Kenworthy on Nixonland

I haven’t read Nixonland, but based on internet discussions I’ve seen, and other recent internet discussions of the same general topic, it seems that he might have underemphasized the most deadly event of the Sixties.

LBJ ran as the peace candidate in 1964 and escalated the war in 1965. The escalation was justified by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which turned out to be fraudulent, and though no one could prove it, it seems likely that LBJ was already planning the escalation during his campaign.

This happened at a time when there was a resurgence of popular radicalism centered on the civil rights movement, and the radicals were unfriendly to American military adventures.

LBJ and Humphrey tried to use their institutional power in government and within the Democratic Party to render the anti-war forces irrelevant, but they failed. As a result, in 1968 anti-war Democrats were demoralized or driven out of the party, Humphrey was stuck with the war, and Nixon was able to pose both as the pro-war candidate and the anti-war candidate without making much effort.

And then there was civil rights, where LBJ had played an honorable role at considerable cost. He really overplayed his hand by fighting two different fights against two very large voting blocs.

I say this because it seems to be the received wisdom that everything would have been fine except for the DFHs. It’s hard to exaggerate the demoralizing effect of LBJ’s Vietnam lies.

The lesson I’ve taken from the political history of my lifetime is that the war party took over in the US in 1941 and its power has never been shaken since. Military decisions are made in-house by a small group of bipartisan experts, without much regard for the electorate.

That’s why we hear so much about isolationists and evil populists whenever there’s any resistance to a plan for war. Everything was decided in 1941 when the populists and isolationists were defeated, and everything since then has been details.

I suppose I should read the book. But I definitely have seen people drawing the same old “The DFHs did it!” conclusions from the book.

Well, I was there and am inclined to favor the polarization thesis rather than the “multiplicity” hypothesis.

The war was a symbolic issue that drew together people who were dissatisfied with the status quo for a variety of reasons. It created a self-conscious Counterculture, of which I was a part, which like any culture embodied a whole package of preferences, practices, political agendas, social rules, taboos and values. There was certainly the expectation that you’d get on board with the whole thing and lots of social pressure. There was the idea floating that all the preoccupations of the Counterculture hung together so that if you didn’t buy it all you were, on the most charitable interpretation, too dumb to recognize the connections.

To me, as a very young, very naive undergraduate it was just scary and awful. By Kent State, we were convinced that “the straight people” wanted to kill us all. It seemed like everything had come to a head and there were just two stark choices: either back to Leave it to Beaver or forward to perennial Woodstock. My college closed down for “teach-ins.” At one such I remember one of our leaders announced that higher education as we knew it would close down permanently. Instead there would be “people’s universities,” at which there would be no paid faculty, where we would all teach one another. And we would teach one another things that were “relevant”–certainly not analytic philosophy.

I was scared out of my wits: I wanted to be a professor but believed that Academia would collapse before I could get my piece of the pie. Oh, jeez, I’m against the war, I’m a good Socialist, I want to see recreational drugs legalized and an end to dress codes, but do I have to buy into this?

Classes resumed, colleges didn’t shut down permanently, people got degrees and jobs, but the sense that we, those of us on the political and cultural left, who ended up as academics, journalists and such, were a distinct culture in opposition to “Middle America,” iconically represented by Archie Bunker. Yes, it really was like that, and Nixon exploited it.

6:I don’t it ever gets simple, abb1. History is always edited & interpreted, according to fashion, biases, framing goals. If Perlstein wants to frame post-1968 as Nixon vs counter-productive war resistance, discounting the social/cultural movements and economic changes, I’ve noticed he has a lot of company. I am not even saying it may not be the most immediately useful misinterpretation.

The Democratic Party doesn’t want to compromise on social issues and has few answers for the decline of unions & rising inequality, so kick the liberal hawks & puppeteers away and end the war. Not that far from the 70s liberals, they’ll either win or learn a lesson. Or not.

“My college closed down for “teach-ins.” At one such I remember one of our leaders announced that higher education as we knew it would close down permanently.”

