Miscellany #2: The Political Sphere

1. Allard Lowenstein on Democracy

I think that there are a lot of macro-level parallels - many already noted elsewhere - between our current American political and social moment and the political and social moment that began around fifty years ago, in 1968, and continued into the Watergate era. What is interesting to me is that there are also so many what might be called "micro-level" parallels are well - small phrases and details that come up in speeches and interviews from that time that have strong echoes (or, I suppose, are the original, which we are the echo of today) of what's happening in the country now. Here is a short passage of politician and activist Allard Lowenstein speaking to William F. Buckley on Firing Line in the run-up to Watergate.

I think that the way you remove President Nixon from office is you defeat him, and I’m I’m engaged in an effort to make clear that’s possible. But I’ve never supported impeachment of President Nixon, not because - and what I want to do is to get into the questions that you raised, the basic questions that you raised, and just clear away some of the underbrush. It is, in fact, untrue to say that I became a devotee of democracy, as you suggest, only when the country, by polls, went my way. I think that the job of people who are in public office, or seeking public office, I think I agree with you on this, is to say what they believe, to stand on what they believe, and if they lose, to lose. And I don’t think you go with polls, I never have, I hope I never do. But I think what we said in 1968 when we opposed the renomination of President Johnson was, in fact, the majority sentiment of the country. We’ll never know, because in Los Angeles there was an assassination which punctured the normal procedures which would have given a test in that election. 

The election that fall, then, ended up not as a test of differences, but rather a test of which of two men could persuade people that they were less undesirable, at least that was the case for millions of people in the country. And what I think we have to see is that as a result of the frustrations that developed in 1968, through the murders and the other horrors of that spring, is that for millions of people there is a kind of erosion of belief in the whole election process. That’s led to some people doing extreme things in frustration which are unconstitutional and unjustifiable and I think we share opposition to that kind of tactic.

2. "A Base Craving For Peace"

A NASA research pilot watches a B-52 fly overhead, 1969.

 From Ward Moore's 1956 short story, "Flying Dutchman":

"The grave men who decided strategy had been well aware of the nature of the war they were fighting. Every possible preparation had been made for all forseeable eventualities; plans and alternative plans, and alternatives to the alternatives, had been carefully and thoroughly mapped. That the capital and the proud cities would be destroyed almost immediately was taken for granted, but the planners had gone much further than mere decentralization. In former wars operations had ultimately depended on men; the strategists knew how frail and fallible humans were. They thought with grim distaste of soldiers and mechanics made useless by uninterrupted bombardment or the effects of chemical and biological weapons, of civilians cowering in the innermost recesses of mines and caverns, their will to fight gone and only a base craving for peace left. Against this unstable factor the strategists had guarded zealously; they planned not only push-button war, but push-buttons for the push-buttons, and more push-buttons behind them. The civilians might cower and chatter, but the war would go on until victory was won.

And so The Flying Dutchman sped unerringly for its familiar goal, serviced and powered by an intricate network of tools, implements, factories, generators, underground cables and basic resources, all of them nearly impregnable to discovery and destruction, able to function until they wore out, which might not be - thanks to their perfection - for centuries hence. The Flying Dutchman flew north, a creation of man no longer dependent on its creator.

It flew toward the city which had long since become finely pulverized rubble. It flew toward the outlying rings of antiaircraft batteries and the few serviceable guns left which would spot it on their radarscreens and automatically aim and fire, attempting to bring it to the fate of all its counterparts. The Flying Dutchman flew toward the country of the enemy, a defeated country whose armies had been annihilated and whose people had perished. It flew so high that far below its outstretched wings and steady motors the bulge of the earth made a great curving line, the earth, that dead planet, upon which no living thing had been for a long, long time."

Full text of "Flying Dutchman" available here.

3. "What is Honor, Anyway?"

Allan Sherman with President Kennedy.

Here's an excerpt of a speech given by comedian Allan Sherman at UCLA in 1970.

See, I believe people are one by one. One by one. I’m a revolutionary - I think we need 3 billion separate revolutions. In forty-five years of living and feeling and trying to be as smart as I could, that’s all I ever learned: people are one by one. One at a time. Each one different. Each one special. Each one full of his own wild feelings, each one dancing to his own music. Each one living out the poem of his own life, in his own special language. 

That’s why I could never join anything like the Communist Party. That’s why I also don’t go along with the military mentality - because they both seem to regard human beings as units, digits, statistics to be manipulated. They lump people together in one pigeonhole, under one label. 

