35 Comments
May 6, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Nice column from one who came of age during that era (first voted in 1968 when you had to be 21). As a senior at UCSB, we had a Bank of America burning and final exams under a quasi lock down with a dusk to dawn curfew. It was relatively easy to impose this as our college community of Isla Vista only that two roads in and out and those were closed off at 7 PM by the California National Guard (guess who was the Governor who mobilized the Guard?) .

IMO, a another useful book to read is Geoffrey Kabaservice's "Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party" which covers the political move of the Republican party from the Eisenhower presidency through to the early aughts.

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I read #5, "The Invisible Bridge" a few years ago and it is outstanding. Makes me want to get a copy of "Nixonland".

Always hard to know how much the lessons of the past might apply to the future, but regardless, these lessons are definitely worth understanding.

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May 6, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

I've never read Mailer's book (I was not a fan), but the description here of the '68 Dem convention seems to me inaccurate. There were certainly advocates of Eugene McCarthy in the hall and on the streets, but the Grant Park protesters were generally antiwar, rather than pro-McCarthy. The more confrontational elements of the antiwar Left (growing out of SNCC, SDS, etc.) had developed organizational skills in political theater; McCarthy's young followers (the Clean For Gene crowd) were more oriented towards traditional forms of political advocacy. The common target was the opaque structure of party politics, which provided Humphrey a path to the nomination, along with local machine politics that had locked in some primaries for him, and which Daley's police represented to the demonstrators. (Unfortunately, we were all too young then to realize what a progressive Humphrey had actually been in the '40s and '50s, so we couldn't imagine him free of Johnson's shadow.)

I agree with Noah that the 60s-70s is the best mirror to use for today from the perspective of the Left. I don't think it helps us understand the contemporary Right (although you can find more peripheral elements of the earlier period to foreground for that--after all, violent Right extremism of the McVeigh/Jan 6 varieties emerges from the Vietnam War period too). Having been part of the young Left that brought us the Nixonian reaction, I sometimes talk to young progressives today about the way people like me blew it in the '60s. I get 'Ok boomer' eyerolls. I think the ultimate punishment for the political sins of my youth is not the way my cohort bungled a real opportunity and helped pave the long path to the presidency of a tabloid sociopath, it's watching a later generation do much the same thing and have our earlier failure discredit our attempts to warn them.

The Left has gotten beat up by conservatives for generations because some of the radicals of the 1960s read Saul Alinsky. But very few really did, and today, although Alinsky still serves as a punching bag that the MAGA crowd hits from time to time, it's the Right that has read Alinsky and benefitted from him. Sometimes I think the Left's equivalent has become some comic book offspring of Foucault.

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4 sentences in and I’m sorry Noah, I know it will be a good column, but for the same reason I’m on a self-enforced social media ban, I couldn’t read on

Everything to do with politics just sucks at the moment, I desperately want to go back to the pre-social media age where the fact I was interested in police marked me out as mildly eccentric, so much of what is wrong with modern politics can be traced back to the problem of social media inviting a lot of ppl into claiming an interest in politics who never did before, these ppl have nothing of value to offer. They just follow it the same way they previously did for reality TV or how ppl do for sport, they just pick a side and cheer, they don’t read books, they don’t even read columns like yours, they certainly don’t engage with ideas from ppl on the ‘other team’

One thing I will say, 5 days away from Twitter and I’m noticeably happier, due to the fact I have an addictive personality no doubt I’ll be back on social media soon, but for now I’m not inviting the toxicity into my life

I believe, as expected Roe will be overruled based on a headline I glimpsed, a week ago I would have read thousands of words about this getting more and more progressively angry, but not this week, I’m a 44 year old male in Australia, bad as the reactionary SC acting like a reactionary SC is (& predictable, making the Bernie or Bust 2016 types who dare protest this decision now after the way they acted when something could have been done about it ensures their place in hypocrite history, but also another reason I’m avoiding SM so I don’t get involved in angry back and forth with them who would refuse to accept responsibility anyway, making it a complete waste of time)

But in addition to the above, it occurred to me that this has little to no impact on my life, so why get angry and upset about it for days, especially when the ppl (such as 2016 Bernie or Bust types) who will no doubt be performatively sharing their anger but refusing to accept responsibility will no doubt see a sentence like the one where I suggest the fact doesn’t impact me means it might not hurt to not immerse myself in it & then they will no doubt choose to interpret that in the most negative possible way & climb on their high horse is just another reason I’m avoiding this stuff

Anyhoo I’m rambling now, but I think you get the point if you’re silly enough to have wasted time reading this whole thing

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I recommend To Make Men Free by Richardson. While it's an entire history of the GOP, it does show how movement conservatism took over and enforced Taft-style policies.