And those teach-ins were often led by teachers from the last generation of those with direct connections of the old left, and who in the end were disgusted by the anti-intellectualism and self-indulgence of the DFH’s. As a mass movement the “counterculture” spawned the age of greed that followed. Reagan republicans owe the hippies everything (and those of them who stuck to the original plan are few and far between.) Greed is now hip. The Republican party became the party of modernity.

The early 60’s continued the political rise of the black middle class, and ended in the chaos and confusion of the spoiled children of the white middle class. The bourgeoisie could be made to understand the critique of gender, sexuality and (more slowly) race, because none of them threatened its interests. Class is in a different category.
And the war ended with the end of student deferment, not before.

Don’t defend, describe. Being aware of your biases won’t remove them but it makes you less likely to use them as a crutch.

9. Au contraire: I think I got a very clear idea of how at least some working class Americans of the period, like the Chicago cops who attacked when we demonstrated at the 1968 Democratic convention saw things. They wanted safe, comfortable lives, houses in the suburbs, families and regular jobs, and saw us trying to tear that world down. They saw our appearance and behavior as symbols of contempt for them, their aspirations, religious beliefs, practices and values, and signs that we were out to destroy the kind of world they wanted to live in.

That’s what created that polarization. Innocuous trivia became politically charged. And the anti-war movement was perceived not simply as a protest against an unmotivated, increasingly unpopular military adventure in southeast Asia, but as part of a grand program to destroy that world of neighborly neighborhoods, families, regular jobs and regular paychecks. Just the way Nixon wanted it.

You just couldn’t say: “Look, I want a house, a family, a regular job and a regular paycheck too: I just think this war is wrong. And I don’t want to wear make-up and pantyhose every day.” I understood the resentment that Nixon, Agnew et. al. tapped into though because I resented the comrades with whom I marched for, as I saw it, trying to destroy my future. But I didn’t think I had any choice because things were so polarized, so charged at the time, that I saw the only alternative as supporting a system that promoted racism and right-wing politics, and which wouldn’t tolerate even the most minor deviation from a norm I couldn’t achieve.

God, I could deconstruct 12 all to hell.

“we were out to destroy the kind of world they wanted to live in.”

We were. We are. We will.

“Innocuous trivia became politically charged.”

Here I went to get Homo Sacer, especially Agamben on Debord, but never mind

“I just think this war is wrong. And I don’t want to wear make-up and pantyhose every day.” + “that promoted racism and right-wing politics, and which wouldn’t tolerate even the most minor deviation from a norm I couldn’t achieve.”

And where are we all now, and where are “they” now? Well in Iraq, and about to vote on gay marriage in California, and hoping the first black President appoints a Justice that will save Roe, and trying to reverse 30 years of plutocracy, and and and…it wasn’t or shouldn’t have been perceived as a comprehensive attempt at Revolution? The Chicago Cops understood very well, apparently it is the liberals that are still in denial.

10:”The bourgeoisie could be made to understand the critique of gender, sexuality and (more slowly) race, because none of them threatened its interests. Class is in a different category.
And the war ended with the end of student deferment, not before”

This is pretty smart, but still seems to imply that some of the revolution has been won. We ain’t got nothing. Really. 35+ years sliding backwards from a peak around 1970.

The DFH’s knew that a corporate plutocracy sexist homophobic conformist unless attacked as a totality would end back in another Vietnam and depression. Opposition to the DFH’s thought we could pick it apart in pieces, incrementally.

And now we are blaming each other for Bush. but we are both mostly watching the spectacle and pretending it’s democracy.

And when I watch the bombs fall in Afghanistan and Iraq and maybe Iran, and see the New Hoovervilles in LA, I’ll be damned if my first thought will be:”I should have been more moderate back in 1968.”

