Deja Vu: We have been here before.
This feels like the summer of 1973, amid the Watergate hearings.
Young readers may have a pang of regret, not to have been young and alive back in the hippy-counterculture days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when young people were excited amid a cultural revolution, and then watching the slow train wreck of the Nixon administration.
Colleges were in uproar, the single-sex ones were going co-ed, women were entering the professions, clothes and hair were wild signals, and we young people thought we had discovered sex and drugs.
I was there. I also know the feeling of being in an era of change, and looking back at the same time.
People in the 1960s read Earnest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald and wondered about the lost generation. Maybe people were more alive back in the 1920s in Paris, bemoaning the Great War while drinking coffee and alcohol in Parisian bars, smoking cigarets, writing novels or getting the subject matter for them. Their generation had a name: the lost generation. They were part of a moment in time.
Just like the counterculture/Watergate generation.
Youth in the 1960s had our own revolution to console us, even amid our own great tragedy to bemoan, the political defeat of George McGovern by Nixon. There was a kind of happy ending as we watched the Watergate death spiral of that great symbol of evil, the man who had campaigned and won by attacking us with the slogan of opposition to "Acid, Amnesty, Abortion."
Now young people have hearings of their own, and their own moment. This is the Trump era. It may not be ending, but it is a moment of crisis in it. Democrats have the House and Trump is under a microscope.
Michael Cohen is a version of John Dean, a man on stage, testifying. Like Dean, Cohen knows some things, but not enough of the right things to be the stake in Trump's heart. Haldeman and Erlichman and the Oval Office tapes knew the truth. Dean--and Cohen-- only knew that an ugly truth was out there, but did not have the documentary proof of it.
But there is a difference worth noting, and it speaks badly for the Republic. In 1973 the Republican senators who represented the public face of the GOP were desperate to look like seekers of the truth. They had standards for Nixon, but were unclear that Nixon had flouted them. They wanted it proven, not suspected.
"What did Nixon know and when did he know it." Every person over the age of sixty five knows that
phrase. It was a question of fact, questioning whether Nixon had been criminal. Whether he was
wrong, and if it was wrong then it was indefensible.
phrase. It was a question of fact, questioning whether Nixon had been criminal. Whether he was
wrong, and if it was wrong then it was indefensible.
It is different now.
Now GOP House members, the current face of Republicans in these hearings, are defending their president--as is predictable--but not by defending Trump’s behavior. They know his actions are wrong, that he has financial crimes, election crimes, open lies about his relations to Russian money and political influence and to Wiki-leaks. The Republican purpose is to attack the messenger. That is all that is relevant. They are doing a tribal defense of their man. Trump against a bad guy. Not what did Trump do.
They are doing exactly what Michael Cohen admitted he did and part of what he is going to prison for: he defended his client, Donald Trump, when Trump was wrong and his actions indefensible. Cohen warned Republicans that they would regret this.
Americans may need to reflect that this is the new reality for America, that the standard isn't the truth. It is the tribe. Nixon only resigned because GOP leadership decided he was in fact guilty and indefensible and the electorate wouldn't stand for it, so they would vote for conviction. That won't happen now.
In the current political understanding, Trump didn't misbehave against laws and the Republic. He misbehaved against Democrats and liberals and progressives. He openly and proudly admits to trying to influence the investigation, and his allies openly talk about tampering with witnesses. They aren't admitting to obstructing justice, they are celebrating trying to defeat Democrats.
If the standard is tribal rather than legal, tribal defense of the man, period, is a good thing, not a bad thing. It speaks badly for the long term future of our Republic, but it is the new reality
Today's youth are getting their great moment of crisis and change. It is happening now.
3 comments:
Is it really "just like Watergate?"
I agree things are different now, but not that different. It seems to me that Democrats are quite a bit more active in opposing the regime than they were in '73, but the one similarity that sticks out for me is that it's the Press that's holding them accountable. Another big difference is that the overall quality of Republicans in Congress has deteriorated to a dangerous level. It's an open question as to whether any of them may be compromised by Russia, but it's certainly true they are compromised by decades of pandering to the most Regressive elements in our society which leaves them no choice but to defend the indefensible, something they do without compunction.
It's interesting to note that the cultural dichotomy between those whose college years sparked a Progressive value system and those whose conditioning held is in full display. Now years later we see the same "hip/straight" diegesis play out, with one big difference: pot is legal.
Nixon, for all his faults, was not a traitor. The jury is out, in that respect, for Trump. That, indeed, is one HUGE difference.
Further, there was no Fox News during Watergate, spewing out falsehoods and half truths. Some say that Fox is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. But perhaps the Republican Party is no more than a soap commercial for Fox News?
In"Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire" Kurt Andersen makes a good point.
While much was gained in the sixties in the area of civil rights and social progress, economic progressive deteriorated. Andersen attributes this to the underlying "mantra" of the "revolution:" "Do your own thing!" This extreme focus on individualism and individual perception brought us the "me generation" and the cult of personality.
Perhaps, after food, water and shelter, human beings most crave community and acceptance of their individual perceptions..."kindred spirits." The underlying theme of a shift from the conservatives fifties gave us the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Angela Davis but it also gave us Dick Cheney and Grover Norquist...all "doing their own thing." This, I submit, was the foundation of our current tribalism based not on the true patriotism, envisioned by our enlightened founders, rather on what has become acceptable, subjective self-indulgence.
Andy Seles
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