Glory years. I was born when Eisenhower was President, and JFK was next in line. America led the world in just about everything, it seemed. And was always Best and was always Right and Just! That’s how I was taught at home, and nothing at school contradicted it.
I was raised by a father whose own dad, my ‘Grampa,’ was a John Bircher. Grampa taught me never to forget that “Franklin D. Roosevelt was a Communist who sold the US down the river at Yalta.”
Things shifted, though. I remember my primary school teacher coming into the classroom with tears in her eyes. I’d never seen a teacher cry. She did the best thing possible. She wheeled in one of the monster TV’s schools had back then and turned it on to Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the JFK assassination.
Took the Vietnam War to get me to think. Was all for it- the USA is always right, correct? - until I read that the US was fighting for a South Vietnamese government that had refused to let its own people vote on whether they wanted Ho Chi Minh as their president or not. This meant the South Vietnamese government was illegitimate, a dictatorship — so why was the USA fighting for them?
With the draft looming as I approached eighteen I considered all this deeply. I registered, but in the lottery that year I came out in the low 200’s. No chance I was going in, at least as a draftee.
My views at that time? Pro-union, but also pro-business. Never trusted unfettered capitalism, so loved learning in history class about Teddy Roosevelt’s domestic policies and trust-busting. My maternal grandfather was a sincere pastor, but I discovered he was unusual, as the behavior of many ‘Christians’ at my church would not have brought a smile to Jesus. Was abhorred by the Holocaust, was glad the Jews had their own country in Israel, but was concerned even then about what was going on with Palestine. One of the first eighteen year-olds able to vote, I voted for the candidate, not the party. Some moderate Republicans like Governor Dan Evans of Washington State got my vote every time.
More of my life and what’s influenced my writings will come out in my stories. However, one main theme is the Turning Right of America.
My views, which were Moderate in the seventies, are pretty much unchanged. However, what would have made me a Moderate then make me a flaming Liberal Progressive by the standards of 2023. That is extraordinary to me.
Richard Nixon’s policies were generally ‘left’ of those of Barack Obama. Check that out. It’s true.
The huge shift in the USA started with Reagan. I consider him a terrible president, and a very homey, cuddly, smooth-talking elder who was a poisonous sna–ke in disguise. Almost all of the ills of the USA today have their roots with him, who cheated his way into the presidency by bribing Iran and preaching that “Big Government is bad.” To me it was obvious that bad government is bad, but good government was and is essential.
America today is in the throes of dealing with Reagan’s heirs, which makes them an intellectually deficient, dishonest lot in most cases.
That’s enough about me, but at least you’ve been somewhat familiarized — or warned.