Excerpt from the Lane review:

…The political legacy of the 1960s is the diminution of one incongruous aspect of American party politics, the Democrats’ dominance in the conservative south, but simultaneously the growing importance of issues that cut across the economic divide:

Race. …

Cultural norms about authority, sex, drugs, appearance, and public behavior

Crime

Gender relations in the home and at work

Foreign policy

Separation of church and state

The environment

Socio-political status. …

It’s widely recognized that these issues increasingly fractured the Democratic coalition.

[end excerpt]

Lane misses the point with the notion of “increased polarization.” The splintering divisions he alludes only begin to touch the hot spots — no mention of divisions on abortion, single assassin theories, Catholics trying to save Vietnam for the sake of gaining converts, UFOs, FDR’s caving in to Soviet territorialism, etc etc etc. The media poured salt galore into all the open wounds of society, carving up electoral interests into such minuscule groupings that none could make real headway against the political party manipulators, the ones breaking up trade and worker organizations, progressive tax groups, and anti-war groups (to name just three)into feeble agglomerations. The exploitation of pluralism proceeded apace.
—
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego

19:Whatever “left” new or old exists in this country hasn’t been part of the conversation since Jimmy Carter, except maybe in campus coffeehiouses. We haven’t bee in anybody’s way.

You’re just putting on a “Sister Souljah” show for your Republican buddies, to reassure them that you want to be a corporate tool just like them, but with casual Fridays. Comity!

Both Pearlstein and Kenworthy have it completely backwards. Through the first half of the 20th century, American politics was far more fragmented and chaotic than it is today. The parties were little more than loose coalitions of local and regional constituencies, dominated by patronage and machine politics, and held together by transient rallying issues, outside of which party discipline was weak-to-nonexistent. The “New Deal” coalition, for example, included Southern Dixiecrats, Northeastern urban ethnics and Midwestern farmers, to name just a few of the subgroups. They had little in common beyond the belief that the government should step in with programs to help “the little guy” (meaning each one of them).

By the 1960s, however, technological advances such as air travel and (especially) television, as well as the growing power and importance of the federal government, made such regionally fragmented parties politically unviable. The battles that tore apart the Democratic party during that decade were essentially over control of the emerging national Democratic political agenda, and the winners–advocates of the now-familiar “liberal” constellation of positions: economic interventionism, social libertarianism and dovish foreign policy–ended up dominating the politics of the subsequent decade. It wasn’t until 1980 that the “Reagan coalition”–the mirror of the new nationally consistent Democrats–came into its own.

Nixon, a skilled national political strategist in his own right, anticipated this coming rationalization of party politics. His “Southern strategy” was basically an (ultimately successful) attempt to take advantage of the Democrats’ newfound national consistency by peeling away socially conservative (and racially reactionary) Southern whites, whose views didn’t fit into the new Democratic agenda. On the other hand, he failed to foresee, let alone forge, a unified Republican platform to match the Democrats’–an essential precursor to achieving Kevin Phillips’ “emerging Republican majority”.

The reason why today’s national partisan divide seems more acrimonious than that of previous eras is not that Americans were once much more unified, but rather that today’s division really is national in scale, whereas it once would have been merely a collection of regional or local ones. As a result, national politicians who at one time would have found themselves in comfortable agreement on many issues with members of the other party from other parts of the country, are today almost certain to line up along party lines on almost any issue.

You’re just putting on a “Sister Souljah” show for your Republican buddies, to reassure them that you want to be a corporate tool just like them, but with casual Fridays.

Exhibit A: This was indeed the party line. Want a house, a family, a regular job and regular paycheck? You’re in with your Republican buddies.

What on earth is Left supposed to be if not a program for working to get everyone on the face of the earth that kind of life–which is incompatible with bombing them into the stone age to deliver “freedom” and other features of the Republican agenda. But then, I was excommunicated from my local chapter of SDS by our leader who accused me of “just wanting Them to have color TV sets.”

Grow up.

23:Close enough to be useful. And provided a base of experience for the French (and Europeans) that helped them analyze their own 1968 with a depth and clarity that made them a little more resistant to Thatcherism. The Situationists are hated more in America than in France.

