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If you think you fully understand the modern culture wars, and everything that went on in the 1960s, you don't... until you've read Nixonland.
Perlstein was born in 1969, the first year of the Nixon presidency. He writes, however, like he was in the middle of it. His narrative is lively, ironic, and ultimately, depressing. The country, in the years since, has not progressed but regressed. Nixon, in retrospect, looks like a wise man. Despite his "enemies list" he seems a civil libertarian compared to what we have now. Surely he is responsible for the beginnings of what American politics have descended into, but other, more skilled practitioners have dug the hole far deeper than Milhouse could ever have dreamed. Perlstein’s own “engagement with Trump”, he says, “came at a time, in 2015, when I was incredibly burned out from writing about Republican conservatism because it seemed so darn predictable. Then something happened: history is a cunning thing to completely transform the story. I think we always have to be alive and open to that.” ‘Do you take the good with the bad? These years were absolutely bonkers. One war raged in Vietnam; another flared in American streets. Watts erupted in flames. The National Guard was deployed in Newark. The Democratic Party went to Chicago to hold a convention, and decided instead to burn itself to the ground, live on national television. Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. Martin Luther King was shot and killed. The odious George Wallace was shot and paralyzed. Weathermen planted bombs. Soldiers shot kids on college campuses. As president, Nixon stewed, plotted, dropped bombs on Cambodia and Laos, and surrounded himself with buffoons who were full of bizarre schemes and had ready access to slush funds. He cheated and broke laws and acted small and vindictively. He also had the far vision to look at Communist China and see the possibility of friendship rather than the inevitability of conflict. Throughout the book there are numerous insults and slights which convict Nixon for being a clever, calculating and even conniving politician. But given Nixon’s obvious and often obtuse faults, it is surprising that Perlstein bothers to indict his subject for the same traits exhibited by many successful politicians before – and since. But even avid fans of Nixon (as well as readers interested in his complex life) will come away from this book having learned something new. After Nixonland came out,” Perlstein says, Stone “came out with one of his books about Nixon [and] basically proposed that we go on tour together: ‘We can sell a lot of books and make a lot of money.’ At the time he was very adamant he was no longer a Republican. He was running for the Senate, I believe, from Florida as a Libertarian. The depths of his attention-starved behavior. .Lennon appears to be radically oriented however he does not give the impression he is a true revolutionist since he is constantly under the influence of narcotics. P714 Richard Nixon acceding to the presidency pledging a new dawn of national unity--and governing more divisively than any before him. The problem was facing the wrath of all those decent Americans who didn’t want to face that their government was mad. P171 In a book in which picaresque narrative and forensic political analysis sit side by side, Perlstein constructs a typically vivid set piece. There were a couple things that stood out to me. Things that, maybe in retrospect aren’t that surprising, or maybe I actually already knew, but stood out with a little more clarity with the 5000 foot tour.
His point is that when Trump “keeps doing things proven unpopular to all but the fascistically inclined, maybe he sees his audience as the fascistically inclined – those more useful to him for keeping permanent power than mere voters”. Edited 12/12/18: Cruz is a footnote in Presidential politics and Trump won and is possessed of very paranoid insecurities. But as the saying goes, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you... You know, I would have six or seven or eight different strands to think about, kind of untangling that.
An exciting e-format containing 27 video clips taken directly from the CBS news archive of a brilliant, best-selling account of the Nixon era by one of America’s most talented young historians. As he prepared for his next big Vietnam speech, set for November, he made ready to turn the divide between ‘normal’ Americans and the immoral Establishment that pretended to speak for them into his next political advance. The liberal inhabitants of the best circles: they weren’t like you and me” (411). Perlstein is frequently cited these days by middlebrow political commentators in the us as someone with his finger supposedly on the pulse of history.A self-identified left-liberal Democrat—useless though such terms are as political locators in a talk-radio grading system that slots Teddy Kennedy in as a Spartacist—Perlstein contributed a long and rather laboured essay for the Summer 2004 issue of the Boston Review on what the Democrats should do. It added up to a vague call for return to some sort of fdr programme. Nixonland, then, offers historical grounding for these sympathies; appropriately enough, its title comes from words spoken by Adlai Stevenson on the campaign trail in 1956:
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