Ratcheting up the machinery:
Ronald Reagan’s administration prepared for the 1969/70 school year by asking the FBI to help in its “psychological warfare campaign” about student radicals. J. Edgar Hoover responded enthusiastically — “this has been done in the past and has worked quite successfully” — and dispatched his number two man, Clyde Tolson, to help…
__
Senator Sam Irvine, the North Carolina conservative and civil libertarian, learned that Treasury Department officials checked library lists to see what books certain suspicious Americans read, that HEW kept a blacklist of antiwar scientists, that the Secret Service was asking government employees to report anyone with an interest in “embarrassing” the president.
__
… The Nixon administration tapped an attorney in the Justice Department, William Rehnquist, to write a memo justifying expanding the program to spy on any antiwar activity. Soon, one thousand undercover agents in three hundred offices nationwide were compiling dossiers on such groups as the NAACP, ACLU, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Clergy & Layman Concerned about Vietnam.
Kissinger and Ehrlichman hosted seven student leaders in the WH Situation Room. They represented 273 student government officers and student newspaper editors who had signed a pledge of draft resistance. Ehrlichman said, “If you guys think that you can break laws just because you don’t like them, you’re going to have to force us to up the ante to the point where we give out death sentences for traffic violations.“
“Every American has a right to disagree with the President of the United States, and to express publicly that disagreement. But the president of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him, and the people of the country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a presidential address without having the president’s words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested” by “this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every presidential address, but more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues of our nation.”
That last was Spiro Agnew, starting his campaign against the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’. Of course, Roger Ailes was already embedded in the White House, taking notes (or writing scripts). If the President does it, then it is not a crime…
Of course, I could be reading too much into this. How do you remember those times? What do you think?
Bob Loblaw
I’ve actually never been clear on what a nabob is.
Patty K
That should be Senator Sam Ervin — not Irvine — from NC.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
I got caught up!
The Agnew quote was one I made a note of. Back in ’69, the Republicans were complaining bitterly of media power, how they couldn’t get their message through the filter. Looks like Roger Ailes found a way to take care of that problem, and now it’s the rest of us who are ignored by the corporate media.
It’s ironic that they’re still pissin’ and moanin’ about the liberal media. Seems like one of the conservatives’ hallmarks is to fight the last war, over and over again.
Omnes Omnibus
The Ehrlichman quote seems to be calling for a return to a time when virtually all crimes resulted in a sentence of death. This kind of thing can lead to juries finding an obviously guilty person not guilty because they knew the sentence would be death. All in all, it is no way to run a fair and equitable judicial system.
Also too, “embarrassing the President?” WTF?
Bob Loblaw
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Nah, they know they won. It’s just a rearguard maneuver to make sure there isn’t any dirty liberal revanchism.
Bob Loblaw
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, like that’s never not been the case. Every administration thinks that way on some level or another. Even the current one. Withholding or hording access, punishing those who “speak out of turn,” cutting funding, etc.
The President cannot be made to look ridiculous by others. Because he and his people do a good enough job of that on their own already.
licensed to kill time
It’s a war, we’re the enemy, everything old is new again.
Batocchio
Again, All Roads Lead to Nixonland. A few things struck me, in these chapters and those preceding:
One, Nixon and Kissinger spying on each other, and how similar they were in their paranoia and ruthlessness. (Cheney spied on Condoleezza Rice, having her staff’s memos and e-mails secretly forwarded to his office. It took about two years before Rice found out.)
Two, Nixon’s invocations of civility, and the initial eagerness of reporters to hail him for them.
Three, the culture war stuff, and how centrist journalists began to think that “real” Americans cheered cops beating up hippies and minorities, the law be damned. The section about sex, sex ed and abortion was also interesting, including the unbelievable tales that frightened Americans passed around about young children being taught how to “copulate” at school.
Nicole
Not having been around then, I don’t have any memories, but the list of names that I do recognize from the 1980s and onwards (the earliest political memories I have) is both fascinating and depressing.