European political analysis is about all I’ll read. However good Perlstein might be, it’s tragic that he is considered revelatory 40 years after the events.

24:Grow up.

No. I was much calmer and mature in the 90s, but that was obviously a mistake.

“Want a house, a family, a regular job and regular paycheck? You’re in with your Republican buddies.”

Actually, yes, you are. As Socrates would ask you back, what’s a home? What’s a family? I don’t see you desiring the oikos of the classic Greeks or the domus of the Romans, but rather the familial construct designed by the Victorians (or Rousseau, ultimately) as a response to capitalism. Why would you want a job? Remember that, until extremely recently, while a free man might have a trade or profession, it was very unusual (and well into even this past century, somewhat declasse) to work for a large firm for a paycheck.

IE, you’re presenting your desires as something natural and eternal, when they’re simply artificial conventions useful to our current regime.

#15 “Completely false.”
You were drafted. Ok.
You don’t give much of a response beyond that.
Sept 28 1971: End of deferments for college freshmen, but not upperclassmen. Jan 27 1973: Official end of war.

Baber’s point: “After the revolution we’ll all be bourgeois!”
To which I’ll add that “Permanent Revolution” is basic capitalist theory, if never capitalist fact. “Permanent Revolution” is the argument of the avant-garde. The fact that most people don’t want to be members of the avant-garde doesn’t seem to matter much to theorists then or now, of any stripe.

Dunno about anyone else, but I’m still trying to digest this @25: “don’t seem to me to be terribly liberal at all. At least, they don’t talk about syndicalism, they talk about ‘pragmatic approaches’. They don’t talk about Capitalism as the work of the devil, they say they’re firm believers in it,”

What kind of shit are you smoking that makes you think being ‘liberal’ has ever meant being an anticapitalist syndicalist? Either you’re taking the piss, or you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

“And the war ended with the end of student deferment, not before.”

Posted by seth edenbaum

US troop strength in S. Vietnam was winding down long before the end of student deferments.

Nah, Violets, ‘liberal’ in any reasonable sense of the world is always pro-capitalism, no question about that. A typical American left-liberal is for managed capitalism, for capitalism with a human face, for heavy redistribution, but he/she is definitely a firm believer in capitalism.

“Thinking that the Awl Cumpnies should be nationalized in light of their behavior this decade past? Now that’s liberal”

I see, you really do think liberal is a synonym for communist. Only in America…

Are you saying un-restrained capitalism, or un-managed capitalism, or capitalism unfettered by any sort of regulatory apparatus is moderate?

No, the assertion was that it can be part and parcel of liberalism, as it is.

You should really divorce “moderate” which means nothing from “liberal” which means something.

43: ‘Using “liberal” to mean the entire left is a Rush Limbaugh-ism. Since none of us are Rush Limbaugh, that’s why we’re puzzled.’ Uh, that’s my point; that a lot of so-called ‘liberals’ . . . aren’t. They’re moderates. Can you point to something I said led you to think otherwise? I really don’t want to have this misunderstanding again. And can you also explain what part of my ‘definition’ is idiosyncratic? I really can’t make heads nor tales by what you mean otherwise. Ironically, this also flies totally in the face of –

42: ‘You should really divorce “moderate” which means nothing from “liberal” which means something.’ I most emphatically disagree. You seem to want to conflate ‘moderate’ and ‘liberal’, but in case you’re not, I ask again, what positions would differentiate a moderate from a conservative?

But you’ve redefined liberalism to exclude all actual liberals. Liberals do believe in managed capitalism. At this point, that’s practically part of the definition. By your definition, FDR is not a liberal. If you believe in syndicalism, you’re not a liberal, you are to the left of liberals. This is how the meaning of these words are understood on the left. This is why everyone is so puzzled by your point. You want to redefine “moderate” and “liberal” so that “moderate” means what liberal means now, and liberal means what left means now. These are private definitions, unique to you.