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May 6, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

A lighter book that gives a sense of what this era "felt like" is We Own the Skies by Brendan Koerner. It's about hijackings, which were shockingly prevalent in the 60s and 70s. Incredibly entertaining!

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May 6, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

I recommend Lawrence Roberts' Mayday 1971 for a left wing version of insurrection. Although there was no storming of the Capitol in 1971, there was a bombing in a Capitol restroom, and the avowed purpose of the organizers of the events that Spring was to shut down the government. And there were mass arrests and sweeps, including the arrest of anyone who looked suspicious on the streets of DC, in the wake of it.

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I think a throughline is that if a movement pushes too hard, past what the general public will accept, it will engender backlash and deserve any rollback that the general public imposes on it. Knowing when to stop is a valuable skill.

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I agree that we're currently in an era that really rhymes with the '70s, That said, I believe that there's one subtle, but important difference between then and now.

Namely, the sides have reversed.

The trajectory of the progressive movement over the last ten years (going back to Occupy), I feel, has mirrored that of the conservative movement post-Goldwater/Miller '64 to an eerie degree: a radical political insurgency driven by the young, the educated, and the upwardly mobile who saw the party of "their side" (the Rockefeller Republicans then, the centrist Democrats now) as a bunch of cowards who wouldn't stand up to the political consensus of the time, a consensus that they felt had failed them and the country as a whole.

I'm specifically thinking of how anti-capitalism has become a meme among the younger generations to the point where the "moderate" economic view still embraces a lot of New Deal-level government involvement in the economy. Progressives, obviously, are the biggest proponents of such, but even a lot of younger conservatives are far more populist than their parents. To me, this mirrors how the default politics for much of the '70s (and beyond) took a similarly dim view of the government, seeing it as a blundering, sclerotic mess that couldn't do anything right and couldn't be trusted. Again, it was conservatives leading the charge, but even a lot of liberals associated "big government" with Bull Connor's firehoses in Birmingham, Richard Nixon's abuses of power, and the Vietnam-era war machine.

The thing that really got me thinking of our current era as "the '70s with the sides reversed" has been the right's slide into extremism, and how well it's mirrored that of the New Left in the late '60s and '70s. You point out that domestic terrorism reached a fever pitch in the '70s, to which I'd like to add that it was driven primarily by leftists and Third World nationalists back then. There's been no comparable wave of far-left domestic terrorism in the last ten years; instead, the conversation on that subject has been driven entirely by the far-right. In both cases, the extremists were driven by a sense that the political system has failed them and is rigged against them, and have embraced an apocalyptic, revolutionary worldview in response, seeing themselves as the vanguard of a new order that will purge the old. For the New Left, it was an embrace of revolutionary leftist ideas, especially those from the Third World like Maoism, that they saw as an alternative to the sclerotic USSR that had become the standard-bearer of the Old Left. For today's far-right, it's a Christian nationalism that they see as an alternative to the godless laissez-faire that ultimately became "woke capital".

I distinguish extremism here from radicalism, as both the right then and the left now were also growing increasingly radical and assertive, and weren't always willing to play nice. With that in mind, I think that the best analogue to the Hard Hat Riot isn't the Three Percenters, but Rose City Antifa. Just as we've forgotten the Hard Hats, antifa already seems to be vanishing from the conversation, with a lot of young, left-leaning people going "yeah, maybe they go too far, but how else are you gonna deal with those fascist whackos?" (I think you pointed out in a recent tweet that antifa seemed to vanish shortly after the fascist marchers they protested.) Hell, I think you could make a case that cancel culture is the non-violent version of the Hard Hats. I think that a lot of left-leaning people, including many who criticize it, see it as a necessary evil: an ugly and brutal weapon that's had some nasty side effects, but one that's pushed a lot of bigoted discourse out of mainstream consideration by creating a real social cost for voicing it. That sounds a lot like how conservatives viewed the blue-collar Joes in Manhattan and Greensboro who knocked the skulls of "commies", or the South Side working stiffs who rallied at Comiskey Park to torch disco records.

And as for Joe Biden being Gerald Ford, well, I think Ford being a Republican and Biden being a Democrat kind of speaks for itself.