And Moynihan? What? Talk about having my previous notions about the man totally 180’d. Politics really does depend on voter short memory.
cfeddy
Nixon goes from using the media, after his the disaster of the debate with Kennedy, to manipulating the media. Ahead of his time.
The spying on the peace movement was well known by protesters of the time. We often saw men in suits taking pictures of everyone. I suppose there are pictures someplace of all the marchers.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
this is why baby jesus invented the credit rating, because erlichmann would have sounded far less like a douchebag if he had said, “we’ll permanently fuck your credit up” and the student protestors would have scurried away with out all the melodrama.
that credit rating shit scared a generation that would not be moved by death sentences for parking tickets for 40 years.
Damned at Random
@Batocchio:
The stuff about kindergardeners watching chicks hatch reminded me of the uproar over Obama supporting “age appropriate” sex education. What exactly is their problem? Are parents afraid that the kids will question the cabbage leaf explanation of their own origins?
Anne Laurie
@Bob Loblaw:
You need to read more Georgette Heyer :}
Actually, a ‘nabob’ in Regency England was someone, usually not from the top social tier, who went ‘out’ to India and made enough of a fortune that he could come back and be a nuisance to the people who considered themselves his betters. Like Bill Gates or the Google-lords, people who think being smart & working hard should give them as much status as silver-spoon babies like Dubya Bush and John McCain III or the media courtiers who suck up to them.
Agnew used the word purely for its alliteration, I think, but it says something about the speechwriter who put it in his mouth (Buchanan? Kristol?) that they chose a word invented by Franklins to bash Orthogonians.
Nicole
@Batocchio:
That caught my eye, too. But I wonder if it’s just people’s willingness to believe whatever suits their pre-conceived notion. I did some follow-up googling after the post this week about the woman charged with murder who lost her baby following a suicide attempt (she took rat poison after her boyfriend left her). Some of the comments on a right-wing site were so awful- one person said he or she was sure it was murder; that the woman surely knew EXACTLY how much rat poison to take to ensure the baby’s death but not hers. Which is preposterous. Just as preposterous as sex ed teaching kids how to have intercourse.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@licensed to kill time:
Yes, speaking of enemies, there’s this:
“In San Francisco“, he intoned, gaining intensity. “a few weeks ago , I saw demonstrators carrying signs reading ‘Lose in Vietnam,” that one word lose was practically shouted, “bring the boys home.”
Ooh, San Francisco. Heart of Evil. Can’t these assholes come up with anything new in 45 years?
gnomedad
So Erhlichman wrote that crappy Star Trek episode?
cfeddy
I was struck that they really didn’t need Fox to push a point. This seems to happen somewhat naturally, I guess. Nixon just keeps his ear to the ground and uses the fears the public came up with. I guess Fox just amplifies this today. Stupid human nature.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@licensed to kill time: Another quote from the list of “Everything old is new again” regarding enemies:
The “want to get out now” constituency, whatever their numerical or geographical distribution, no matter that they included … Tom Seaver … were strangers to the group Buchanan labeled “Americans”.
Off Topic: Why is Pat Buchanan still on TV after destroying America?
Folderol & Ephemera
@Anne Laurie:
Pulitzer prize winner William Safire wrote that, apparently.
4jkb4ia
@Anne Laurie:
Bill Safire!
I don’t know if I wrote this here before. In fact I am sure I did not. My mom says that you wouldn’t mind George W. if he lived next door to you. He would have barbecues and what not. But you would absolutely mind Nixon if he lived next door to you. This section shows that. The public Nixon was for being a grownup and the center holding. The private Nixon was for destroying the republic simply because he was paranoid and vindictive. You can’t say that the voting public voted for fascism because in the end he didn’t get away with it.
licensed to kill time
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: The whole Silent Majority theme was built on stirring up fear and resentment of those dirty hippies, and where did those hippies come from?
San Francisco!
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@mclaren: Well. I had some things to say, but perhaps we should move this discussion to an Open Thread, since it veered somewhat off track from the 3 chapters of Nixonland we’re discussing here.