Uh, you don’t seem to understand, though I’ve said this several times already: _most_ people believe in managed capitalism. I hardly think that one should then say that most people are liberals, but rather that liberals and moderates and agree on this issue. Nor does that imply that FDR was not a liberal; A => B surely does not mean that B => A.

bubba, you need to put your money where your mouth is,

I did.

Jeez, it’s like you got your interpretation from David Frum or sumpin.

Well now, that effectively derailed discussion on the actual topic of the post. Well done ScentOfViolets.

You need to give me

This is another error on your part.

Moderate:
Someone standing the middle of a drifting boat.

Well if the thread is going off the rails…

Moderate: the nose-picker between the snot-eater and the scold.

54: Sigh. It’s an if-then proposition. Not a command. So, no you haven’t. It also shows that you’re not being serious(the fact that you’re being extremely unpleasant for no good reason I’ll let pass.)

And no, far from ‘derailling’ the topic, the point is that, to a large extent and in a very real sense, liberalism won; what were once arguably liberal values, liberal modes of thought, liberal positions are now casually accepted as mainstream. Civil rights and desegregation may once have been considered liberal; now they are very much mainstream, so much so that racism has more or less gone underground in public. Social Security may once have been a liberal position, or the minimum wage. They are now most assuredly the darlings of the moderates.

On the other side, take something like vouchers. _Every_single_time_ they come up as a public referendum, they are voted down. Despite this, I have been called a ‘liberal’ and a ‘lackey of the State’ (where do they come up with this stuff? That sounds like something from the Mauve Decade, and said by a rather pompous twit at that.) No. I am not a liberal for opposing school vouchers, or opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I am not a liberal for believing the FDA is an important organization, or for believing that government has a regulatory function wrt business, or thinking that SS is a pretty darned good program.

I am a _moderate_. And enjoy the company of the majority of my fellow citizens in being in like agreement on these issues.

Someone trying to tell me I’m a ‘liberal’ because of any of these things is either a complete yahoo (possible), or more likely – and this is the important part – is trying to marginalize my opinions by attempting to label them liberal. At which point I laugh in their face and point out what a pathetic nutjob they are, and how far out on the fringe they are, and don’t even think I’ll cede having the majority opinion at my back; I am _not_ as far out on the left as they are on the right, and I intend to take full advantage of this fact. To play into their hands by agreeing to this is the act of either a fool, or someone who can’t believe they will actually ever win anything.

I suggest that it would behoove most ‘liberals’ likewise to take advantage of the fact that in reality, they enjoy the popular support; not conservatives, despite whatever advertising they may have heard to the contrary.

People. I am this blog’s troll – moi-je.

When observing trolling or, erm, participating in it my measure of success generally involves word count: how much typing can you generate for your efforts? Abb1, I salute your efficiency. Note, however, that with a mere “This is another error on your part” I got a return of 431 words without even advancing a position I disagreed with. You owe me a drink or something.

Now, how many words was that ;-)

A liberal amount.

I’m just loving this. Tell you what, I’m going to redefine myself as a conservative, because I believe in people getting to keep the fruits of their labours – how conservative is that? And by ‘people’ obviously I mean the global proletariat; and by ‘keep the fruits of their labours’ I mean slaughter every lasting mother-lovin’ capitalist on the planet…

Meanwhile, violets ol’ buddy, any comment on the concept of ‘socialism’ and how it interacts with your so-wonderfully idiosyncratic definition of liberalism?

‘Moderate’ and ‘liberal’ are not mutually exclusive categories. One can be moderately liberal (i.e.: against privatizing schools) or radically liberal (i.e. libertarian, for privatizing schools).

scentofviolets,

I would say that “liberal” is a substantive position and that therefore liberal positions can be popular or not, but are still liberal. Hence, there is no contradiction between a position being “liberal” and “moderate”, nor “conservative” and “moderate”. In fact, in the birds-eye view, the biggest political conflict since the industrial revolution has been between lassier-faire and socialism, and “liberalism” in its modern (post-FDR) meaning is, indeed, the moderate position between these two extremes, at least as far as economic issues is concerned.

