"Nothing happens?" Meme of the '70s has redux

Michael Kinsley

I am old enough to remember when inflation was a top item in the news. This means I am also old enough to remember disco. Disco got a bad rap. That's because it took on a faddish quality or image. If it was a fad, it must have had pleasing qualities. The whole purpose of popular music is to be pleasant and lift our spirits. 

Disco is not revered in our popular culture history. It has gotten dragged down by a general perception of the '70s as a decade "when nothing happened." "Nothing happened" is part of a book title about the decade. One thing that most definitely happened was inflation. Michael Kinsley once wrote that inflation appears once every generation. With time we can forget our last bout with the phenomenon. Then it arises, it scares us, our leaders eventually tamp it down and we resolve to move on. 

Paul Volcker made us take our medicine after the 1970s bout. He advised us to be prepared for a recession. I remember going to the old First Federal Savings Bank, where Riverwood is now, and getting a certificate of deposit that paid 13 percent interest. I probably got more than one. It was a way to cope with inflation but in the end, the economic climate was deemed unsustainable. 

As a young adult I swore for an extended time that two worrisome things were never going to end: 1) the Vietnam war, and 2) inflation in the economy. They were such norms. The Vietnam war seemed like nothing but a tragedy and disaster. It was ingrained in my head. And yet the disaster just rolled on, as we tuned into the 5:30 p.m. evening news (no Internet platforms then) to hear the stats of the "good guy" dead vs. the "bad guy" dead. I believe the former was with the initials A.R.V.N. So I'd see the initials behind John Chancellor so often as he talked about the war. 

Young adults are impressionable. I was impressionable. So when my suspicions about the war were confirmed, finally - the war was a miserable pointless enterprise - it made me cynical and suspicious for basically the rest of my life. I adopted journalism which was the element that finally called out the government for its lies/propaganda. 

Juxtaposed with the war horror was inflation with rising prices. I guess I was troubled by the futility of recognizing these problems, because time just dragged and dragged with a hopelessly static feeling.

 

A repeated phenomenon

This relates to my thoughts now as I reflect on the four years of Trump. By that I mean: the liabilities associated with the man could have been easily understood all along. Time dragged. The commercial media droned on and on, putting all the evidence about Trump and his surrogates right in front of us. 

We cannot blame anyone for being suspicious of Trump's closeness to Russia. The suspicions were based on what we knew about what made Trump tick. It was obvious to me, and probably obvious in the minds of many TV journalists who spilled forth with issues and investigations as if it's just another day. Just like the seemingly endless morass of the Vietnam war. 

 

Alisyn Camerota

Breath of fresh air
Occasionally a newsperson lets an honest thought slip, I mean out of exasperation. An example is Alisyn Camerota of the morning CNN show. As the Russia investigation plodded, one morning she distilled the essence and said "nothing happens. They already have enough evidence on obstruction. They don't need to talk to Don McGahn." 

Ah, "nothing happens," just like in the decade of the 1970s. It is so painstaking for some of these people to distill the essence. 

(Alisyn, if you only knew how often people have to look up the spelling of your first name, or even your last.)

The Trump people would say CNN is "fake news." But they say that about any journalistic enterprise outside of Fox News or more recently, Newsmax and One America. 

Should we be suspicious of the argument that only one cable TV network can be trusted, that being Fox? I think Fox News is a long-time cesspool. I am beginning to resent that the local Federated Telephone of Morris even continues to present Fox. The people you see on the screen get frozen into certain issues, certain ways of seeing the world. They cannot budge. That is because their employer has given them a gravy train of success and professional security. They become programmed like Brian Kilmeade of Fox News. He is growing into a prime example because he once seemed more reasonable. 

Many of these people don't even want to come right out and assert how Trump egged-on a violent mob on Jan. 6.  They are now "shading" what happened. They allege flaws with Democrats. Yes and maybe the Pope is Catholic. 

This whole mindset is their haven. 

 

The high and the low of Matthews

Chris Matthews of MSNBC apparently succumbed to burnout. Think of all the years he was on TV focusing on government and politics. A former aide to Tip O'Neill. He once worked for the capitol police, an institution now very much in the news based on the attempted insurrection. Matthews lost some of the acuity in his judgment. From years in the fishbowl? From a sort of exasperation with how the cable news ecosystem had become ossified? 

Can't everyone just agree that Trump and his family and crowd have done terrible things and he needs to be removed from power? Mark Levin? He has become a recognizable name because of his Trump sycophancy. Would you expect him to withdraw from that now? Of course not. So the system drones on, greased by things like advertising money from the "My Pillow" guy. 

 

The aggrieved masses

Discontent is growing among the regular people in America. They are looking for answers and they look to the wrong places too much of the time. You can't fault them. They are busy with the day-to-day tasks of life: family, making money etc. Problem is, these people become easy "marks" for the right wingers. 

Inflation is scary because of how it could light a match to the current unrest. Inflation simply means that everything costs more. We have a Federal Reserve under a Republican regime that talks about wanting to see a little more inflation. I don't want to see prices go up, I'd like to see prices go down. This is top-of-mind for me because the other day at our Willie's Super Valu, I noticed the price of a standard-size Mountain Dew going up a dime, from $1.99 to $2.09. 

A single instance of inflation, like this, doesn't throw anyone. It's easy to handle in the short term. The problem of course is the accumulated pain. Back in disco times we might have kept up, as we were paid higher interest on our savings in the bank. Today? Haven't interest rates been basically fixed at zero for a long time? You can't depend on bank CDs for much if any help. And now we see prices going up at the grocery store. 

Federated Telephone continues giving us Fox News where we can hear the "conservative" screamers follow their script 24/7, as they decry "socialism" whenever Democrats manage to take a step forward. They throw out "diversion" issues after the obvious abomination of what happened at the U.S. capitol on Wednesday. Trump got those people fired up. Can't we just call a spade a spade?

Is this a complicated issue? (politico image)

So here we are on Monday morning and there's a disturbing status quo. Trump and his sycophants are still basically in place. I mean, Trump hasn't been removed, has he? I rest my case. It's just like cursing the news day after day during Vietnam. And yes the war "protests" got lots of attention too. But it was just a dreary status quo that went on and on. "Nothing happened." Eventually it ends because it had to. 

Remember the fall of Saigon? How will our current dystopian atmosphere end? I'm sure it will but at what cost? In the meantime, "nothing happens." 

Sally Kohn was practically shouting at the TV camera Friday as she wondered why impeachment proceedings couldn't begin immediately, rather than on Monday. As "Dr. Evil" of the movies would say, "let Daddy do his work." It's an old norm. Let these things plod on, because, well because it's the way it has to be. We go to bed, get up the next morning and hear all the "talking heads" going at it again. 

Ad nauseam. "Nothing happens." Maybe listening to disco would be therapeutic. How about the "Stars on 45" medley "Sugar Sugar." It's on YouTube. (What isn't?)

 

Addendum: "It Seemed Like Nothing Happened" was the book by Peter N. Carroll that examined the 1970s. It came out in 1990.

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com