Put this one back up on the next open thread, and we’ll talk.
ppcli
@Anne Laurie: “I think, but it says something about the speechwriter who put it in his mouth (Buchanan? Kristol?) that they chose a word invented by Franklins to bash Orthogonians.”
I believe it was William Safire (who also composed “Effete Corps of Impudent Snobs”). The man could spin a phrase.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@licensed to kill time: That part I understand, but why demonize poor Nancy Pelosi because she represents SF? Hell, she’s a Baltimore girl. You know, Mobtown. Home of John Waters, Edgar Allen Poe, the Know-Nothings… never mind.
Anne Laurie
@Batocchio:
But this time, Lucy promises she won’t pull away the football! What kind of cruel cynic would assume that a fine, upstanding permanent character in the ongoing strip would break a promise?
I swear, it’s not that Our Failed Media insists on reducing every argument to a simple four-panel cartoon, it’s that they can’t even understand that cartoon when they’re given it!
Anne Laurie
@Folderol & Ephemera:
A-HA! Talk about a Franklinian leading the poor dumb Orthogonian around by the nose…
licensed to kill time
@4jkb4ia:
Re:the public vs private Nixon, the passage on page 422 (too long to type out) where Rick describes Nixon’s torturous machinations to be seen as unaffected by press criticism and having credibility that ends:
…made me laugh out loud.
stuckinred
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Credit rating, credit rating. . .are you fucking kidding me? I came home from Vietnam September 3, 69 and started at the University of Illinois on the 13th. I was ready and willing to burn this motherfucker to the ground and you think someone threatening my credit union would have mattered? Sheeeeet.
mclaren
@Batocchio:
Hardly unbelievable. People believed insanely crazy stuff back then. Lots of people believed that nuclear bomb tests was causing the weather to change — they were probably noticing early signs of global warming but misattributing it to a sinister nuclear government conspiracy.
Republicans were not only heavily pro-war but intensely anti-sex. If memory serves, Ronald Reagan used to describe hippies fornicating in the mud like wild animals at Woodstock.
Nixon understood that America is all about hate and pain and suffering. Americans despise joy and love torment. “No pain, no gain” is the quintessential American motto, and Nixon understood that. The consuming fear that lurks in every American’s heart is someone, somewhere might be happy. That’s why America has become the world’s torturer today, and why the public enthusiastically approves.
Having any kind of sex ed in the 1960s was massively controversial. Nixon capitalized on that. We’re still seeing the echoes of that electroal strategy today with the “abstinence education” in public schools.
CJ
@mclaren:
Your belief that this country can, or has ever had, a functioning democracy leads me to believe you typed that comment from your unicorn-mounted iPad 4.
Batocchio
@Damned at Random:
Unfortunately, the notion of discussing sex with their kids makes some parents extremely anxious… And leads to abstinence-only sex ed (or none at all), and higher teen pregnancy rates. Sigh.
@Nicole:
That murder charge case was just astounding, and I wish I could say the right-wing reaction was surprising. Alas, one of defining characteristics of movement conservatism is its lack of compassion and fierce unwillingness to consider the reality of someone else’s life. That’s not to mention the misogyny. (Clearly, she learned that rat poison dosage trick at a fancy liberal college.) The far right anti-choice zealots really do seem to believe that liberals hate babies and celebrate abortions, despite those liberals having children somehow (through non-stork means).
@Anne Laurie:
Your last paragraph is depressingly accurate – “it’s that they can’t even understand that cartoon when they’re given it!”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@licensed to kill time: Yes, that whole circular reasoning piece was really funny.
Much like trying to go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
stuckinred
Here we are at the White House with the tricky fuckers chopper on the lawn in the background. See if you can guess who I am.
Anne Laurie
@stuckinred: Yeah, it took 30+ years & Reagan’s implementation of ‘Nixonland’ to beat us serfs into the kind of economic submission where ‘your credit rating‘ has become the modern Authority’s replacement for ‘your immortal soul‘. Only some of us believe the state of our personal CR/soul is a vital key to our identity, but all of us know how dangerous it would be to attract the attention of the witch-hunters.
