Tag: Richard Nixon

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Purple Rage, by Lewis Thompson

In his brilliant and encyclopedic new book, Why the Right Went Wrong:  Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, E. J. Dionne, Jr., spells out in exhaustive detail how the Grand Ol’ Party evolved from the Middle American conservatism of Dwight David Eisenhower to the rabid, ranting, rage of Donald Trumps’ avid band of Storm Troopers.  In a nutshell, it happened when the bedrock conservative vision of Barry Goldwater–which had given rise to the hopes of millions of conservative, white working-class people that their superior status among the races was assured—sustained set-back after set-back politically in the decades to follow.  
Not only did Goldwater lose in a landslide resulting in the election of LBJ who ushered in the Voting Rights Act but the next Republican president, Richard M. Nixon turned out to be a stealth liberal whose term ended in utter shame and embarrassment. In his 1978 memoir, RN, Nixon wrote, “I won a majority of every key population group identified by Gallup except the blacks and the Democrats.  Four of those groups—manual workers, Catholics, members of labor union families and people with only grade school educations—had never before been in the Republican camp in all the years since Gallup had begun keeping these records.”  [Why the Right Went Wrong, p.74.]
“Now,” Nixon wrote, “I planned to give expression to the more conservative values and beliefs of the New Majority throughout the country….I intended to revitalize the Republican Party along New Majority lines.”  [ibid.]
The migration of white Southern Democrats to the GOP had been going on since LBJ’s hay-day as president.  But it was Ronald Reagan’s failed 1976 campaign, whereby he “rais[ed] a banner of no pale pastels but bold colors which make it unmistakenly clear where we stand” that launched the “Reagan Revolution” toward which the Party stills displays undying fealty.  It was a banner that Gerald Ford hastened to pick up, as has every GOP president since, though George H. W. Bush dropped it more than once.
His son, George W. Bush, who liked to call himself a “compassionate conservative”, further frustrated those who considered themselves to be “true conservatives”.  His bumbling engagement in two costly wars in southern Asia and the Middle East further alienated his conservative base and the Great Recession which closed out his term in office left many of them in a sad way economically.
In Dionne’s view, this, combined with the ascension of a black man to the Presidency, is what led to the level of vitriol we now see on the faces of the men and women who comprise a typical Donald Trump mob today.  They are the new base of the GOP.  They come from “red states” as well as “blue states”.  (Thus my title for this piece, Purple Rage.)  They see change not as something they can believe in but as something to fear.  It is not stalemate in Washington that they lament but an arc of history that for them is bending toward the Left.  For almost 50 years, they have witnessed one frustration after another coming out of Washington.  The only bright light for them is Ronald Reagan.  He made this country, in their eyes, “great”. 
Now, along comes The Donald, promising to make America great again.  He is unlike any politician they have ever known—brash, tough, taking no crap.  He is rich, he is powerful and he’s bold.  Perhaps they haven’t noticed that his posture on stage, his swagger, suggests no one–as someone on the Bill Maher Show last Friday pointed out—so much as “Il Duce” himself, Benito Mussolini.  I like to think of him as “Donito Trumponi”.
I don’t know how similar the situation in the United States today is to that of Eastern and Southern Europe in the days following World War I and the Great Depression.  But I do believe that the kind of change the world has undergone over the past 60 years can produce a great deal of fear—and the concomitant anger—in those whose core values appear to be steadily eroding.  I have seen their faces in the crowds surrounding Mr. Trump and it frightens me.  I am frightened even though I have made the attempt to understand from where they are coming.  But when I think of what lies in store for America and the rest of the world should Mr. Trump become the most powerful man in that world, my knees start to rattle.  It is not too late to interrupt this eventuality.  I still believe that there are more Americans who welcome progress toward a better life for all than resent it.  But those of us of that mind must follow through on what we know is the only peaceful means available to interrupt that darker vision and that is to vote for the side that still believes that justice for all and animosity for none is the better way.
P.S.   Here’s a quote that I just ran across.  The source is unknown:
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
© 7 Mar 2016 
About the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the
Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly
realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as
our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger.
Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my
path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Three Fond Memories, by Louis

