Believe Me, It’s Been Going Downhill for Awhile

On September 8, 1974, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while president of the United States.  I remember when I first heard the news.  A friend and I had just taken our seats in a lecture hall at the University of Maryland’s main campus in College Park, MD.  The class usually began with a series of announcements from the professor—guest speakers, upcoming tests, book purchases and so on.  That day, the only announcement was that Ford had just pardoned Nixon.  A murmur went through the overflowing lecture hall.  Two hundred students expressed their anger and cynical acceptance.  Those who supported Nixon were either non-existent or very quiet.  As the class continued, whispers about a protest on the green began to circulate.  Maybe they reached the podium, because the professor let class out half an hour early.  A couple dozen of us headed to the mall. There was little going on.  Some people sneaking hits of weed in the bushes and raised voices disparaging the pardon.  People’s cynicism was magnified.  The overwhelming sentiment was confirmed—the powerful always get away with their crimes.  I had to work that evening, so I headed to the IHOP, where I cooked over a grill forty or more hours a week.  Lots of pork products, eggs and pancakes.  Short stacks, if you know what I mean.

That same month the University of Maryland student newspaper had a strange letter regarding a rumor that the university was going to pay the former Israeli military “hero” Moshe Dayan lots of money to speak at the college.  Yes, the eye patch-wearing member of the zionist terror group Haganah was invited to tell Israeli lies for a hefty sum.  I don’t recall whether or not he did come to the campus.  I do remember that a table I was sitting at dispensing left-wing newspapers and books was overturned by a couple of members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL)  because some of the books we had supported the Palestinian Liberation Organization.  Back then, the PLO was a predominantly socialist and communist organization opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.  Washington and Tel Aviv wanted it destroyed as much as they want today’s Palestinian resistance destroyed.  Indeed, it’s easily argued that the destruction of the mostly secular PLO informed the rise of the religiously inspired resistance of Hamas and other such groups.  The JDL was a group founded by the racist, supremacist New York rabbi Meir Kahane.  Its attacks on Soviet installations and cultural events, Black organizations and organizers, and US leftist groups, together with anti-socialist rhetoric, indicated its essential fascism.  The group was illegal in Israel.  Nowadays, individuals who consider Kahane a hero and inspiration are part of the Israeli government.  The JDL’s hate-filled politics are part of the mainstream in Israel. Similarly, although the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had the JDL on its watchlist for years, many of the ADL’s current positions are distressingly similar to some of Kahane’s numerous statements back in the day.  This is especially true in regard to the movement against Israel’s apartheid regime. Although many zionists in the United States probably never heard of Kahane, too many of their sentiments come straight out of his philosophy.

Meanwhile, Richard Nixon drowned his sorrows in San Clemente, just up the interstate from the neon glow of the San Onofre nuclear power plant.  His buddy Elvis performed at the university’s basketball arena.  A regular hunk of burning love. On May 11, 1975, the Vietnamese liberation forces took Saigon and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.  Lots of us celebrated. A few days later, Nixon’s replacement, Gerald Ford, ordered an attack on Kampuchea after a US Navy ship was temporarily captured by the Khmer Rouge.  The Khmer Rouge, who were in control of Cambodia thanks in part to Washington’s relentless bombing of the country since 1969 and its replacement of the monarchy with a CIA fascist named Lon Nol, turned back to its killing fields. A few weeks earlier, Marine recruiters set up shop in front of the University of Maryland student union only to be met with a fairly large blockade of their table by students, staff and some faculty.  Right-wing students attacked those of us who encircled the table several rows deep, attempting to break through by pushing people to the ground and punching a few.  Mostly, these big men went after the smallest women.  Campus police eventually intervened and the Marines went inside the Union behind a closed door.  A couple of protesters were able to get into the room and disrupted the recruiting procedures there.  They got arrested.  We took over the office of a university administrator and they released the two arrestees.

Hundreds of students protested cuts to the university staff over the academic year. Faculty in the Women’s Studies and Black Studies departments were the first on the chopping block.  Unionized staff joined us students.  We rallied a few times, held pickets and interrupted classes to get people’s attention.  It didn’t matter.  The next fall we would disrupt a meeting of the Regents while they voted to go ahead with the cuts. Higher education was looking to the future they had decided on and those that ran it were already working on how to cash in.  Neoliberalism was just around the corner and the foundation was being built much quicker than we could tear it down.  Jimmy Carter was down home talking to the young people and hanging out with the Allman Brothers while their manager distributed cocaine.  Gerald Ford didn’t really have a chance in the upcoming election.  His boys talked about getting high in the White House. Something was happening, but it wasn’t what it seemed like, Mr. Jones.  At least nobody in power was making abortion illegal again.

After Carter got elected and began privatizing public services under the guise of reform and retreating somewhat on his amnesty for draft resisters proposal, some of us saw our fears confirmed; the assimilation of the counterculture into the mainstream meant the purging of the politics many of us considered to be part of that culture. There were lots of corpses littering the ground of SE Asia.  Israel was expanding its illegal occupation.  Anti-colonial wars in Africa raged.  Nixon and his fascists almost took down the US government and even though they failed, they made it even worse than it already was.  Marijuana was completely illegal and friends were getting put away for months and even years for possession.

The Democrats were retreating from their McGovern moment and the corporate party leadership was taking the party back while the neocons—who were led by Democrat Henry Scoop Jackson, the senator from Boeing—were working on making war reasonable again.  It would take them a while.  The GOP was watching the Birchers and other right-wing clowns start to groom Reagan for the White House. The lines were being redrawn and the right wing in both parties was doing the drawing.

I still wonder how many of the people I used to get high with in my youth later voted for Ronald Reagan, who once called for a bloodbath of young people on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and sent in lots of cops to facilitate it.  Likewise, I wonder how many, if any, regret those votes.  After all, the Reagan years are a big reason why the two current mainstream candidates include a raving fascist and a Ronald Reagan in Democrat drag.  Speaking of which, I wonder how many of those who I used to drink and get high with voted for Trump.  Or think Ralph Nader lost the 2000 election for Al Gore and Jill Stein could ruin it for Kamala Harris.

We’re told electoral politics matter in the United States, but the results of each election I live through make me wonder as to the veracity of that truism.  I guess they matter for certain classes and sectors of the US population.  For me, a worker now mostly retired, the only way they matter is how much and in what ways I will be getting shit upon after the polls are closed.  That and how they’ll affect women and children, especially those who don’t have white skin or money.  Some things never seem to change.

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