The Nixon Years

I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes
They're drinking and dancing, wearing bright colored clothes
All the young men with their young women looking so good
Well, I'd trade places with any of them
In a minute, if I could

Walking into the Avalon used bookstore in Madison, WI (just like Berkeley, but without Telegraph Ave's urine smell) I had a vague sense of the type of book I was looking for, and I experienced the pleasure of finding exactly the book I didn't know I was looking for, Observing the Nixon Years, by Jonathan Schell. The book compiles a selection of Schell's "Notes and Comments" columns in The New Yorker, from 1969-1975.

The eerie sense of familiarity you get from reading Schell's contemporary observations on the breakdown of democracy, the attempted shredding of the Constitution by the Executive branch, the abetting of the Legislative and sometimes Judicial branches, and the bitterness of a shrinking base of support for the war and the president as the Vietnam War death spiraled and Watergate ensued is head-shakingly frightening. I had a sense of the similarities, but had no idea just how closely aligned these two eras are and just how precisely the Bush/Cheney administration is matched with their authoritarian forebears, Nixon/Agnew. I'll have lots of excerpts I'm sure, but as I read about the latter days of 1969 and early months of 1970 sitting in the sunny WU campus overlooking Lake Mendota, I was struck by how differently the two eras are in at least one respect.

Recognizing of course, that the effect of Vietnam on U.S. society, with as many as half a million U.S. troops serving there at any one time and a far higher percent of GDP than our fiasco in Iraq occupies, must necessarily be larger than what we experience today (for us -- I'm sure the impact is nearly the same for Iraqis as it was for the Vietnamese). But still, on a university campus that was a hotbed of protest in the 1960s, there was no sign of the war, let alone dissent amongst the bright shiny things today. The lack of a draft can't entirely explain it. The coeds, I'm sure, are just as dairyland cute as they were back then -- the fact that I only read 25 pages in two hours had something to do with that, -- and there's still a few dirty fucking hippies around (but they're in their sixties now). But the atmosphere I'm guessing is much different that it was 42 years ago. There was no indication that these kids and their parents were even aware that we're embroiled in a conflagration half war around the world that is sapping our strength and our reputation, or that we're led by a government hell-bent on expanding the disaster into Iran.

Just like the rain that finally stopped here in the midwest, those of us enjoying the sunny day seem to have moved past the war as well.