Damned at Random
There was a Reagan quote from the battle of People’s Park that I found infuriating:
What makes these noncombatants such experts on war?
licensed to kill time
@stuckinred: the shirtless blonde, right?
Nicole
@Batocchio:
Which, in Nixonland, the mention of My Lai and the right’s reaction to it (and the big papers refusing to run articles on it!) shows is nothing new. I haven’t had the strong emotional reaction to the book that those who lived through the times have had, but that part- oh God.
stuckinred
@Anne Laurie:
You came in this life
Un-sheltered and all alone
That’s how you came in and for sure
that’s how you’ll go out
That’s for Sure
Starship
stuckinred
@licensed to kill time: Damn, is it THAT obvious?
licensed to kill time
@stuckinred: heh heh. Saw your pic the other day with the waist-length hair, V. impressive!
stuckinred
@Nicole: Watch this clip of the reaction the the Calley Verdict at Ft Benning?From the Civil Rights Digital Library.
Batocchio
@Nicole:
Well, as long as the “right” people are being killed or beaten up, they’re all for it.
Everything we’ve read so far is before my time, too. What I appreciate about Nixonland is the many details it fills in for me.
stuckinred
@licensed to kill time: Rats! Blew my cover. But I was very worried about my credit rating when we went to DC to try to stop the war. Nixon said, “These bums are not veterans”.
stuckinred
@Batocchio: That’s why it was so important that we faced the fuckers down at Dewey Canyon III. The headline said “Vets Over-rule Supreme Court”!
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Nicole: In the category of living through this period, I had the good fortune to hear Ron Ridenour speak about My Lai in Claremont. He was the GI who wrote the “… whistle-blowing letter by a former GI” that kicked the whole thing off. I’m pretty sure it was after the Hersh article had come out.
Anne Laurie
@Nicole: Moynihan, gods rest his soul, was a life-long devotee of the school of 1st Marquess of Halifax, whose seminal political tract was titled The Character of A Trimmer. The epithet trimmer is not generally considered a compliment among my people (who were Danny Pat’s loyal voters), and yet Wikipedia assures me that he was a very wise man and a brilliant politician, so who am I to argue?
bryanD
I vaguely remember the 1968 Wallace-Nixon-Humphrey billboard triptychs and then my childhood political consciousness submerges until $1 at McDonald’s is suddenly not enough for a Big Mac, fries, and Coke, circa 1974.
Anyway, back to Now: Obama is the house negro-at-arms of the ascendent fascist state.
So, what do YOU think?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@stuckinred: Well, that’s cool. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of me walking with a candle on October 15, 1969. Also sadly, by the time my hair got that long it was already starting to fall out. :-(
AAA Bonds
The take-away for many readers of this blog should be:
When you denigrate the left for magical brownie points among an imaginary class of independents even though deep down you agree with the people you’re denigrating, you are enabling the modern-day Richard Nixons all around us.
Nixon and his gang of thugs did not work in a vacuum. They still do not – Henry Kissinger remains free today because of a failure of liberals to do their jobs.
stuckinred
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: The Moratorium! I did not know that picture existed until they posted it on the Winterfilms site nearly 30 years later.
stuckinred
@bryanD: I think you are an asshole.
Nicole
@stuckinred:
Oh sweet fucking Christ. We are an abominable people. That was really depressing.
stuckinred
@Nicole: Yea, the soda jerk is a real bad-ass isn’t he. Five will get you ten he’s a teabagger.
AAA Bonds
@bryanD:
I think it’s fucking stupid for you to call a black man a Negro.
Anne Laurie
@bryanD:
Maybe you should write a book castigating the Ford Administration and its failed ‘Whip Inflation Now’ policies. Go run along and get started on it right now! Don’t worry, we can carry on without you.
Nicole
@Anne Laurie: Heh. You’re kinder than I. From the depiction of Moynihan so far in Nixonland I’m currently thinking of him as the Irish Lieberman.
