Posted on 11/19/2023 3:59:10 AM PST by Chad C. Mulligan
Just in case you were thinking of giving it a try, be warned: Nobody will be able to write a competent history of 20th-century American politics without absorbing the themes and revelations in the new book by Luke Nichter, The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968. A history professor at Chapman University and the biographer of Henry Cabot Lodge, among others, Nichter is widely understood and rightly admired as a tireless researcher—though "tireless" doesn’t quite cover it: In his quest to transcribe most of the hopelessly garbled and obscure audio tapes left behind by Richard Nixon after his presidency, Nichter eventually lost most of his hearing in one ear. It’s not often that we history buffs get our own martyr.
And now Nichter rewinds, so to speak, to the year that gave us the Nixon presidency. For those generations unlucky enough to succeed the baby boomers, the year 1968 must already linger as a grating cliché. Yes, the pop music was often sublime, and many of the movies were fresh and ingenious, and even American TV showed signs of crawling out from its mewling infancy into something less embarrassing. The cataclysms of 1968—assassinations, campus riots, inner cities in flames—are so familiar they don’t need to be rehearsed.
Nichter directs our attention elsewhere. His argument is that the year’s most enduring significance lies in the presidential election, as the moment when the culture wars emerged in the contours they maintain to this day, gripping us all in a kind of stranglehold.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
When the Marxist radicals started their takeover of the Democratic Party.
As we started expanding in the Pacfic, guarding both oceans required the help of The Royal Navy, which is why we became “Anglophile”.
“But among those who have shot and been shot at, and who have lost bothers in arms, the attitude toward war is much more reserved.”
Gotta agree with that one. That’s a prime reason I believe the Uke war is a European war and we have zero business paying for it or depleting our military stockpiles for it. Our attention should be focused on the real enemy, the one that has their tentacles deeply embedded into the whole country, and that enemy is Red China.
The average war monger has never been shot at. The target range hero with the perfect gun and perfect score would run like a scared rabbit if that target shot back. The average Joe’s concept of war comes from movies and games. It’s so easy to support something you know nothing about.
“You got just four paragraphs in, and then went off on a polemic of your own based on one offhand comment by the reviewer.”
Not exactly, I was around at that time, and before, and active in the political dealings of the time. I was in early college as a high school student in the 60’s and was exposed to the jargon of the day and how it was being misrepresented. In many cases it was educators that were doing the deed and using a system designed for it. So I was in the “learning atmosphere” and I was in ‘Nam in the late 60’s sent home on my back.
The education and not informing of people to include midrange kids, which I feel this book is aimed at, was no less disingenuous than it was then. The only difference is that it is not near as stealthy but is far more outreaching. And lies become the truth if they are pushed enough. (See Alinsky)
We are no longer a growing nation. We are losing ground with the acceptance of a lower standard than we had, and the co joining of leaders that are not concerned with our well being anymore, just their power and paycheck. They got theirs and the did it walking right over the backs of the people they swore to act in the best interest of. They lied!
I worked military and government for over half my life and have seen the transition from the people to the selected. And it was not the right direction to go. We’ve have transitioned from a democracy to an anarchy of the elite as they prefer to be considered ignoring the people and doing basically what they want to do following laws they created or even common sense on many occasions. We are headed to the stone age, not the future.
We have more wars, less healing, more brutality and violence, more hatred and lack of understanding. We have less communication, less interaction of ideas and more separation based upon appearance than differences. We celebrate the differences rather than likenesses that can be built upon while we strike out at those that don’t share our personal outlook closing the door to compromise or even determination of change.
And we have people that bury their heads in the sand or herd themselves into the corral and go bah letting it happen and thinking everything is good because it hasn’t hurt them enough yet. The evil is praised (hamas), the improvement is discouraged, and the lines of communication are closed. I see that as coming to nothing and retreating to worse. And that reviewer is not alone. There are armies of them out there.
wy69
“You got just four paragraphs in, and then went off on a polemic of your own based on one offhand comment by the reviewer.”
Not exactly, I was around at that time, and before, and active in the political dealings of the time. I was in early college as a high school student in the 60’s and was exposed to the jargon of the day and how it was being misrepresented. In many cases it was educators that were doing the deed and using a system designed for it. So I was in the “learning atmosphere” and I was in ‘Nam in the late 60’s sent home on my back.
