthinkable. And I’m currently living in a high misery index area
Mike E
@Teri: Texas, wow…you got out before they started talk of issuing their own currency (or is that S. Carolina, I get secession all confused). I’m now in Tarheel country, living briefly in the only place in the USA where the local racists lead a total coup d’etat of their duly elected gov’t (Wilmington 1898, look it up!) and confiscated their property. I’m in Raleigh, where our school board is currently working hard to re-instate segregation.
Teri
@Annie Laurie Next two chapters for next Sunday? I gotta go feed the snow covered horde that are my teenagers…
Omnes Omnibus
@Damned at Random: That doesn’t really refute BL’s point. Obama was the sunny optimist in the 2008 campaign; remember “Hope and Change” as a slogan?
Anne Laurie
@Damned at Random:
I was in mid-Michigan, which the OPEC Oil Crunch was turning into Ground Zero for the middle-class meltdown. Carter’s loss didn’t surprise me, but Reagan’s margin did, because he seemed like such a mean shriveled litte turd behind the advertising blitz. Little did I suspect how many of my fellow Americans wanted a mean shrivel-souled turd as their Dear Leader!
Teri
@Mike E: Yeah, right before the medical bust there in Houston. But I did learn to drink good tequila and do a mean two step.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus:
True, and that slogan has been mocked incessantly by the Wasilla Quitta.
How could you forget? The problem is, the change is non-existent as far as the “unitary Executive” concept is concerned, and the hope is fading.
Damned at Random
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re right of course. But 2008 seems like such a long time ago
Little Boots
@Anne Laurie:
Honestly, for most people, I just don’t think he seemed that way. He may have been that, but seemed it? no. And that is a weakness of the left. We do not always, or often, see what others see. WE gotta figure out what to do about that.
Teri
@Little Boots: I gotta say, your marketing (the left, Dems etc) leaves a lot to be desired. The Repubs (a pox on their houses now) have a unified message, streamlined bullet points, marketing and strategy materials for even local candidates of that messaging, image etc is unified and more importantly tested to sell well. Money and market testing over years proved it. Need to get on message, stay on message and co-ordinate down to local level.
Anne Laurie
@Teri:
Doubt it, but Karl thinks that enough of us are Orthogonians that he can win elections by appealing to their wounded sense of lost entitlements. Nixon appealed to blue-collar workers who feared “losing” the gains they’d worked hard for; Rove set up Dubya to appeal to spoiled suburbanites & retirees who were fearful of losing the privileges they’d inherited. Rove’s ‘country club’ line was a ‘tell’ — country clubbers today are the guys who took over their daddies’ car dealerships, medical practices, or string of chain restaurants, plus the AARP members whose gated communities don’t have nice enough tennis courts or white-tablecloth restaurants.
Villago Delenda Est
@Little Boots:
If we could just turn off all that reason, turn off the scientific method, turn off our unhealthy obsession with fact, and with cause and effect, and what has been demonstrated to actually work, we might be able to see things their way.
nancydarling
Interesting to me that Mellon-Scaife’s name pops up in connection with Reagan in the 60’s. I’ve often wondered if you traced the money funding right wing foundations and the money that went after Clinton in the 90’s it all leads back to the same old WASP moneyed class that hated FDR. FDR was loathed as a traitor to his class, but Clinton drove them insane. To them, he was this white trash kid from Arkansas, but he was smarter than they were and better at their game, and in the end, he was still standing. Now imagine their insanity with a young, smart, and classy (in the best sense of the word) black man in office.
I’m about to go all “Chris Hedges” in my thinking when I realize what we are up against.
Little Boots
@Teri:
Yeah, we don’t get that. We gotta think now and then, and actually evaluate what we’re doing and saying.
Little Boots
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anne Laurie:
In short, people who feel they are entitled, because they, like the deserting coward, never had to actually demonstrate any actual merit in their entire lives.
Wile E. Quixote
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s one thing that really impressed me about Richard Nixon after reading Nixonland. How hard the guy worked. I’ve purchased copies of the book for some friends of mine and they love it (I’m not loaning anyone my copy because Rick signed it for me a few years back in Seattle when he was at Town Hall* and because this is a book that you buy for other people so that they’ll loan it to their friends, if that makes any sense.). Reagan was a hard worker too and neither one of them was as stupid as Palin is. I wonder what Ron Reagan, Jr. thinks when Republicans gushingly compare Palin to his father, with whom he had a complex relationship. He seems like a pretty mellow guy but I’ll bet it sets his teeth on edge.