And this much I know: as soon as you think of people more than one at a time, you are beginning to tell yourself lies. Lies that begin with “All black people,” “All conservatives,” “All policemen,” “All Communists,” “All young people” - it doesn’t matter, they’re all lies.

But when you think of people one by one you begin to care. Just look at that last moonshot, with those three astronauts trying to get back to Earth in that broken tin can. They broke into the television all the time and kept showing them to us as human beings, one by one - Lubbell, and Hayes, and Sweigert. And one by one, when we saw them, we began to care. How long do you think the war would last if we did the same for the soldiers in Vietnam? How long would the majority remain silent? If all day long, they kept interrupting the television programs and Walter Cronkite came on and said, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin. Five minutes ago, Corporal Donald L. Carter, 21 years old, of Mattoon, Illinois, was killed in a mud-hole outside Da Nang. We bring you now an interview with his wife, Gwen, 20, and their son, Eddie, two years old. How long do you think this war would last if they interrupted the television like that fifteen times a day, once for every kid that got killed?

I don’t really know much about Communism, or the military, or the politics, or the CIA. We aren’t taught those things in our schools. It’s like sex education - you’re not supposed to know about it, just go out and do it. But you can’t get killed from that! 

And I’m getting very tired of secrets. The government keeps doing things in secret, and then when it’s all done, they tell me they did it for my own good. That’s how the whole war began, as far as I can tell. I’m tired of secrets, and trench coats, and cloak-and-dagger games. The other night I had a nightmare. I dreamed that the whole Communist Party was really the CIA in disguise - and there’s no way to prove I’m wrong! 

It’s not that this is a bad country. It’s a good country. But the quality of life has changed, like a virus that gets into your system and changes a healthy person into a sick one. I’m mad at the sickness, and I want to cure it before it kills us. When was it that form became more important than substance? Since World War II, we’ve been getting bigger and bigger and richer and richer and fatter and fatter, until we now seem to care more about our image than about what is real. All day long we lie to each other in business. Commercials and ads lie to us from the TV screen and the newspaper. Politicians lie - well, you’ve seen it in this last week or two. 

People say to me, “Well, you’re free to say anything in this country, it’s marvelous!” And I realize that’s true - largely - and the reason is, nobody’s listening! My friend, the late Robert Ruark, took a look at the quality of life in America. The last thing he ever wrote was an article called, “Nothing Works, and Nobody Cares.” 

And your generation grew up in that world. You never knew anything else. What else could you say but, “Oh my God, nobody cares”? “I’m alone, and nobody cares. My mother and my father care more about the rules and regulations than about me. My university says, ‘Don’t make waves, sit down in the corner please and be a nice hole in a punch card.’ My clergyman keeps shifting his position - God isn’t dead, no, he’s hiding; no, he’s sick; no, he’s on vacation somewhere trying to figure out what he really thinks about birth control.” The President goes on television and says, “I don’t care, I won’t change my mind, you could cry, or plead, or march in the streets.”

But you people have one advantage: you’re young, so you can’t lose. The world is gonna belong to you. Like children, you have to have the guts to ask the question that my generation did not have the guts to ask: “Why, Daddy? Why?” When you ask “Why,” the great political figures will answer you as if you were a six-year-old who asked where do babies come from. They’ll answer, “Not now, you’re too young to know. It’s too complicated. Go away and play. Have a lollipop. Have a Mustang. Go play with your color TV, play with your drugs, play with your dirty movies. Only don’t ask questions, and don’t make waves.”

Well, I’m forty-five years old, so I’m not too young to know. And I have a why to ask them. Gentlemen, why do you want my son? Is anybody listening? Does anybody care? Well, why do you want my son? He’s not a statistic, he’s not a military unit; he’s Robert Sherman. He’s twenty years old. He’s short for his age, and thin, and his face is still marked from where he had chicken pox. When he gets excited he stammers a little. But he’s not expendable, and he’s not replaceable. He’s Robert Sherman, and he’s full of joy and wonder and discovery and love and and life. He wants to become a musician or a mathematician or a comedian. Or maybe a bum! But he does not want to be a soldier. Killing doesn’t interest him and dying terrifies him. He loves his country, and his job, and his girl, and his car; he has a plain, conservative haircut, and he obeys the laws, and someday he might do something to make the whole world as proud of him as I am. But he wants a chance to live until that day, and be whole, and not have his body or his mind scarred forever with your kaleidoscope of death and dirt and napalm. So why do you want Robert Sherman? 