I have three categories [of
fond memories]:
(a)          My mother at Christmas time, and her
fabulous garden (herb garden included). Sour ending: she died.
(b)                       
Politics: George McGovern’s campaign. Sour
ending: Richard Nixon got elected.
(c)          My love affair with John Wheeler. Sour
ending: he dumped me after 6 weeks and 15 years later, turned into a mentally
impaired middle aged man.
(a)          On Christmas morning, my mother would
put on a red satin robe, which she put on only on Christmas Morning. She would
walk regally down from the second floor of our house to the first floor. For
her, Christmas was the day she celebrated her five young sons, of which I was
number 4. Our oldest brother Arthur would distribute the Christmas presents,
some of them were donated by a local church. We were poor, but well fed. Our
Christmas dinner table sparkled with elaborate china and fine crystal ware,
handed down to us from our well-to-do great great grandparents, Hiram and
Hester Brown of the early nineteenth century. Mother Elinor Brown really made
me feel special.
Elinor
Brown also kept an elaborate garden. She loved working in it for hours on end.
When we moved into that house in 1950, the previous owners, the Horns, had
purchased about 3 tons of topsoil. As a result, everything my mother planted
grew luxuriantly and flourished. Most of the lawn was shaded by two very tall
maple trees. And part of the garden was her herb garden which provided mint
sprigs and sweet basil, etc. My mother grew holly hocks, all kinds of roses:
tea roses, rambler roses, yellow roses, button roses, wild roses. Her irises
were yellow and yellow and purple, and dark blue and light blue. She grew lady
slippers and Jack-in-the-Pulpits. When I was around 30 years old, a friend told
me that the reason that flowers are so beautiful is that they are sex organs.
Well yes Mother Nature is somewhat lewd in many different ways.
The
sour ending was that my mother died aetatem 76 years, and she was born in 1913,
which would mean that she died in 1989. Elinor Brown was well-read and was an
inspiration for many children not just her own five sons.
(b)                       
Politics:
I was in my 20’s when the War in Vietnam was going on. Everything about that
war made me feel guilty. The establishment’s stated reasons for us being there
were not very convincing. All the appalling pictures. I felt very guilty. So,
when George McGovern came along and demanded we stop the whole disastrous war,
I was relieved. My guilt was assuaged. I volunteered in his campaign. Although
Richard Nixon beat him, I was not too dismayed. As reprehensible as Richard
Nixon was, he could have been a lot worse.
In
a report about President Obama visiting Laos, I recently heard that we dropped
2 million tons of bombs on Laos. For what reason?  I’ll never know. I also remember the reports
of large numbers of veterans returning from that war as drug addicts. It was a
bummer every which way.
(c)          About two years ago, I told you about
my short-lived love affair with John Wheeler. I wasn’t too worried about
invading his privacy given how common his name is. My love affair with him went
on for about six weeks, during which time we would walk down the street and,
you remember the song, “people stop and stare”, well people would literally
stop and stare at John Wheeler, his beauty was so spectacular. I never told him
what I really thought of him. I would say, “I think you are handsome or
good-looking”. Whereas, in reality, I thought he was a rare beauty. His elbows
were perfect, his farmer toes were beautiful. His proportions were perfect.
Well he was a model for a sports magazine. He would curl his eye-lashes.  Every night he would put a dab of Vaseline on
his eyelids. The long eyelashes made his beautiful almond-shape eyes even
dreamier. His back muscles were rippled beautifully. His posture was perfect. He
kept an enormous rifle in his closet. God knows if that was legal or not.
The
sour ending: For some reason, after six week, he said
he got a computer technician job in Connecticut and would be moving there with
his girlfriend. He never wrote to me, never gave me his address in Connecticut.
In other words, sadly, I got dumped.
About
20 years later, while I was a caseworker in Queens County in New York, I was
assigned a client, a John Wheeler. I said to myself it couldn’t be my
ex-boyfriend. I went to his apartment in Jackson Heights and saw it was the
same John Wheeler, all his good looks gone. He looked like a slightly dumpy
middle-aged man. The sad part was his memory was so defective that he could not
remember what you said at the beginning of your sentence by the time you
finished your sentence. His brain got pickled by too much vodka, to be honest.
He was clinically mentally impaired. What was the point of me asking him about
his computer technician career in Connecticut? He would not know what I was
talking about.
© 5 Oct 2016 
About the Author 
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City,
Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker
for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally
impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s.
I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few
interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I
graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.