No, these are not recovered memories. I've always had them. But the horror of our war, the pile-on against Murtha by the chickenhawk brigade, the weird Vietnam reversal (see
this diary by thereisnospoon), the accelerating sense of revealed criminality, all bring episodes from the Nixon era to mind.
- It was 1970, I was 6; my family was living abroad for a year. I was having one of those conversations you have with kids, and my best friend Stefan and I were talking about history. I said "America's never lost a war." (Obviously I didn't know shit, but hey, I was 6). Stefan said, "You're losing one now." For me, this was like discovering your parents will die some day.
- Two years later, living in suburban Maryland. Everbody's dad seemed to work either for the government or a defense contractor. My father, though an academic who consulted for the defense industry, voted for McGovern (Mom wasn't a citizen then). School was hell the day after the election. This was my first memory of being in a righteous minority.
- It's 1974 I guess, and I'm reading the Washington Post every day, back when Bob Woodward was a journalist. (These days I think he must have met the devil at the crossroads to get that story, and now it's payback time.) Doonesbury is still on the comics page. One day a Doonesbury strip gets pulled. In the first two frames, Mark Slackmeyer is talking about former Attorney General John Mitchell, and Mark (who is a DJ) notes that, while the trial has not yet finished, all the evidence leads us to conclude that he's guilty. Pause -- silent third frame. Then in the final frame Mark, eyes wild with glee, says "That's GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!" The strip was pulled from the Post for political reasons, but it became one of most famous of Trudeau's career. And of course, Mitchell was guilty.
I take some comfort in these memories. They show that disgrace will come, appropriately, with time. Or as the man said in Macbeth, "Murder will out."
Correction: the phrase "Murder will out" comes from Chaucer, not Shakespeare. It's from the Nun's Priest's Tale. Not sure why I assumed it was Macbeth.