Omnes Omnibus
@AAA Bonds: The takeaway for others should be that if you get too far ahead of the American people, you may lose them.
@stuckinred: Understatement of the day.
licensed to kill time
One of the things I thought about as I was reading about Nixon’s press paranoia was that a Palin presidency {{{spit! make the sign against the Evil Eye}}} would be so much worse.
Nicole
@stuckinred: Yeah, I definitely recognized him as a member of the Chairborne Division.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nicole: The last I knew, Calley was managing a jewelry store in Columbus, GA. I had the dubious honor of being the OCS Company that Calley had been in about 20 years before. FWIW, he and his legacy were taken seriously and talked about about as examples of, among other things, failure of leadership and war crimes.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus:
Anne Laurie
@Nicole: My sentimental childhood fondness for the late Senator from NY colors my opinion, but I’d argue Moynihan was a LOT smarter than Lieberman (not a high barrier, admittedly). Wikipedia on the original self-proclaimed Trimmer:
(Unfortunately, that just gave me the image of David Brooks with his hand in his pants, euchh!)
Nicole
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s good to hear, but Iraq (and the accompanying opinions about soldier misconduct heard by our contemporary Chairborne Division) makes me feel like nothing changes.
This is a gross generalization, and I’m all for being torn apart for being wrong, but I swear, I think there would be less soldier misconduct, at least of the on civilian sort, if the Army were more fully integrated, gender-wise. I know, I know, Lynndie England, but young men are different when they are in a group together and, especially in the extreme circumstances of war, I find it hard to believe military training always wins out over human nature. We are pack animals.
Hell, we point to the sex-segregation of many conservative Islamic societies as a contributing factor to terrorism, and yet we endorse it in our own military. What?
Nicole
@Anne Laurie: Oh, I agree Moynihan was very, very intelligent, and I liked him (I’ve lived in NYC for 20 years now) and was sorry when he died. Nixonland has been a really interesting read for me in that respect, as my political awareness really kicks in around Iran Contra, and I didn’t know much about where a lot of the major players came from.
That’s the other thing that sticks out to me reading this- how much brighter the conservatives in the 1960’s were, compared to the hacks today.
Damned at Random
I found this shocking
With tens of thousands of servicemen dead, campus riots and mass demonstrations – the House never had a sustained debate on Vietnam until Oct 1969.
Anne Laurie
@Damned at Random:
[Spoiler alert]Speaking of foreshadowing, this helps me understand for the first time why Good Ol’ Ger, the guy Mike Royko called ‘most notable for being extremely average’, came to the mind of the Permanent Ruling Party when the Watergate stench got too strong.
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: Good for him for recognizing and admitting what he did was wrong. Now, having gotten that out of the way, fuck him. Too little, too late. His responsibility as that 2LT was to make sure things like My Lai did not happen. For a more modern version, any officer or NCO in A-stan who even heard a rumor of the “kill-teams” and did nothing to investigate or stop it, deserves to, at the very least, have his or her career ended.
/rant
SBJules
@Anne Laurie:
Didn’ William Safire come up with nattering nabobs? I was around and we (anti war people) were all paranoid, but we didn’t know til later, much later that it wasn’t paranoia, it was cointelpro. We did think Hoover was evil.
stuckinred
@Damned at Random:
From Backfire by Loren Baritz:
“In the summer of 1970, after 25 years of American involvement, Henry Kissinger. . .met with Dr. Ellsberg in San Clemente. Dr Kissinger asked for the name of someone who knew “anything” about the North Vietnamese because, “as you know, no one in this government understands North Vietnam”.
p.21
Damned at Random
Hoover was evil. I actually understand infiltrating some of the violent antiwar groups – Weathermen and the like- as a police function. I would expect them to take an active interest in any group – left or right – with a history of bombing and terrorist activity. But the ACLU and NAACP?
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, you know how I feel about the whole deal.
stuckinred
Look, Cafe Press wants me to buy some Vietnam Vets swag!