The education and not informing of people to include midrange kids, which I feel this book is aimed at, was no less disingenuous than it was then. The only difference is that it is not near as stealthy but is far more outreaching. And lies become the truth if they are pushed enough. (See Alinsky)
We are no longer a growing nation. We are losing ground with the acceptance of a lower standard than we had, and the co joining of leaders that are not concerned with our well being anymore, just their power and paycheck. They got theirs and the did it walking right over the backs of the people they swore to act in the best interest of. They lied!
I worked military and government for over half my life and have seen the transition from the people to the selected. And it was not the right direction to go. We’ve have transitioned from a democracy to an anarchy of the elite as they prefer to be considered ignoring the people and doing basically what they want to do following laws they created or even common sense on many occasions. We are headed to the stone age, not the future.
We have more wars, less healing, more brutality and violence, more hatred and lack of understanding. We have less communication, less interaction of ideas and more separation based upon appearance than differences. We celebrate the differences rather than likenesses that can be built upon while we strike out at those that don’t share our personal outlook closing the door to compromise or even determination of change.
And we have people that bury their heads in the sand or herd themselves into the corral and go bah letting it happen and thinking everything is good because it hasn’t hurt them enough yet. The evil is praised (hamas), the improvement is discouraged, and the lines of communication are closed. I see that as coming to nothing and retreating to worse. And that reviewer is not alone. There are armies of them out there.
wy69
“”””Our attention should be focused on the real enemy, the one that has their tentacles deeply embedded into the whole country, and that enemy is Red China.”””””
War mongers support the Russian war, the invasion.
We and most of NATO and our Pacific allies are rebuilding our military readiness and increasing weapons factories and manufacturing and have reevaluated the amounts of some weapon items and ammo we should be making and stockpiling.
Japan, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, and others are all reacting to what they are learning from Russia’s war.
We are much better off in our position against Red China than we were 22 months ago and we can thank the Russian war-mongers for launching the biggest European war since WWII for waking up the West and the Pacific.
I think some of these observations are valid; but the idea of “the myth of RFK inevitability” is spurious. IF I recall, there were still remnants of the national conventions’ smoke-filled rooms, where actual deals were brokered between several ballots, or canvassings, among the delegates and wheeler-dealers. I believe the “Clean-Gene” McCarthy delegates were swerving en masse toward RFK when he was killed. So, had he lived, the supposed 1200 delegates HHH “had in the bag” could and would easily found their way out of the holes in the bag via the onslaught of “Dump the Hump” sentiment, and RFK would’ve emerged the nominee.
So, I say, demythologize on that point of his premise, at least.
>>As we started expanding in the Pacfic,
I guess the expansion is American business and missionary interests in China, which resulted in promulgation of the Open Door Policy in 1900, American acquisition of the Philippines in 1898 after the Spanish American War, and American annexation of Hawaii in 1998.
To some extent, Britian was still a competitor of the US until WW I, so I’m not sure that the need for naval cooperation was a big motivation for Anglophiles.
I think that it was more a matter of British “soft power” influence over the WASP elite who always felt threatened by the numbers of other European ethnic groups such as Germans, Irish, Poles, Scandinavians, Italians, and various west Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Actual Englishmen were a minority by WW I. And those categorized as English included Irish and Scots who had emigrated from England.
“there’s still too many “Freepers” here who hate America and cheer for Russia and China”
those “Freepers” are pretty clearly paid trolls of one stripe or another ... they eventually go away when their cause has ended and their pay has stopped ...
That’s how I remember it.
Could be I remember it wrong. I was pretty young.
The Deep State had some problems—and 1968 is when they started working them in earnest.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
1963.
Sixty years ago this Wednesday.
The Deep State toadies call them “guard-rails of democracy”...
;-)
“When the Marxist radicals started their takeover of the Democratic Party.”
When conservative states became permanently “Red”!
Exactly.
Interesting.
1968 was also the last year a presidential candidate was selected by a party who did not go through the primary process.
Hubert Humphrey.
I will also say this. While 1968 was a tumultuous and pivotal year in American politics and in our culture at home and abroad... 1968 was a Sunday School picnic compared to the shitstorm 2020 was.
yeah, there might be something to this "learning from history"
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