Note to Young Progressives
/
ike most things, in retrospect it’s so easy to see what happened…
Step one: the Democratic establishment got behind its candidate, one with solid liberal credentials and decades of experience--but lacking much magnetism on the campaign trail.
Step two: millions of young Democrats had a different idea. Their passion fueled a rival candidate who brought fire to the party, who wanted the conversation pushed decidedly further to the left.
Step three: the Republicans choose a nominee who lied as easily as he breathed; one who, behind the scenes, colluded with a foreign government to rig the election.
Step four: Disillusioned and bitter young Democrats stayed home on election day—enough to swing the final result to the side of evil.
And America paid the price.
owever, this scenario didn’t just play out two years ago. Fellow old timers may realize I’m also talking about one that happened exactly half a century ago, as well. The year 1968 was more tumultuous than any since, with the Vietnam war, civil rights, urban rioting, the sexual revolution and recreational drug use roiling the culture. It was the year that both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Kennedy was the ideal of young liberals, but after he was gunned down in June, they freely pledged allegiance to the single-issue, anti-war protest candidate, Eugene McCarthy.
And I was one of them.
But after the bloody Democratic convention that year in Chicago, I differed with many of my fellow McCarthy supporters in the most significant of ways. I held my nose…went to my polling place…and cast my ballot for Hubert Humphrey. Many of my friends just stayed home.
Richard Nixon won by half a percentage point.
ll elections have consequences, but the consequences of 1968 can be counted in coffins.
Early that year, before the election, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger began working through a secret intermediary to persuade the president of our ally, South Vietnam, NOT to accept any peace agreement before the election. “We,” they promised, “will give you a better deal if you just wait until we’re in office.” South Vietnam complied.
Of course, Nixon and Kissinger were lying. (Did you think Donald Trump taught Republicans how to be Republicans? They taught him!)
Once Nixon entered the Oval Office, more than 20,000 additional Americans were killed in Vietnam. Had peace—or even a cease fire—been agreed to in Paris in 1968, those 20,000 young people could have lived…thrived…and raised families. But to Nixon, winning was more important.
So much winning.
hat’s happened since our last election is an atrocity. In his pamphlet Common Sense, Revolutionary War author Tom Paine said, “we have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
To my progressive friends, I say that we have it in our power to make this country over again. Has that ever been needed more?
But it doesn’t happen unless you vote AGAINST ALL REPUBLICANS. Every last one. And demand that your friends do the same. The GOP are the enablers that have spun this nightmare. Your vote is the antidote.
Edward R. Murrow said, “a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
Don’t be a sheep. Vote passionately.
Destroy these wolves.
Have a comment or thought on this? Just hit the Your Turn tab here to have your say.
