Remember When ….
on 06/24/2006 at 01:14 PM
You win the prize, Squigster! (to be determined later)
Your family and mine would have gotten along great. My grandaddy cussed Rossevelt until the day he died. My Dad was only happy when Ike was President. As soon as Kennedy got in office the mood around the house was always gloomy. Especially, after the Air Force grabbed my Dad, slung him on an aircraft and hauled him down to Homestead AFB to manage the flight line during the Cuban crisis. We didn’t know where he was until weeks later when he returned home, mad as hell. It wasn’t until years later that I found out about the Bay Of Pigs. Dad cussed Kennedy until the day he died. He hated Johnson even worse after his third tour in Vietnam.
Bobby Kennedy visited the University Of Alabama where I was in school shortly before he was killed. I almost decided Democrats weren’t so bad after listening to him (I was young and dumb). The madhouse in Chicago convinced me the Donks were insane. I watched it on TV and was horrified at the police violence against the demonstrators.
Nixon’s only mistake was that he didn’t burn the tapes. Clinton would have. In a heartbeat.
...and I remember too. Back then, the preception was that the Democrats were going to clean up Johnson’s credibility gap and promote civil rights. George Wallace scared us with “lawnorder”. Ronald Reagan gave credibility to actors becoming political pundits and a new style of campaign was born, selling candidates like breakfast cereal. We didn’t know about Nixon’s enemies list - though we were soon to find out. My mother (now on the extreme left - she suffers from a severe case of BDS) debated medicare with my father. She was a Republican and against socialized medicine and my father, a Roosevelt Democrat was for it.
Back then, I was considered a left wing radical, mostly for being pro civil rights and against my friends and contemporaries getting killed in Viet Nam. I was soon to get draft number 83 which did little to make me feel any better about dieing for a corrupt South Viet Namese regime. It did get me to stay in college, safe with a 2S deferment. The cushy stateside military jobs, Coast Guard and Reserve slots were all taken up with the sons of influential politicians - both Democrat and Republican (eg. Al Gore and George W. Bush). The average Joe was good enough to be sent to Viet Nam, but not the sons of the powerful. Somehow, in all the fuss, almost no one made the connection between Mayor Daly’s handling of the anti war demonstrators in Chicago with the corruption of Democratic politics.
Not long after the election of 1968, I remember then Governor Ronald Reagan giving pep talks to the police and National Guardsmen sent in to break up antiwar demonstrations. He basically told them to go break heads and that’s what they did. At the Graduation ceremonies for U.C. Santa Barbara, Classes of 1970 to 1973 a few of the graduates carried birdshot in their bodies as a result of those pep talks. Kevin Moran didn’t graduate. He was buried as the result of an “accidental discharge” from a policeman’s rifle (yeah rifle) roughly 70 yards away. Kevin was trying to put out a fire in the local branch of Bank of America at the time - the cop thought otherwise.
It took until the Carter administration to finish my political education. Ever since, I find I’m not voting for a candidate I actually believe in, just which candidate will do the least permanent damage. May God have mercy on us all.
I was in a different land when that magazine came out - my dad died the next day. That was the time from hell for me. My mother never really wanted us and now here she was stuck with a senile mil and two nasty teenagers. It was not a good time at all. I left home the day after I graduated and barely looked back. [Which was stupid - I should have cleaned out everything I owned before I did that, she let a lot get ‘stolen’]. But anyway I can’t remember voting for the first time - Heavens only knows where or when (in the space of a year I was an OH,IL,OH,MO resident, the beginning of a long line of temporary state residencies - did a lot of voting absentee (mostly MO and MI - hubbys’ home states). The result is that I can’t remember much of voting re: issues - it just never seemed important, I can take a drivers license test in record time and I agree - through the years - it’s become picking the one candidate who will do the least damage. But until the Dems give up the idea of universal (education, healthcare, ss, etc etc) I won’t be voting for any of them. My family made more of big deal of Kennedy’s being Catholic than dem - but like those here, they hated Johnson. My only voting mistake was being po’d at them all and going every other dem/repub one year. Believe me, after Levin got relected by about 1 vote - I never did that again! I guess we all live and learn. Talking about BDS, if it weren’t for abortion - my mom has become an avid liberal, I just can’t believe what comes out of her mouth now. I guess just watching the alphabet networks and reading the newspaper does dumb you down.
AMEN, Dr. Jeff! You have no idea how closely I mirror your sentiments. I was there too. The Dems were after power and the GOP was ... yep. I am still ashamed Carter was elected. I did my best (one man, one vote).
Somewhere, there has to be a middle ground - where sane people live. I’m trying to find it.
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