11/22/63

Budd Dwyer.

 

Apples and andirons. We're talking about Nixon and Wallace in 1968, not Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Goldwater was an ultra-conservative who was four election cycles ahead of his time. He pulled the Bubba vote hard and was a harbinger of what was to come. But again, the topic of this conversation is Nixon and Wallace. Wallace, a longtime Dixiecrat before he broke away, was the vote-puller in 1968.

Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was in fact a joke. His real strategy was to get out of Wallace's way and let him snuff the Democrats in Dixie.

And the modern primary/caucus system didn't come about until 1972. So I have no idea how Humphrey would have fared. Probably a tick better than McGovern did, but who knows?

 

This discussion makes me realize how much we all put the 2004 tsunami out of our minds so quickly just because it happened half a world away.

 

Says, "Hold my Tang" . . .



Honorable mention: Freedom 7, Friendship 7, Apollo 8.

 

I think the constant barrage of information and disinformation is a detriment in many ways. The 24/7 news cycle is overwhelming and exhausting. It continually preys on our emotions to the point where we dread the next bit of bad news. There is a fatalistic component involved, which is repetitive and self-fulfilling. The latest COVID numbers or news from Washington only confirms or reaffirms our opinions, good or bad. There is no chance to breathe.

1968 was a series of terrible events -- MLK, RFK, Chicago protests, Vietnam, race riots -- that directly affected small numbers of people but cumulatively affected our entire nation's psyche. 2020, on the other hand, has affected all of us directly -- mainly due to the pandemic -- but it's been just day after day of "how can this get any worse?" that seems to lead to news fatigue. We're so divided over the dumbest things -- like general health concerns -- that we've become suspicious of everything and anything.

 

In the late 70s I was making $150 a week when mortgage rates were in double digits, we had gas lines and American hostages were in Iran

 

The Japanese earthquake/tsunami of 2011 would be another. The collapse of the Soviet Union/tearing down of the Berlin Wall also fits that description.

To the lists already posted, I'd put "Neil Armstrong's first step" as the clear No. 1. If you were alive in July of 1969, that was a touchstone moment, not only for America but for the world. We all stopped that evening to watch.

The reason why "where were you when X happened" seems nationalistic is because all of those directly affected our lives as Americans or North Americans. It doesn't make major events in other parts of the world less important, but we have a more difficult time placing them in context.

 

I lived through that also. Between 9/11, the Afghan and Iraq Wars, the school shootings and other mass killings in the country, Trump and COVID, this iteration of America seems much worse. I’ll take Nixon over Trump everyday.
I’ll Take Johnson and McNamara over Cheney and Rumsfeld.
They they had distorted morals but alt least the goals were relatively sane. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Trump have no morals and the goals were and are power for the sake of power

 

"Show" is probably the wrong word. But I recently read an old biography of RFK by Jean Stein. They were planning his funeral even during his final hours in the hospital, drawing on what they'd learned.

It's like when a beloved relative dies. You have an Irish wake. People sing, tell stories. It's truly moving. But you'd rather have your uncle still alive than the wake.

In part, what the country lived through in 1968 was the birth pangs of a better world being born (undoubtedly for women and anyone who wasn't white.) Nothing really good came out of the latter.

 

Well, RFK lingered for about 24 hours after being shot, he was not killed instantly like JFK. For that single day, there was a lot of hope against hope that he would somehow survive.

But since the family had already been through the production with JFK, they knew how to run the funeral ceremonies.

 

DISCO. LEISURE SUITS. JOANNIE LOVES CHACHI. DEBBY BOONE.

It's no wonder we're all mad, mad, mad!

 

I'm a bit of an RFK assassination-phile. I would put his killing as something on live TV, but it was 3:15 a.m. "back east". ABC and CBS were live with post-speech wrap-up and no one actually captured the assassination live. TV cameras were heavy and bulky in 1968 so there was nothing handheld in such a tight space.

After watching the YouTube clips of the broadcasts at the time, there was a narrative that RFK was doing well after the shooting. "Extremely critical to life", Frank Mankiewicz would say in the press briefings but also reports that he was breathing on his own, blood pressure was good, etc.

However, the bullets would have left him extremely limited to have any fulfilling life. I think they just kept him on the machines so that family could get to Los Angeles to say goodbye.