Throughout my life, I've been asked why I read so much. "Why are you always reading?" "Don't you get bored reading all that historical stuff?" My answer has always been the same. I'm fascinated by it, and I always know that there's more I can learn that I didn't know before.
It is something I wish far more people did.
While I have largely tuned out the cable news shoutfests and the partisan muck, I keep an eye out for the general direction of such things. I've devoted far more of my time to looking at our past, and I am astonished to see that very little has changed in 40 years. What I suppose shocks me even more is that after 40 years of the same thing, too many people are either ignorant or deliberately refuse to acknowledge the falsity of some things.
More over the jump.....
In the late 1960's, the right-wing blamed everything on Communist fronts. The riots by impoverished blacks in their corrupt cities: Communist-trained. Sex education: Communist-guided to reduce our God-fearing moral direction. Antiwar movements: Communist subversion of our fight in Vietnam. While McCarthyism had ended, the right still saw Commies under every bed, carpet, and vehicle in America. Lord knows they weren't alone. President Johnson and the vast majority of his cabinet believed the same, even had the CIA investigate it. When director Richard Helms reported there was NO Communist influence, Johnson refused to believe it. The Cabinet responded with disbelief when Attorney General Ramsay Clark said the same.
Today, the subjects have changed, but the same tired charges spew forth. This time, it's the stimulus bill, or healthcare reform, or Obama's administration, that are called Communist, products of Communism, et cetera. Communism is dead. China is Communist in title, but not in act. They are a capitalistic economy run by a committee of dictators. Cuba is nearly dead, as is North Korea. The Soviet Union has been dead for 19 years. Why are people still trotting out Communism as something to fear? Even more, why are so many people believing that there is some scary Communist underground in the White House, desperately trying to undermine society?
Because, let's face it, President Obama has ended up being very moderate on a variety of issues. In fact, many of us who support him find him too willing to hew to Bush administration views regarding our war on terrorism. What I honesty feel it comes down to is that his election broke down another barrier, and it scares the crap out of the WASP/C (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant/Catholic) establishment, and so they drag out the old bogeyman argument to scare Americans into fighting against policies that will better their lives.
Why do I say this? The book Nixonland by Rick Perlstein lays bare, in detail, the offenses and outrage that took place against African-Americans during the sixties, how the conservatives howled with delight as riots took place and then used them as a reason to vote down Great Society legislation, to blame the "coddling" of the disenfranchised as the reason the riots took place (and not their corrupt, racist city structures), and use them as a reason to use police state tactics. Again, they weren't alone. The liberal Johnson administration, and Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara, drew up legal orders that would in case of severe inner-city disturbances (which, again, they thought were the work of those nefarious omnipresent Communists) give the President the right to declare martial law, orders that Deputy Attorney General Warren Christopher handed over to John Ehrlichman the day that Nixon took office.
I am not saying, nor do I believe, that disagreements with the President and his policies are born of racism. What I am saying, however, is those who are yelling the loudest about him, are, by and large, from that WASP/C establishment (with the few tokens like Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal). Some of the people protesting him in the Tea Party movement are racist (witness the Obama as witch doctor pictures at rallies). The majority of them, I believe, are simply scared of their order being torn down. They are scared of the demographics that show that Hispanics will be the largest ethnicity in the nation by 2050 (hence the massive cauterwauling about illegal immigration and the clearly racist Arizona effort to not issue birth certificates to children of illegal immigrants-a direct violation of the Constitution's provisions on such matters.) They are scared of not having power, and so they do their best to scare Americans into believing the worst about these people.
For a nation that constantly changes, we are collectively afraid of change on a deeper level. In 1966, voters in Massachusetts were quoted as saying about Edward Brooke, an African-American Republican candidate for Senator, "Nothing personal, but if we vote you in, we'll end up with a Negro president." Now we have a black president (albeit a mixed-race one), and the fears of those type of people have been realized. So, Glenn Beck goes on TV and says Obama hates white people. Sarah Palin said during the campaign, "He isn't like you and me," echoes of Nixon's charges about the antiwar crowd. He is decried as a closet Muslim (because in this age of terrorism, being Muslim is scary!) and a militant black Christian in the same breath. The "birthers" scream for proof of his citizenship, much as they did against the Mormon George Romney in 1968, because he was born in Mexico while his parents were out of the country.
Anyone that is "different," who isn't part and parcel of the power structure, Americans fear. In the late 19th century and well into the 20th century, Catholics were supposedly part of some papist plot to put America under their control, and John Kennedy repeatedly had to demonstrate his fealty to America. Today, many of those Catholics, sadly, repeat the same sort of slurs, directing them at Obama, that he's a closet Muslim who wants America under Sharia law. None of it was or is true, about Catholics, about Mormons, about Muslims, but a fear and smear campaign always bears more fruit than one based on facts.
This is why I read. This is why I consume as much information as possible. This is why I read the newspapers (online), scores of books, and study history with the devotion I do. Because the maxim is true, that those who fail to learn history are destined to repeat it. Nixonland, sadly, is alive and well in this divided nation, still perpetuated by the same type of people, with the same falsities and myths propagated upon an America that is as vulnerable and afraid as it was in the late 1960's. Too many people do not care or try to know anything more than what the loudest, most ignorant person in their communities or on their televisions and radios shouts. In their isolation, they do more to destroy what makes our nation great than any external enemy could ever hope to achieve.