Mark Twain said, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” I say, “What if they gave a war and everyone left?” What if we just said, “Sorry, fellas, we hate to shoot and run”? And we put up a sign that said, “War cancelled because of human sanity,” and we went home and began to live our lives again like human beings? A lot of people would say, “Ah, but would it be an honorable peace?” And we would answer them, “Yes. Because there is more honor in peace than there is in war. And love is more honorable than hate. And life is more honorable than death. And truth is more honorable than lying. And joy is more honorable than misery.” 

What we need is a new definition of honor. What is honor, anyway? Is it military victory? Then Adolf Hitler, who won every battle except the last one, was one of the most honorable men of all. Is it honor to subdue by force everyone you disagree with? Then we owe Lee Harvey Oswald a Congressional Medal of Honor. There is such a thing as real honor. We’ve all seen it and felt it. Real honor is caring about other people, one by one, whether they’re famous or unknown, whether they’re rich or poor, whether they agree with your politics or not, whether they’re black or white or young or old. Real honor is being what you really are, not what you think other people would like you to be. Real honor is saying what you really feel. Real honor is not remaining in silence, safe and comfortable, while the country you love is burning down. Real honor is standing up for what you believe in and saying so, and accepting the responsibility for what you say and do.

It’s elusive. It’s hard to find. It’s hidden behind a labyrinth of bravado, and status-seeking, and image-making, and publicity releases, and plastic, and frozen TV dinners, and political gobbledegook. You think to yourself, “You can’t get there from here.” But you can’t get to the Moon, either - unless you want to. That would be real shining armor, wouldn’t it? That would give us back our pride in our manhood. That would bring us together, as Americans, in spite of all our differences. 

4.  "The Great Terror Would Be That I Might Win"

George Plimpton (far left) watching the America's Cup race with John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy in 1962.

George Plimpton answers a question about politics at Auburn University in 1972:

Well, I think I might win in politics, which would be terrible, because then my constituency would be stuck with me. Obviously, I wouldn't run for what Pat Paulson is running for, but I think if I ran for Representative in one of the New York districts, maybe I'd have a chance. But I'm not - I don't, that's not what I've set my life to do, you know? I think it would be cheating, you see, if I went into some political campaign, as Pat Paulson did. He does it as such a marvelous joke that it's really a commentary on politics. When I try to play quarterback for the Baltimore Colts, I really try as hard as I possibly can. I know I can't make it, but I'm not letting anybody down except myself. But if I tried to run for political office, and really wanted to do it - and after all, it's the only profession where any amateur can try, isn't it - then once I got started, it seems to me that I'd have to carry it all the way, and the great terror would be that I might win. Then I'd have to give up everything and become probably a rather mediocre political figure. If you see what I'm saying. 

I don't think you can fool around in politics, is really what I'm saying, unless you're a great comedian, as Paulson is. For example, Bill Buckley ran for the mayor of New York, and I think originally he started off to see - really, to write a book about it, to write a book about what it was like as an extremely bright amateur fussing around with the New York political system. And he got involved in it, and discovered that he was much brighter than anybody else that was going; also he discovered that he had a formidable political platform. And he began to do better and better and better, he was supported by the entire conservative wing in New York. And then he began to have dreams of glory, I think, ran really very solidly and well, and then wrote a book about it which is absolutely humorless. He forgot what he started off to do, and as an observer he became less interesting than - or he was less interesting as an actual participant than he might have been as an observer. 

Anyway, it's a very clumsy answer to what you asked me, but I think in essence, everybody has to find out what they're best at. I'm probably best as being an observer. 

 5. "Any Idiot Can Wreck What Only a Genius Can Make"

From Garry Wills' The Kennedy Imprisonment:

A parent can have every resource of coercion, along with the will to coerce, in dealing with a child; he or she can "ground" the child, spank, take away toys, allowance, privileges. But this combination of resources with will does not equal power, in the sense of getting another to do one's will, if the child keeps saying no.... 

The parent who exerts his or her power over children most drastically loses all power over them, except the power to twist and hurt and destroy. This power to destroy - to wound, to sever bridges, to end lives - is easily wielded; and we tend to call this real power since it has such an instant, spectacular effect, dependent only on our will. We can all smash a TV set, a computer, a friendship, a marriage. Few of us can build a workable computer or rewarding marriage. Any idiot can wreck what only a genius can make.

...[T]he ideal of foreign power has been to approximate our assertiveness to our powers of destruction, to equate ability to destroy with right to control. There, our will is being tested, not other wills recruited.