Sunday, August 09, 2009

Anniversaries

MANIFESTO

Since August is such a slow news month, newspapers have to content themselves with noting anniversaries of events that actually did occur in the month named after Octavian. Viz., we're coming up on the 40th anniversaries of both the Tate-LaBianca murders and the Woodstock festival.
Woodstock comprised a crowd of more than 400,000 on Max Yasgur's 600-acre farm from Aug. 15-18 [1969]. The event featured 32 musical acts, including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Likewise,
The mayor of Nagasaki called for a global ban on nuclear arms at a ceremony marking the 64th anniversary of the devastating U.S. attack on the Japanese city that killed about 74,000 people.

In a speech given just after 11:02 a.m. — the time when a plutonium American bomb flattened Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945 — Mayor Tomihisa Taue said some progress had been made toward eliminating nuclear weaponry but more needed to be done.
Finally, Daniel Schorr comments on the day the good guys finally won.
August 9, 1974, remains as vivid in my mind as if it were yesterday — President Richard Milhous Nixon, having announced the previous evening his intention of resigning, makes that official with a one-sentence letter to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, delivered at 11:35 a.m., followed by an emotional, somewhat disjointed farewell speech to the White House staff in which he evokes the memory of his sainted mother. And then, there he is on the steps of a helicopter, his arms raised in his signature "V for Victory" posture ...

The only president ever to be forced out of office had left the country exhausted. He had stubbornly clung to the presidency until a unanimous Supreme Court ordered him to surrender the Oval Office tapes that implicated him in the Watergate conspiracy. He faced impeachment and, almost certainly, conviction. His chief of staff, Al Haig, had mentioned to Vice President Gerald Ford the possibility of a pardon after resignation, although Ford later denied there was anything like a deal.

In his first speech as president, Ford said that the national nightmare had ended. A resilient nation had survived, but the episode had left its scars on the body politic. Since Nixon, no president has been fully trusted.
Indeed, Schorr is correct in his last statement, but a more insidious effect has been felt for the last three and a half decades: There has been a concerted effort to avenge Nixon or sanction his actions in some way. Certainly, Reagan's "welfare queens" mantra was an echo of Nixon's racist "Southern Strategy," and the entire "white southerners started voted Republican" phenomenon came about as a result of Nixon's sincere distrust (some might say loathing) of black people. It goes without saying that Feckless Leader's strategies were Nixonian; with Nixon idolators like Cheney and Rummy around, it could play out no other way.

And, of course, the entire tenor of modern politics can be ascribed to Nixon's neuroses and psychoses. The hideous divisiveness that has plagued the nation for the last number of years originated in Nixon's notorious "Enemies List"—an early articulation of the "If you're not with us, you're against us" sentiment.

Thus, my hopes were raised on that Friday in August 35 years ago. Indeed, it looked as if "our long national nightmare" really was over. Ironically and unfortunately, however, we Boomers hadn't seen anything yet.

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