I am reading Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland. It is an enjoyable stroll through the period when Nixon entered politics to his exit in 1974. Richard Nixon is one of the most fascinating people ever to enter U.S. politics – a complex, twisted, tortured and brilliant man, one who knew the globe like most of us know our own city streets. Even Henry Kissinger admired his intellect, and what could have been. His famous quip “He would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him.
I think he was a great man, though I certainly do not love him.
I am currently following Perlstein through the sixties and the civil rights riots and debates. I was very young then, and was as naive a spectator as has ever lived. I was very conservative, and very much feared black uprising, even in Billings, Montana. Pundits of the time on the far right ascribed the discontent to socialists and communists. Many allusions were made to Hilter. How little things have changed.
This ties up many loose ends for me. Back in 1988 I sat in our family room in our house on Pine Street reading, and was struck by a thunderbolt. Communism, I realized, posed no threat to us. The Russians did not threaten us, nor did the Chinese.
Not too long after I realized they posed no threat, the Soviet Union collapsed. The world since that time has been confusing and hard to understand. It will never get easier. But it is different since that day in 1988, and would have been different for me back in the sixties had I achieved the breakthrough earlier.
I’m not afraid. In the months in years after that day, I grew more liberal, and eventually eschewed conservatism and all right wing thought. It’s a natural progression. Absent fear, the mind is clearer, the world safer, people less threatening. Liberal and progressive politics and absence of fear go hand-in-hand.
What I see all around me with teabaggers, right wing web sites, immigration debates and health care reform is fear. The right wing is afraid. The are manipulated by fear, governed by people who rely on their fear to advance agendas having nothing to do with safety.
In the post below, which I wrote yesterday, I was making fun of certain right wingers for being stupid. I knew was I was doing – I was poking them with a stick. Yesterday afternoon as I drove to the store, a caller on talk radio hit on an excellent point. Right wingers, he said, are not stupid. That’s not why they behave the way they do, or believe what they believe. They are afraid. Their minds are polluted by fear, and it distorts thought processes. It makes the world a muddled and scary place full of demons and bad guys. It makes people defensive and accusatory. It allows them to call on Hitler to help them demonize every politician they do not like.
I lived in that neighborhood. I grew up during the Cold War. I was manipulated, my thought processes were muddled. People who were not afraid, like George McGovern, scared me. People who exploited my fears, like Richard Nixon, were my ideals.
So I invite anyone on the right wing who reads this to experience what I did, to feel the weight of the world lifted from your backs. There are no new Hitlers, socialism is not scary, national health care works everywhere it is tried, illegal immigrants are responding to rational economic impulses (which need to be addressed), there are no terrorists of any note, you are safe when you fly, and most of all, there is no conspiracy of liberalism to enslave you. Life is a beautiful thing when you just cast your fate to the wind, drop the load from your shoulders, and do what Atlas did – shrug.
P.S. Osama bin Laden, far from hiding in the hills of Pakistan, most likely suffered an ignominious death, probably in late 2001 and surrounded by a few of his fellows of no note. He spirit lives on in films, where he has gotten noticeably younger.
Piece of Mindful 
Black uprising in Billings, Mark?
In the early seventies there was what, three black families?
I remember one winning Miss Broncette, at Senior in 73. Somehow I don’t see her, or her family, burning down the south side.
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I was trying to understand the fear that grips you guys so much, and realized I used to be part of it.
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Not too long after I realized they posed no threat, the Soviet Union collapsed.
Kreskin!
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Yeah – I realized then that it had all been an elaborate rouge to fool me alone.
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How long before we finally see Wall Street and K Street as our greatest threat?
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I don’t know how old you are, and so don’t know how you fall on my general scale: anyone who was afraid of the Soviet Union after the later of (a) their 25th birthday or (b) 1977 has shown himself or herself to be, in my opinion, so impaired in judgment, that no further attention need be paid to the person’s opinion on any security issue. At least, that’s been my general policy — I think maybe I ought to allow for redemption in cases like yours . . .
(My favorite current example of people of this mindset are the security people who refuse to allow one USDOJ lawyer to send another USDOJ lawyer an email containing classified information, such as what one Guantanamo prisoner says about another Guantanamo prisoner. Are these security professionals really afraid that Al Qaeda can intercept emails within USDOJ? If so, do you really want to defer to their judgment about risks to national security? Or any other topic?)
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Who are you, Charley Carp? As Joseph Epstein said of Alexis de Tocqueville, ” The older one gets, the more it becomes clear that it is a great mistake not to have been brilliant when very young,” as was Alexis. I will always hold it as a matter of personal pride that I overcame my political and religious upbringing. That I did so at age 38 instead of 25 … my bad.
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As I say, I should lighten up. I’m not now, nor have I ever been brilliant.
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Sorry – that wasn’t meant to be heavy. Your words just reminded me of that description of Alexis, and my own thoughts when I read it – yes, how wise it is to be smart when we are young. I was not.
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(I presume that ‘who are you” is rhetorical. If not, drop me a line).
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It is so rare to run into to anyone who understands the underlying premise of the Cold War that my reaction was “Who are you, masked man?”
I’d like to hear more from you. Might even drop you a line. You are in Montana?
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Msla. Got here as you were leaving MT.
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Egad. Two self parodying leftist getting together. What do you guys do — give each other estrogen shots?
I’m not afraid. In the months in years after that day, I grew more liberal, and eventually eschewed conservatism and all right wing thought. It’s a natural progression. Absent fear, the mind is clearer, the world safer, people less threatening. Liberal and progressive politics and absence of fear go hand-in-hand.
This sounds like a testimonial given at the Church of Gaia after a reading from the Book of Chomsky and the Book of Gore. “Next we will hear from brother T., who once was lost in the wilderness of hate and narrow mindedness, but the spirit of Liberalism came upon him and opened his eyes!”
absent fear
Fear can be useful. Maybe if we feared Muhammad Atta and what he stands for a little more we would have less trauma to work through. It seems to me you swapped your fear of communism for a fear of the US military-industrial complex with an emphasis on CEOs of health insurance companies.
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If you don’t understand the role of fear in politics, you don’t understand politics. All of American foreign policy, 1951 to 1990, was a fear scam. Then we had a brief interlude where the great enemy was not to be found. Where once we had commies, we now had terrists, and you and your fellow nimbists are trembling under the bed again wetting your pants. All is right with the world.
I don’t fear things, I simply understand them better than I did. I don’t fear insurance companies, I merely despise them. The military has guns and patriots -maybe I should be afraid, but I live under the radar, so I suffer from the illusion of safety. Ain’t no one out to get me.
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I’m not sure how the mechanism of more fear = less trauma would actually work. Seems like more fear would lead to more trauma. Rather than fear, maybe diligence is the better answer.
Estrogen shots — you’re quite the humorist.
Always funny to see the advocates of bedwettery of one stripe or another accusing the people who aren’t afraid of (a) cowardice or (b) weakness.
Who’s “weak-kneed” — the quote a recent MSM op-ed — the guy who wants to keep some poor schmoe locked up forever no matter what the evidence, or the guy who says we should have the courage to stand up for our values, and follow our legal tradition wherever it leads?
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One “fears” getting hit by a car when they cross the street. That doesn’t mean they cower under the bed, wetting their pants. One takes measures to reduce the threat to a manageable level. Prudence and caution would dictate that we quit giving flying lessons to Muhammad Atta. Walking naked into the storm does not denote bravery.
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