*Thanks again for coming to Seattle Rick. Town Hall readings are always very good and yours was one of the best.
Little Boots
@Anne Laurie:
You really don’t think Karl thinks of himself as an Orthogonian? They wear it on their sleeve, constantly. Hell, uber privileged, do nothing, rich boy George W. Bush probably thought of himself as an Orthogonian, confronting all those smarty pants.
Teri
@Little Boots: I took a big step for me, I went to the local Democratic Chairman to talk about volunteer positions etc. Oy…she was confused as to why I (the Republican she knew) was asking if there was something I could do to help. She is going to get back to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@nancydarling: I think it is pretty much the same group of people who opposed the Progressives around the turn of the previous century. They are like the undead.
Little Boots
@Teri:
We all get there. I feel so weird being a Republican for decades, but you can’t erase it. And embarrassed, and not wanting to do anything else now, but you can’t. Go forward. Good for you!
licensed to kill time
@Teri: It’s true that the Republicans do a better job selling their product. I think it’s easier when all they want to do is get people to buy the brand(R). Unfortunately when they get the product home and open the pretty box all they find inside is a pile of Styrofoam peanuts. Then they’re stuck humming the ad jingle and telling themselves it’ll be a pony for sure next time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Little Boots:
Especially those Gore and Kerry guys. Both of whom actually put their own asses into the game in their generation’s trial by fire, unlike himself and “Unka Dick”.
Little Boots
seriously, do you all get how deeply ingrained the Nixon viewpoint is on the Right? Everyone from the stupidest trailer trash fundamentalist to the most privileged white bread country club Republican is a victim, of the liberal elite! Always. That is the glue holding the whole sick coalition together.
Teri
@licensed to kill time: Excuse me, I didn’t sell ponies….only genuine zebras!
Mnemosyne
@Wile E. Quixote:
You don’t have to wonder. Patti Davis isn’t too fond of the comparison, either.
Villago Delenda Est
@nancydarling:
FDR saved them from tumbrel rides, and he’s been hated by them ever since.
Little Boots
@Villago Delenda Est:
And I sort of wish he hadn’t, but then, who knows what would have happened. But just executing Jay Gould. Might that have done something?
Mike E
@Little Boots: Paranoia makes for crappy glue, they’re welcome to it!
Little Boots
@Mike E:
Long term, I think you’re right. At least I hope so.
licensed to kill time
@Teri: Well, zebras are black and white :) Easier to sell than shades of gray…
Cheers for your journey!
Little Boots
by the way, do you guys know that the Governor of my state, Wisconsin, is staging a coup? De certifying all state unions? A huge power grab, and I’m not sure it’s making news outside this state.
Damned at Random
Also, how he worked for the support of the Franklin power brokers he loathed. A dirty and degrading effort. He wasn’t a natural politician – like Bill Clinton, who seemed to genuinely enjoy the BS sessions with all kinds of people. Nixon rose to the top through relentless effort in a field for which he had no natural aptitude. He nursed his bitterness and grew it as a consequence of the road he chose. In the absence of that joyless obsession, could he have had a good life as a successful attorney with a good wife and loving daughters? Would he have recognised happiness if he stumbled across it? He’s really a tragic figure
jake the snake
@Lurking Canadian:
Google the “Hardhat Riot” and Jackson St. shootings.
If you know about Jackson st, you will understand why it
was not in the news.
If I remember correctly Nixon praised the hardhats.
Damned at Random
Read about it on Crooks and Liars this morning. The new Florida governor is a piece of work, too.
We live in interesting times
Villago Delenda Est
@Damned at Random:
Those are very interesting questions, and his obsession is ultimately what did him in, because his paranoia about “leaks” got the better of him, and led him down the path that led to his resignation in disgrace.
Phoebe
@Little Boots: Yes, Rove is an Orthogonian because the defining quality is a resentment for the graceful and the charming and the seemingly charmed. Nixon had [legitimate!] socioeconomic resentment in there, but that’s not really it. The fact that Rove actually views Obama as a Franklin is the “tell” that he’s an Orthogonian at heart. It’s a point of view.
I keep thinking of the Morlocks and the Eloi from The Time Machine, particularly the abridged illustrated version I read as a child [SPOILER ALERT!]. The Eloi were seemingly [and formerly] the ruling class, but the Morlocks ran everything and preyed upon the Eloi. It’s not quite the same, of course; Orthogonians want to BE Franklins, and Morlocks just want to eat the Eloi, but I still keep thinking of them.
