Has the US changed since Nixon was in power? Yes and no. During the Vietnam War, Nixon claimed in public (in 1971), "America today has the best opportunity to achieve two of its greatest ideals: to bring about a full generation of peace, and to create a new prosperity without war." Neither happened, and neither seems to have a chance. He also said in 1971 -- and taped himself doing so, rambling in the White House, "The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."
Nixon took swipes at Jews, Catholics, gays, lesbians, and all women, too. Of the latter: "I'm not for women, frankly, in any job. I don't want any of them around. Thank God we don't have any in the Cabinet." In 1973, Nixon again posited on tape, "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." Today, one kind find such sentiments residing with the Ku Klux Klan, on the record. Off the record, who knows how many still hold such beliefs? In 1971, Patrick Buchanan, who still chatters away on TV in 2009, was mad at Nixon for not being conservative enough. "Conservatives are the niggers of the Nixon administration." More recently, Buchanan publicly lauded Sarah Palin as a shining exemplar of his type of conservative. He still does.
So yes, the USA has changed in that in 2009 we have Barack Obama, a man Nixon would have preferred aborted, as president, with women in his presidential cabinet. That's the change news. The same news is, we're no closer to a generation of domestic or international peace than we've ever been, so far as I can tell.
Today's Rune: Flow.
Sources: Nixon White House tape transcripts, 1971-1973; Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008), pages 602, 605.
4 comments:
What a sweet sensitive guy.
Buchanan should be shot.
Aw hell, in the history of the world, how many generations have known peace?
So Nixon was a misogynistic racist? Fucker is dead and he has no real legacy on the domestic front. Not even the far right today claims him or his ideal, he was too liberal for them.
I do not care a wit anymore about RN, there are always new days with which to engage the enemies of a free society of which Palin and Buchanan are only the face of them really making the power play.
It is the corporate business structure where the light needs be shown. They are the ones holding not only people of color down but all of us who have no real power other than a voice.
See Ya TED ya did what you could. Journey well into the house of your ancestors.
Thanks all for the comments!
Much still to learn about Tricky Dicky and Republican "ratfucks" -- dirty politics, dirty tricks, Karl Roves and R Reagans . . .
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