In a culture where knowing the nickname of the boyfriend
of the housekeeper on Keeping Up with the Kardashians is considered current
affairs, we have become a nation of sheeple with the same sense of history as a
cat. I say that not just because I am old, though I am, but because we are.
Forty years ago, today, Richard M. Nixon, re-elected by
one of the largest pluralities in the history of Presidential elections, less
than two years earlier, resigned the office of the Presidency before he was
impeached and removed from office by Congress.
Here in the digital era, it may seem odd that so much
could have been made of tape recordings, but as what had been on the miles
of tape Nixon had secretly recorded in his own office started to become
known, Nixon’s defenders started to bolt for the exits.
I had just concluded my senior year at Rutgers College or
Rutgers University as Nixon was boarding Marine One, the Presidential
helicopter at the White House. He turned to face a small coterie of
well-wishers on the White House lawn as he reached the top step of the ladder
to the chopper and offered his final V for Victory wave as a farewell. Stepping
into the ‘vertical transport device’ he flew off.
A couple of Sundays ago, one of the local newspapers
shared a long conversation it had had with former Senator (and former CT
Governor) Lowell
Weicker, the sole surviving member of the Senate Watergate committee, on
the impact and import on the lives and times of those in DC then, and now, of
some truly historical moments.
As someone who watched in fascination hour upon hour of
the televised hearings, I found the Weicker interview fascinating perhaps as
much for the memories of mine it summoned as well as for the dark corners and
recesses of whispered events it illuminated. I’d hope you’d find the time to
read it.
I may have intended that last line sardonically as we
seem to have no time to read anything anymore. Which may be why I find this so
helpful and yet so sad that we would need it. With all due respect to Theodore
Dreiser, for my now-grey-and-often-gone generation, RMN (as Nixon called
himself) was our American Tragedy.
Four decades later, when national voter turnout hovers at
40%, when more people know the names of the judges on America’s Got Talent than
on the US Supreme Court and a complacent and compliant corporate media offers its glassy-eyed and
slack-jawed “consumers” pre-packaged, cross-platform pablum that does little to
disturb the zombie-like trance with which so many somnambulate while vested
interests on both sides of the aisle malign one another and manipulate those in
the middle in a continuing effort to circumvent the Constitution and
circumscribe our personal liberties, it’s like Nixon never happened.
“The common sense I sometimes lack has opened up a
seismic crack. We've fallen in and I can't pull back and
I guess we'll have to stay.” Especially since I fear we’ve lost our way and
the reason why we set off on the journey in the first place.
-bill kenny
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