Mnemosyne
@Phoebe:
It’s a fine distinction, but I don’t think the Orthogonians want to be Franklins — they want to replace the Franklins with themselves and the Orthogonian way of thinking.
Even if Nixon had been completely accepted by the Franklins, he still wouldn’t have been happy, because he always would have been conscious that he didn’t belong. It’s quite the Catch-22.
Little Boots
@Phoebe:
I think Morlocks is perfect. It is an endless, stupid resentment, not based on any real goal other than that.
Anne Laurie
Thanks to everybody who participated, including (especially) Mr. Perlstein!
Do we want to try for two more chapters this week, get through “School Was In Session” and “Batting Averages”, and finish Book One? Or is that too much?
Little Boots
yes, why would two more chapters be too much?
jake the snake
@Villago Delenda Est:
That is one reason that the prison-industrial complex does not do a lot about the racial gangs in prisons. They increase the violence, most of it prisoner-on-prisoner, but the gangs keep the population divided.
licensed to kill time
I think two chapters is just right. It really is neat to have the author of the book here (well, at least until he has to go do real world stuff!). Very unique….Balloon Juice-it satisfies!
Damned at Random
I’ll be out of touch next week (probably) but will definitely catch up on the discussion later.
Annie and everybody – it was fun. Thanks Annie for setting this up
Carol
One thing that strikes me looking back and now-is that the whole thing is now an OLD people’s set of grudges. Yes there are the trailer dwellers, but even that crowd is dwindling year by year. What do you think those people think is an end game when the majority of the kids today are brown, black, yellow or immigrant?
Nicole
Sorry to have missed this (again! On a train this time) but what great reading the comments were.
Someone commented on the racism here causing divides we don’t see in Europe, but I think a lot of Europe’s being ahead of us on social safety nets is due to Europe being more homogenous at the time those nets were put in place. I have a doctor, originally from Europe, and she told me there is no way in hell national health care would happen today in most of the nations that have it because of the influx of immigrants from Africa.
No matter where you are, people just don’t want people with a different skin color to get anything. Even when it will benefit their own self, too. Tribalism. The only thing stronger than real self-interest…
Barry
@Rick Perlstein: “For the Villagers, Watergate was a serious trauma it demonstrated that those in whom they’d invested their trust might not be worthy of their trust. ”
I have to disagree. The Villagers still trusted everybody there (except for Colson, perhaps). They were still licking Nixonian boots up until the dirt was packed tight over his grave, and working for Nixon was not a disqualification for being a Villager.
What the Village decided was that they should rally around threatened right-wingers, which is the pattern up through today. It’s really, really hard for a right-winger to disgrace themselves so badly that the Village actually disowns them. I can’t think of too many.
arguingwithsignposts
Finally caught up on readings. The Somebody suggested comparing the scenario in the ’60s to moral panics throughout history. Just passing that along. (google books link)
Jenny
@Bob Loblaw:
Okay, who are you and what digya do with Bob Loblaw!?!
Bob, I thought you hated obama.
Jenny
@Damned at Random:
If that’s how you measure success, then why did so many “progressives” abandon Al Gore in favor of Nader?
A significant slice of the left couldn’t stand Clinton because of DADT etc., could care less about the his economic achievements, and they took it out on Gore. Now, some of the same people have flipped, and could care less about DADT etc., and focus on the unemployment rate.
It’s always something, with some people.
Chris
I’ve come in after the discussion (forgot it was happening), but there’s still some good stuff here that deserves comment.
@Linda Featheringill:
I hear you completely. I was never raised in a conservative or fundamentalist community, but I was raised with both Christianity and U.S. patriotism as founding values: in my Maryland suburban homeland, I was easily considered conservative.
The original eye-opener of my teenage years was watching the 2002 and 2004 elections, in which war veterans who happened to be Democrats (Max Cleland and John Kerry) were shit and pissed on by the self-proclaimed patriots who preferred to cheer on draft-dodging cowards (and this after they flew off the handle about Clinton’s record). So I can really relate to what you just said. The utter phoniness and shallowness of their “values” (which aren’t values at all, just tribal identity labels) was the original cause of my starting to move to the liberal side of the aisle.
(Couple years before that, in the post-9/11 patriotic euphoria, I remember my dad warning me to “be careful of people of wrap themselves in the flag.” I was a lot older before I really realized what he meant, or how right he was).
Chris
@Teri:
I don’t think that’s quite right. Those “mostly white immigrants” were just as hated and despised in their day as immigrants today, and often considered nonwhite too. In the 1920s, Irish-Catholics were still considered alien, and the Italians, the Jews and all the rest even more so. All these “mostly white Europeans” didn’t really become integrated until after World War Two (in a sense, until 1960 when one of them won the White House).