Steve
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is strictly an aside, but the reason why virtually all crimes were punishable by death once upon a time is that, prior to modern sanitation, no one could survive a prison sentence of longer than a couple weeks anyway. So it was either a slap on the wrist or death, basically.
Nicole
So, how many chapters for next week? (Milded Pierce is starting)
EDIT- got 15 more minutes thanks to a preview for their new fantasy series.
bryanD
@Annie Laurie: “Maybe you should write a book castigating the Ford Administration and its failed ‘Whip Inflation Now’ policies.”
Ford was an FBI snitch and possibly mildly retarded. Mobbed-up Nixon was our first royal president. What’s your point?
(Can’t wait for Week 11!) :0)
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: The war in general or My Lai in particular. I know your view on the war. I don’t know that I have seen anything you have posted specific to My Lai.
Damned at Random
I have a conflict next Sunday but will do my reading and check the thread when I get home
stuckinred
@Nicole: Assholes! Damn 15 minute preview of some sci-fi bullshit!
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: Officers! But I loves you brother!
Nicole
@stuckinred: Fantasy bullshit. If it were sci-fi there’d be spandex and lasers and pew pew pew. Though, as I have it on in background, I see it opens with the discovery of a massacre of women and children, so I guess everything comes full circle to My Lai tonight.
stuckinred
@Nicole: My bride has informed me we will not be watching it.
licensed to kill time
@Nicole: I was distracted by Dexter, now Breaking Bad, next Mildred Pierce…maybe this time period is problematic :)
Omnes Omnibus
@stuckinred: Oh, that. Well then.
stuckinred
@Nicole: Will the circle. . . .
Nicole
@stuckinred: I must admit, I normally love a good costume porn, but after all the discussion tonight, I’m not feeling it for watching anything dealing with war, even if fantasy war with swords and (sigh) horses. Not to mention I can’t see the guy who played Boromir (who is in this) as anything other than Boromir, so that’s problematic. Kind of like when the guy who played Buffalo Bill was in Georgia, playing Mare Winningham’s husband, and I kept waiting for him to tell her to put the lotion in the basket.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s an authority thing. My boss was an Infantry 1st Louie who spent his active duty at Benning writing manual’s for the M-79. I loves him too (really, he’s a great guy).
stuckinred
@Nicole: Excalibur was it for me. Love Helen.
Scott P.
And “nabob” comes from the Mughal Indian term “nawab,” meaning provincial governor.
stuckinred
@Scott P.: Know what POSH stands for?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@stuckinred: Yup. :) Just from your gearwork by the curb with 2 canine assistants pic I figured it out.
stuckinred
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Pretty good since that is 35+ years later and a shaved head. The big schnozze is the giveaway!
licensed to kill time
@stuckinred: port out, starboard home
stuckinred
@licensed to kill time:
you
are
da
man (or woman)
Nicole
@stuckinred: I have a funny childhood memory (not mine, which was good, as you’ll see) about Excalibur. My uncle and aunt babysat occasionally for me and my little brother and one day, looking for something for us to watch, my uncle saw HBO was showing Excalibur, and though, “Great! King Arthur! That’s good viewing!” We all settled down to watch it and my uncle discovered it’s also chock full of nudity. He was a deer in headlights- if he turned the TV off, we’d know we weren’t supposed to be watching something on it, and if he left it alone, he ran the risk of us telling our newly widowed dad all about what we saw when he let my uncle and aunt babysit. My uncle finally decided to let it be and, fortunately for him, neither my brother nor I have any memory of watching the movie with them.
Now, the Barbarella comic book my grandma bought us (without looking inside before giving it to us)- that’s a whole different story…
Anne Laurie
Thanks everybody — so what is the verdict on the new timeslot? Do we stick with 7pm EDT, move it forward to 6pm, or just go back to 4pm EDT?
Otherwise: Three chapters for next week “The Polarization”,”Tourniquet” and “Mayday” seems like a good breakpoint…
licensed to kill time
@stuckinred: :)
One of my areas of interest is British Colonial India…
lotsa nabobs sailing back and forth.
lotsa nattering, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nicole: I have an aunt who took me to see Dirty Harry when it first came out (I was eightish). She also took me to an all night drive-in Woody Allen marathon. I did not understand the Orgasmatron until years later.
