Not exactly "morning in America"

("the hill" image)

It is 1:47 a.m. as I begin writing first draft of this post. Just another in a pretty long stream of obscure  posts that likely do not find much daylight. Was going to try to put aside politics some. But it is the morning after the fabled Iowa caucuses. 

Somehow it seemed different when Jimmy Carter surprised in Iowa. Jimmy Carter! Mention of whom dates me most surely. But didn't we have a different America then? So we've changed. 

We might really sit back and try to think about the massive change in our U.S. culture. Shall we feel discouraged? Any sea change in our culture is not completely bad. It probably reflects progress in a number of ways, as it's a response to tech innovation all of which is designed to build efficiency and convenience. Which can only be a good thing, right? I guess not entirely. 

America began turning to Jimmy Carter because we wanted a definite person of character. And we even seemed to prioritize that over capability when in office. America had been chagrined by Richard Nixon. Merely stating the obvious there? It was so easy to identify Nixon's shortcomings at the end. And here's the deal: Americans made the sensible deduction based on that. We had control of our proper faculties. We had moral compass. 

We believed what the mainstream news media was telling us about Nixon. Nixon had been vice president for eight long years under the most conventional president "Ike" Eisenhower. Eisenhower helped lead the Allies to victory over the hellish Nazi regime, right? Moral compass of our nation was 100 percent on course. We had our wits about us, even though we were pulled into the biggest hell imaginable of WWII. We don't hear enough about how sad it was that war became inevitable. We hear about the grand nature of our sacrifices. Just attend a Memorial Day program. 

We don't get to hear from any of the countless souls who lost their lives at a young age. Let's say there's a "bias" there. 

We hear a lot about "bias" today. Consider it a buzzword. As in, how we have "the fake news media." The huge Republican leader of today railed about "fake news" in 2016. And he had so many believers. I remember when talk of this kind was marginalized in America. It's not so terrible that we hear it here and there. I came to expect it from the fringes. And I was always willing to consider it some. Frankly I think we ignore conspiracy theories at our own peril. They can carry weight. But as with anything else, they can get way carried away. And if they get carried away, it is only because a big chunk of America is receptive. 

By contrast with today, Americans had a decent sense about things in the mid-1970s. We basically believed the revelations about the shortcomings of Nixon. My generation thought Nixon was fundamentally bad. It is never pleasant to have such thoughts. 

Could you picture Nixon or those around him shouting into a microphone "fake news!?" (Well, we did hear "nattering nabobs of negativism." Huh?)

 

What if?

What if we had learned that Nixon had sex with a porn star and then paid her off to try to keep it quiet? Can you imagine the reverberations? Even the self-styled "conservatives" would have been open-mouthed and said it's time to move on, quickly in fact. And they would show profound embarrassment. 

There was a moral compass in America. Yes, gays were still in the closet. Moral people should never countenance such a thing. So you might say we had a moral compass in other ways. Strange. But human beings can be strange. 

 

Legal system on precipice?

Consider this also: If Nixon had had a dizzying amount of legal proceedings tightening the vise on him, as we are seeing at present, well my goodness, people would have reacted with a sense of respect for our legal system. People would have said we should get out of the way of our cherished legal system. Today we see leading Republican Marco Rubio, a lawyer, saying he has lost faith in the jury system. Lost faith in the jury system? Because, Trump might be judged somewhere where we happen to find a high percentage of so-called "Trump haters?" 

Well, the cauldron of politics often includes "hate." It's our free and fair political system in which the pols often say "politics ain't beanbag." So are we supposed to dispose of our legal system norms just because people in certain places have developed a high degree of skepticism about the current Republican leader in the U.S.? We used to respect our foundational U.S. systems. It applied to justice, ethics and fair play. It was a given. 

Jimmy Carter (wiki image)

What Nixon did was small potatoes compared to our current GOP leader. But America had "grown weary of Watergate," made fundamental conclusions about Nixon's character and came forward to approve of this fundamentally good man Jimmy Carter. It was a statement of values by the American people who were willing to live with a little "incompetence." Such as - we can say with a smile - Carter wanting to manage the White House tennis courts on his own. 

Such anecdotes are surely benign. But there is very little benign about the U.S. Republican leader at present who is storming back toward the White House. Here I am trying to issue a warning about it once again, in the middle of the night after the Iowa caucuses. I went to bed early as is my habit, thus I'm not tired when perusing headlines when most of the world around me is sound asleep. So peaceful, tranquil. It was once common for people to get up in the middle of night for an hour or two, if you go back to the days before electric lights. I have been fond of rediscovering the custom. 

I can peruse all the headlines about Donald Trump and his ridiculous comments, and retain a calm state of mind. I alone cannot do anything about this. I have lost friends because of the Trump phenomenon. They just drift away from me. They make statements about my alleged unreasonableness, like how I took seriously the Trump ties with Putin and Russia, was disturbed by them. I was supposed to dismiss the estimable Robert Mueller as borderline senile, when in fact his hands were tied. 

And now we hear proclamations all over the AM Radio dial about how our current U.S. president, elected totally legitimately, is hopelessly senile. And it gets woven into our U.S. fabric. So as an alternative to our allegedly senile and hopeless U.S. president, we are supposed to open the door for Trump again. That's what the sea of opportunistic commentators are telling us. 

 

The consequences

Four more years of power for Donald Trump to do heaven knows how much damage to our nation. He is back to talking "repealing Obamacare" after the program has become a bedrock of insurance for so many, to be replaced by what? Here Republicans just start doing their usual hemming and hawing. No longer do they really get called out by the news media. Not like in "the old days" when America actually decided on a man like Carter. 

Nikki Haley (axios)

It isn't enough to say we need our old moral compass established again. It is too late for that. Would be wonderful to have a woman president. Nikki Haley? Well, does she support women's reproductive health rights? You know the answer to that. 

Haley thinks we are still playing by some of the old rules in America, and that we can in the end make decisions based on people's character at least in part. What a rude awakening Haley has at this time, morning in America. Morning in America? Where have we heard that before? I really wish it was "morning in America." 

Do you suppose Republicans believe that Haley's "blood is poisoned?" Why am I even having to share that question? Elon Musk is a racist. Charlie Kirk is a racist. They stay afloat with their reputations in the media. Not how it would have been in the 1970s.

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