I believe that the end of the current "era of bad feelings" is going to end with a President who imposes a new political consensus like Ronald Reagan did. That said, I believe that that President is not going to be a conservative, but a progressive. Somebody who can sand down the worst excesses of their side's messaging but keep the substance of their policy intact. A lot of people will probably be hurt during the Presidency of Blue Reagan, and I have some ideas of who might suffer the hardest from his or her policies. A lot of Blue Reagan's supporters will see this era as "Hillary's revenge" against the deplorables, just as the original Reaganites saw the '80s as "Nixon's revenge" against the hippies.

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When I look back at the 20th century in America, I see a determined effort by conservatives to take over the political establishment in an attempt to run the country in their narrow way. I see the support for Father Conklin and his attacks on FDR in a similar way that Trump attacked Obama with the birther movement. Conservatives are always afraid of change, and their strategy of slowly building control, starting with school boards and ending with the Supreme Court, has paid them great dividends.

The Democrats and the public don't see this slow attrition of our rights leading to a totalitarian state. By eroding voting rights and packing the courts with conservative-leaning judges, they are rapidly blocking any attempts to make society fairer for more people.

One of the things the election of DJT and the immense popularity of Tucker Carlson shows is a solid racist feeling in much of the country. Conservatives have no concrete policy initiatives except the fear of "others."

An example of this resistance to change is the desire to have judges who are strict "originalists." They want to go back to when white, land-owning men were in control, and all others were 2nd class citizens. The world has changed since the founding fathers rode on horseback to vote on a handwritten constitution.

The intellectuals who once held sway in Republican politics - like George Wills & William Buckley, Jr. - have been pushed to the side, and the fearmongers are in control. They have tapped into many Americans' hidden preferences, and their influence is only growing.

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I really enjoy columns like this, with book recommendations mixed with commentary. I liked when you did it with sci fi books, too.

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Have you read any good books on the decline of inner cities and black communities starting in the 60s through the 90s (and now too really)? I was born in the South Shore area of Chicago and moved out in 66, part of the white flight happening in many neighborhoods. It took me years to better understand the changes that were occurring. I’ve read many pieces and listened to a number of stories. In general, I think I understand the forces that caused the decline but haven’t seen any books focused on the topic.

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This was the push I needed to finally pick up Nixonland and wow does it match beautifully with the current era. Nixon's appeal to the salt-of-the-earth, "silent majority" orthogonians dovetails beautifully with Trump's, and the story of two completely incompatible visions for the future of the country (and views of reality) is familiar as well. It's honestly relieving to see we've been through this before and made it out the other side (though hopefully we don't need to live through another Reagan first)

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Anyone read Power and the Idealists by Paul Bergman? Might be a worthy addition to the list.

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>>>The parallels between then and now are striking and immediately apparent.<<<<

But there are several rather gigantic differences:

A) The Republican Party of 2022 is unquestionably dominated by the radical right. In the 60s and 70s the Moderate Establishment was very much still a major force (and often a dominant one) in the GOP. FIgures like Ford, Dirksen, Romney, Hatfield, Bush, Percy, Dole, Rockefeller, Lindsay, Javits (and, if we're honest, Nixon) and so on were towering figures of authority in those days. Today such men would be summarily primaried as globalist CCP cucks.

B) The Democratic Party of 2022 doesn't possess anywhere near the political strength at the congressional level (it was clearly the more dominant of the two parties) it possessed a half century ago. Neither Richard Nixon nor Gerald Ford enjoyed a single year of their respective presidencies with a majority in either chamber of Congress. Indeed, if memory serves, Democrats possessed a House majority in every single Congress from 1954-1994, and a Senate majority in every single Congress from 1954 to 1980.

C) Supreme Court (need I elaborate?).

I hope I don't come across as morose, but, as much as one can see parallels (agreed!) between that era and today, in terms of simple, raw political power, I fear the strength of the forces checking the radical right aren't in nearly as strong a position in today's America. And that strikes me as a very big difference.

I fervently hope history proves me wrong.

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> It suggests that episodes of lefty rage — where progressives expect a better world, don’t get it, and resolve to tear everything down — burn bright and hot but burn out fast. It was only 11 years from the Watts riots to Squeaky Fromme.

Not sure 11 years is that fast...nor is burnout a foregone conclusion. 11 years is nearly as much time as it took for the 1905 Russian Revolution to flower into the 1917 Revolutions!

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