Aware
I guess you could say I became politically “aware” in the summer of 1968. I was always interested in politics; at four I was wearing a 1960 “Kennedy” button. We went to see President Johnson speak in 1967, and I was shocked at the black turtle-necked protestors from Antioch College who dared to interrupt him. And Dad introduced us to Vice President Humphrey on the tarmac at the Dayton Airport. But in August of 1968, I broke my arm.
The front wheel came off my bike in mid-pedal, and the bike flipped completely over on top of me. I knew, right at that second, my right wrist was broken – bent in a direction I hadn’t seen before. Dad took me to the orthopedic: they had me hold a bar on the wall with my right hand and hang my elbow down from it. I remember the nurse saying “I hate this sound”, and had just enough time to wonder what she meant. Then the doctor grabbed my arm and set the bone – the snap – and the pain. It was the 1960’s, no need for painkillers, just snap, pop, and it was in place.
I didn’t even have time to try out my new Second Class Scout profanity.
Whole World Watching
They casted my arm, elbow locked at ninety degrees, and sent me home with orders to keep it elevated for a week. I missed the Summer League Swim Meet, where I was scheduled to “clean up” at the top of the twelve year-old age group. All I could do was sit on the family room couch, my arm on top of my painted Boy Scout beer box (where I kept clothes at Scout Camp), and watch TV. It was the week of the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Back then it was gavel to gavel coverage, twenty-four hours of riots and disorder and verbal fights on the floor of the convention. The Democratic Party was without President Johnson, Bobby Kennedy shot dead in a Los Angeles hotel hallway, and a chasm between the Johnson war supporters, the Kennedy/McCarthy anti-war Democrats, and the students in the streets of Chicago chanting “The whole world is watching”.
Math Class
Humphrey got the nomination, but was never able to unite the party. Republican Richard Nixon promised a quick peace settlement in Vietnam, but we all knew he was lying (it wasn’t until five years later, that a deal was actually reached). What we didn’t know was that his campaign was actively interfering with the ongoing peace talks in Paris. They didn’t want an October “surprise” that might tip the election in Humphrey’s favor.
It was a close election on the first Tuesday of November in 1968. It wasn’t until the middle of the next day that the votes were finalized enough to declare a winner. I was sitting in Mr. Schnapp’s 7th grade math class at Van Buren Junior High School in Kettering, Ohio, when the principal made the announcement: Richard Nixon won. It seemed like the whole school cheered: Kettering was a very Republican suburb at the time. I put my head down on my desk, near tears. How could America survive four years of Richard Nixon, four years of division, four more years of war?
Close to 2 million Vietnamese died after Nixon won office, and over 58,000 Americans. Elections have consequences.
Faith
That was the first Presidential election that shook my faith in American decision making. The second was twelve years later, when a glib actor turned Governor of California won an overwhelming victory over my former boss, Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan used uplifting oratory, describing the United States as a “…Shining city on a hill”. But his real agenda was to turn America over to private industry. He sacked the air traffic controllers, he “freed education” from Federal interference by carving $10 billion out of the Federal funding, he ignored the AIDS epidemic because it was a “gay disease”.
The third faith-shaking election for me was in 2000, when George W Bush won the Presidency by one vote (the Supreme Court ruled in his favor five Republican Justices to Four Democrats). It seemed to me the “will of the people” didn’t matter anymore, it was simply who could more effectively pull the levers of power. It didn’t hurt Bush that his brother was the Governor of Florida, the state in question.
On September 11th, 2001, I “united” under George Bush. But a few years later, after the atrocities at Abu Gharib and the private profit-taking in the Iraq war and the Defense Department, my “first impression” of Bush was still the most accurate.
Head Down
And last night, I came face to face with the fourth time that my belief in America is shaken. Yes, I know the 2024 election results have been well known for months. But last night I watched President Biden’s “exit interview” with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. And right after, the ad came on about “gavel to gavel” Inauguration Day coverage on Monday. And I realized, that now, at my advance age of sixty-eight, I am faced with four years of Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi, of Elon Musk and Steven Miller, of inhumanity at the border, and watching the rich get richer, especially if the rich is named Trump.
Four years to a twelve year-old seemed like forever, a full third of a life. But four years now (a nineteenth of my life) stills seems like forever; four years of “Making America Backward Again”. At the end, if 2028 is the end; how much will we have to do to get America back on the “The Arc of the Moral Universe bending towards justice”.
Can’t Watch
I don’t hate America. But I hate the narrow decision that puts these oligarchs in control of our Nation. President Biden last night, characterized his whole political career as fighting against “bullies”, like the those that bullied a scrawny stuttering kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania. A slim margin of Americans have put the “bullies” in control now: to bully the migrants and minorities, the disabled and the disenfranchised, the queer and the quiet. That’s the America of Donald Trump, now back for a second, more experienced, and more vindictive term in office.
I don’t hate America. But it’s hard today to see the good, when we stand on the cusp of this awful period of darkness. I want to go back to Mr. Schnapp’s math class, and put my head down on the desk.
I won’t write about this inauguration; I can’t watch it.
