Our Long National Nightmare: Thoughts of Now and of 1974
Back in 1974, Gerald Ford famously began a speech, “Our long national nightmare is over.”
Boy, he had no idea what “long” could be. Try seven and a half years (compared to Watergate’s less than two).
He had no idea how scary a “nightmare” could be. (Try not just a few illegalities but an all-out assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.)
I realize that there have been many nations whose nightmares have been longer and more nightmarish than ours has been these seven-plus years. We’ve still got it pretty good compared to people living in Idi Amin’s Uganda, or Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Russia, or countless other long national nightbares throughout the history of civilization.
But still, to put ourselves back into the mindset and gut feeling of Gerald Ford and of America in 1974 that led to his touching a chord in the nation by saying, “Our long national nightmare is over,” we can see how far we’ve fallen, how grotesque and frightening America has become being under the rule of this Bushite regime.
And it is not yet over.
And more than that, it is not clear how much of this nightmare will be over any time soon.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I enjoying hearing the perspectives of those who experienced the Watergate era and who can speak intelligently about now and then. Some of my best insights have been gained at the local YMCA where many of the area’s old timers gather in the mornings to exercise. They consider me a youngster, a compliment I don’t mind hearing sometimes as my students have quite the opposite opinion!
In any case, an elderly gentleman stated in no uncertain language this morning that we are in for “several years of hell.” Whomever takes the reigns, he said, will have to deal with a deeply damaged nation, thanks to the bushites. I enjoy the honesty and perspective of northern Minnesota’s senior citizens. Maybe our cold climate contributes to our tendency to confront problems head on. (With luck the ice will be off the lakes before my fishing trip in two and half weeks!)
May 1st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Lewis Lapham wrote in 1993: “The future may view our time as another dark age.” He was not referring just to the obscene brutality of the wars.
As I view the evolution of this bad dream, it is clear that the assault of the “rentier class” on our Constitutional Republic has further to go. Last night, the PBS news hour surveyed the “economic troubles” on ordinary people. 5 experts (Ian McHarg – “An expert is one who makes no few mistakes on the way to a celestial blunder.”) failed to mention the reality that the mortgage crisis is driven by 65% of defaulted loans coming from 2nd and 3rd home purchases as investments. The rich just walk away after dropping the keys off at the bank. No one pursues them or asks for repayment in any way. Here is another small example of how the system is rigged to aid the rich and ignore the rest of us.
The nightmare is only just beginning….
Ananda,
Lee
May 1st, 2008 at 6:58 pm
A friend told me about what was happening in the mortage sector before 2002–that people were speculating and flipping houses. This began years ago and those who knew did not act to stop it until it reached the low economic classes who had been sold houses bearing mortgages that the providers KNEW the people couldn’t pay. These things happen when we are governed by those whose religion is deregulation of all entities put in place to help regular people survive. Sadly, Lee is exactly right. I wonder how many lessons we have to have to realize that when we gut the regulations that attempt to corral the greed of the capitalist class, we endanger our lives.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
For a time I was a real estate agent for a firm that encouraged us to pressure buyers into houses more expensive than their stated “comfort zone” by saying “Well, we’re only talking the price of one dinner-out a week, and you’ll have enough money to purchase this more expensive house.” Our broker would hold weekly training sessions and show videos of famous motivational speakers telling us how to get our clients to spend more money so we could make more. He kept saying that way we got a bigger commission because our cut came out at the front end, and it was the buyers responsibility to not get in over their heads.
My position was that that one dinner-out each week might be the only one they could afford already. This was regarded as not looking out for my own bottom line. After about four months I decided I would not be party to this kind of dishonorable manipulation and left that brokerage. However, I found that this was par for the industry.
Recently a Realtor friend of mine told me of a local mortgage broker who had arranged a line of credit for a grandmother who wished to provide her granddaughter with enough money to make a down payment on a house. He knew that neither party would be able to keep up the payments on their homes with their stated income. Both lost their home to foreclosure. My friend goes to his church had the nerve to ask him why he had done this and badgered him for an answer. He finally admitted he needed the money he made from the sale of the mortgages. One of my fears is that the lack of integrity that has marked the Bush Adm. has permeated our collective psyche and is far more pervasive than is readily evident.
My point is that while our “long national nighmare” of the Bushites may be coming to an end, the mess they leave is a nearly indellible stain on this country. It will take the concerted will of the American public to demand that our representives in Washington change the way big business does business. We must demand that regulations be enacted or tightend up. That multimilliaire CEO’s who lead their companies into bankruptcy, and the employees lose their life savings, not to mentiions their jobs, through bad management not be allowed to get off with a “golden parachute.” It will probably have to start with a change in economic policies, because more people are concerned about how much it costs to get to work than about the dozens of American soldiers who are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan or the billions of dollars it has taken to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis.
For me, every time I hear of another Iraqi being killed, I say a little prayer that it was not one of the children in whose home I lived, or the gracious and lovely people who made me feel so welcome. To quote one: “It must be the most wonderful thing to be an American.” This is one election that I really feel I have a dog in this fight. Not only does it cost me a gallon of gas to drive to the nursing home to see my 95 year old mother, but my government is killing people I know in the name of protecting me.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:50 am
Future generations will feel the pain that you are predicting for yourself. This scenario won`t be for you, `cause the government is borrowing money in a fashion similar the sub-prime mortgage debacle. These trillions will need to be payed for by your children and grandchildren! How else can a nation pay for wars abroad, out of general revenues? Forget it!