To use one of your own examples: the legitimacy of interracial marriage is a liberal position because liberal values support said legitimacy; this was true when such marriage was extremely unpopular and remains true now that it is accepted. Otherwise, the liberalism would not be an attribute of the idea, but of its popular acceptance, which leaves the category “liberal” without substantive content. The category “moderate”, “mainstream”, “extremist”, or “centrist”, by contrast, are without substantive content, because ideas do or do not fall into these categories based on their popular acceptance. At one time, interracial marriage was an extremist position; now, it is mainstream. It was and is a liberal position, however. Only in a theoretical sense is it “moderate”, though, since the third position it would be moderating is not significantly expressed. In other words, one could see simple acceptance of interracial marriage as a midpoint between government a) censuring such and b) incentivizing it. However, no one actually advocates b, so there is nothing to “moderate”.

Note to moderators: about 24 hours ago, I posted a longish comment in this thread. It seems to have gone into moderation. I believe this is because it used a word that sounds like “so-shall-ism” which contains a substring that sounds like “See-al-lis”, a string that triggers (as I have discovered before) the spam filter. Since “so-shall-izm” is a word that crops up naturally here now and again, might I suggest that it would make things easier for you moderators as well as for us if an overriding rule can be specified for the spam filter to allow the “see-al-lis” word when it is a substring of “so-shall-izm”. Whether this can be done easily, I don’t know, but I wanted to point it out in case it can.

How is “moderate” a substantive political affiliation?

America is the one country on Earth where all your dreams can be realized.

#71:
Look magazine actually. I wasn’t there but I hooked up with a chick on a Greyhound bus that was. There. In the room when it was decided that was the name for what that was.

abb1, well, speaking very broadly, as I explicitly was in that comment, I would say that liberalism and social democracy are the two compromises that have taken hold, and the two of them are more similar to one another than either is to the left or right extremes. But whatever: i don’t think much is at stake in this aspect of the discussion.

How many times can you not get it? In the real world, the entire left half of the political spectrum is not defined as ‘liberal’.

Excuse me, but this seems to be your position. There is a vast class of people who already call themselves ‘moderates’. So what are they in your estimation then? Burnt toast? Are they not allowed to call themselves moderates? Do you deny them the legitimacy of their own labels?

It doesn’t matter about specific policy differences – in fact, trying to talk in terms of those shows what a narrow ideological window you’re seeing the world through.

You’re making very little sense here. In fact, it is just to the extent that they have those differences in specific policy that cause people to label themselves according to some affiliation. They seldom say “I am a conservative, so I oppose gun control.” No, they usually reason that _because_ of certain positions, they must be liberal/moderate/conservative.

Really, outside of a rather small circle, very few people engage in abstract political theorizing.

There are such things as ‘political ideologies’, of which at least three – anarchism, socialism and social democracy – sit well to the left of any meaningful description of an ideology called ‘liberalism’ that anyone [besides you and Republican hacks] would recognise. I and other people are telling you this because it’s a fact, not because we’re deluded. Buy a poli-sci textbook or something, if you don’t trust what wikipedia tells you.

Oddly enough, there was a letter last week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from a gentleman who averred that, as a liberal, as a _patriotic_ liberal, the oil companies should be nationalized. Oh, I suppose you’ve given yourself some wiggle room with ‘meaningful description’; by using that you can simply claim that those who fall outside your designated ranges aren’t part of this ‘meaningful description’. And to a certain extent, I’d agree(I used to be a Democrat, until the Democratic party left me, with that minority appeasement stuff and desegregation and Women’s Lib.) But I’ve met too many sincere ‘liberals’ who do talk in just that fashion for them simply to be dismissed as not fitting into an accepted category.

@78, sure, it’s just that American reactionaries and quite often liberals themselves like to pretend that liberalism is a leftist ideology. Very common, persistent, and unfortunate misconception in the US political scene.