(I’ve heard theories that the same would eventually happen to Hispanics – that rather than turning the country into a non-white majority nation, Hispanics’ status would be redefined by society so that they became “white” the same way Jews and Italians are today).
So basically, the “white European” crop of immigrant integrated, and then jumped on the “I’ve got mine, fuck you” bandwagon.
James E Powell
@Anne Laurie:
The spinmeisters were telling the media that if Democrats (labor unions, liberals, women, people of color) didn’t have the “balls” (politely: guts) to “show the ragheads Third World we could defend ourselves”, then it was by-the-white-christian-god time to replace them with people who could and would!
The resentment toward Arabs for gas prices and the outrage toward Iranians (who are, for most Americans, Arabs) for the hostages merged with the American dolchstoßlegende from the Viet Nam War. In the late 70s, it was not a distant memory.
Another issue that drove whites to Reagan was busing. I was a volunteer for Carter in NE Ohio in 1980 and, other than the hostages, it felt like THE issue.
Chris
@nancydarling:
It’s my understanding that the WASP moneyed class that hated FDR pretty much made its peace with the New Deal in the 1950s. Reason being that the Democrats had just won five presidential elections in a row by running against the Republican economic royalist platform, culminating in 1948 when they were sure they’d beat Truman, but didn’t. So they realized their Gilded Age utopia was gone for good and settled down to working within the New Dealized system rather than trying to tear it down.
(And that’s why the leader of the moderate wing of the GOP in those days was actually a Rockefeller).
What we have now’s the same model as we had in the Gilded Age, but I’m not sure it’s exactly the same people. I think a new class of robber barons rose up after the old ones had gone moderate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Prime example of this: Tom Tancredo, whose last name ends in a vowel, fercreisakes. That used to be the marker for the white, but not-quite-correctly-white back through most of the 20th century.
Chris
@Nicole:
This. I’ve heard the same fury coming from many Europeans (and not just the far-right loony parties) at their immigrants that I hear from teabaggers here: they’re lazy, they bring crime and violence, they won’t respect the local culture, they’re living off “our” hard-earned welfare money, and, of course, the politicians are all on “their” side and busy betraying “us.”
Unlike here, I haven’t heard it turn into a call to destroy the welfare state yet, but I think your doctor’s right: there’s no way in hell UHC would pass with in the current climate. The tribalism’s maddening as hell: one finds oneself hoping that humanity can one day move past it for good, but the past suggests otherwise.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Crazy, isn’t it? And he’s not just a Republican, but one of the patron saint of the “damn immigrants, get off my lawn!” crowd.
Chet
@Phoebe: I can’t help thinking of this Mark Ames piece from 2004, which has haunted me off an on ever since I first read it.
“The left struggles to understand why so many non-millionaire Americans vote Republican, and yet they rarely ask themselves why so many millionaires, particularly the most beautiful and privileged millionaires in Manhattan and Los Angeles, vote for the Democrats.
“I can answer both. Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I’d vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect liveswhy mess with it? This rational fear of the peasantry is frequently misinterpreted as rich guilt, but that’s not the case. They just want to pay off all the have-nots to keep them from storming their manors and impaling them on stakes.
“Republican elites don’t set off the spite glands in the same way, and it’s not only because of a sinister right-wing propaganda machine. Take a look at a photo of the late billionaire Sam Walton, a dried-out Calvinist in a baseball cap and business suit, and you’ll see why. If Republican billionaires enjoy their wealth, they sure as hell hide it well. As far as one can tell, Republican billionaires genuinely like working 18-hour days in offices. Their idea of having fun is a day on the golf green (a game as slow and frustrating as a day in the office) or attending conferences with other sleazy, cheerless Calvinist billionaires. If that’s what all their wealth got them, let ’em have itso says the spite bloc. This explains why the Republican elitethe only true and all-powerful elite in America todayis not considered an “elitist” class in the spleens of the white male have-nots. Elitism as defined today is a synonym for “happy,” not “rich” or “powerful.” Happiness is the scarcest resource of all, not money. And the happy supply has been cornered by the beautiful, famous and wealthy coastal elite, the ones who never age, and who are just so damned concerned for the have-nots’ well-being. In that sense, you can see how the Republicans were able to successfully manipulate the meaning of “elitism” to suit their needs. They weren’t just selling dogshit to the credulous masses; they were selling pancreatic balm to the needy.”