Listening to Hillary Clinton and President Obama implore us to give Trump a chance, I couldn’t help but be a bit nostalgic for the 60's, and the peace and love crowd of that day. Contrasting with yesterday’s protests around the nation, that Back to the Future feeling really started to settle in.
This year is a lot more like 1968 than, I think, most people recognize. That was a horrific year, to be sure. Two political assassinations (MLK & RFK), riots in the inner cities to the point that Washington DC (where I lived) was under lockdown (virtual martial law for all practical intents and purposes) for a period. I vividly remember walking to evening choir practice (why did my parents think this was a good idea?) on eerily empty streets.
It was white conservatives vs. white liberals (hippie commie pinkos) then, played out in protests and epithets. Even more it was white conservatives vs. anyone who looked different (skin color, hair length, choice of wardrobe) and threatened their self image.
I want to say that today’s issues are different, but the polarization is the same.
No. That is wrong.
The issues are the same, even if the dynamics–then it was an unpopular war and the draft that drove discontent; today its economic dislocation–have changed. A segment of white America refuses to accept the personal legitimacy and integrity of anyone who does not look or think as they do; persists in blaming people who look different for their life’s woes. We have not yet solved the most fundamental problem besetting our society, whose roots stretch back to the first ship of slaves to land on these shores.
Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on a “wave” of discontent over changes that protesters of the age were demanding. Some would dismiss that idea on the grounds that Johnson’s withdrawal, and the subsequent anointing of Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic candidate, created a vacuum for Nixon to fill; that the infamous protests at the Chicago convention, along with the general tarring of the Democratic party over the Vietnam War, ensured Nixon’s success.
Sorry, those are, and always have been, the excuses of apologists who persist in denying the problem of racism in America. The problems of the sixties, while inexorably tied to the Vietnam War, were rooted in the movement for racial equality that took hold after WWII and became a serious and undeniable force at the dawn of the 60's.
You cannot separate Richard Nixon from the “Southern Strategy” his campaign pioneered and pursued to a successful conclusion in 1968. In that year, the GOP transitioned from the party of Jacob Javits to the party of David Duke (actually, his predecessor Grand Wizard of the time, whose name I won’t bother to look up inasmuch as it should be forgotten).
As in 1968, this election was the short term culmination of a bitter racist, anti-liberal movement that started many years before. In this version, eight years exactly, when the first Black President-elect was named. Barack Obama the candidate was a scandal-free, deeply thoughtful man whose policy prescriptions you could argue about, but whose personal integrity and fitness for the toughest job in the World was undeniable.
That is precisely why they immediately attacked his integrity and legitimacy. For eight years, they hammered home the message of illegitimacy. While most of us tuned that out eventually, the white racists made it their rallying cry. This year the GOP Senate doubled down on the illegitimacy meme by refusing even to consider the President’s choice for current Supreme Court vacancy. They did not have to actually say why the nomination of a President in his final year was illegitimate – their target audience got it and was empowered by it.
Today’s apologists are dismissing the election on the grounds that Americans “always” vote the other party in after two terms (horse droppings – by that theory George HW Bush should have lost to Dukakis no matter how flawed the Dukakis campaign was). Saying that this election was about the “forgotten man” completely misses the point. These ignorant fools have been told (and believe) that all their problems are the result of Government. They cite all sorts of policies, but dance around the reality that it’s the policies of racial and general equality and inclusiveness that they fervently believe is the root of all problems.
You cannot separate Donald Trump from his very public campaign to tar Obama as illegitimate; something we now know was the beginning of his Presidential campaign. You cannot separate Donald Trump from his campaign of racist dog whistles and open courting of people espousing racist, misogynist, anti-gay white nationalist views. You cannot excuse or wave away pitting people against each other as an electoral strategy, then expect peace and love thereafter. In 2016, as in 1968, this election brought the disaffected white racists to the polls in larger than usual numbers because the winning candidate’s campaign gave voice and legitimacy to their immoral and ignorant beliefs.
In 2016, as in 1968, an election won on the basis of hate, lies and prejudice cannot stand unchallenged. Let the determined, implacable opposition begin.