ETA: These are the sorts of memories I have of the first part of the Nixon era.
Nicole
@Anne Laurie: Now that I’ve recovered from seeing Guy Pierce’s ass, I vote for the 7PM slot. I like it.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@stuckinred:
everyone is nostalgic about what they did when they were young, but boomers act like what they did was so much more epic, because it was so much more epic to them.
narcissism.
the reality is the credit score succeeded where threats and paternalism failed. they tamed the “wild youth culture” and made them the patricians, the authority, the man.
Scott P.
That’s actually a folk etymology that doesn’t seem to have any truth to it:
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/posh.asp
Samnell
@Steve:
A further aside, since I seem to always come to these late anyway. Another big reason for the death sentence being so popular, aside general bloody-mindedness (People really did flock to public executions like they were fireworks shows.) is that many of those death sentences would end up being transportation instead, first to British North America (I think mostly to Georgia and New England.) and then to Australia. Courts routinely gave out more death sentences when the colonies were known or suspected to be short on manpower.
mclaren
@Damned at Random:
How can you say that? Don’t you realize that Ronald Reagan helped liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp?
Source: Review of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris.
mclaren
@Nicole:
Here’s what:
1 out of 3 women in the United States army report having been raped by American soldiers.
That’s why.
stuckinred
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Blah blah.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@stuckinred:
exactly how i feel when some one says they “stopped the war”, i mean sure, the war eventually ended, but how many years after most in the military even the politicians had concluded, it was unwinnable? they could have stopped it at that point, but they weren’t going to give in to a bunch of protestors, now were they?
stuckinred
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Good, I’m glad that is how you feel. I feel like we did the right thing whether we were completely successful or not. Nixon resigned and most of his inner circle went to prison. You’ll never hear me say we stopped the war but we goddamn sure tried.
Chris
@mclaren:
Not quite sure that’s an America-exclusive thing. Here’s what Orwell had to say during World War Two:
The parallels to both Nixon and today are there. The ability to tap into the irrational, wild and dark part of the human mind is one thing the Nazis, Nixon, and today’s teabaggers all have in common. Call it our animal heritage.
Nicole
@mclaren: That was a very depressing link. Especially the one woman who said she had no one to accompany her to the showers because was the only woman in her unit. That’s not what I would call a co-ed situation.
Coincidentally, Slate (I know, I know) had an article on group-male thinking today: http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/how-can-happen
Chris
@Nicole:
I think a huge priority for the Republican Party has been making sure that every war since Vietnam, especially Iraq, fails to imprint itself on America’s consciousness the same way.
In that, they get a lot of help from the public itself. Vietnam was the first time the ugliness of war was brought home that graphically to the American public, along with the reality that no, American troops were not, in fact, a bunch of Eagle Scouts looking out for Truth, Justice and the American Way. For a lot of people, the reaction to that was “that was horrible. Do you know how uncomfortable that made me? Never show it to me again.”
And so after Vietnam, “war reporting” meant Desert Storm type coverage of smart bomb hits, which is just what a ton of the public wants.
@Omnes Omnibus:
This.
The only heroes at My Lai were Hugh Thompson and his crew. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon tried to buy him off, conservatives in Congress tried to discredit and even court-martial him, and he received death threats for the rest of his life. A heartfelt RIP to him, in my opinion.
Paul in KY
@Nicole: I met him in a building once in DC. Was there to visit Sen. Ford with my class. Wanted to say hello to him, but he cut me off & jumped in an elevator.
Got the impression he was a total dickhead.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: The latest Rolling Stone has an article (and terrble pictures) about that. I was crying while reading it. I’m so, so embarrased to be an American when I read of these atrocities.
One young boy was only 15 when they murdered him, for fun. All those involved should be executed. They won’t, and that’s reason number 2,967 why this nation is going down the tubes.