I’ve been thinking back over my politically conscious life
experiences (I wasn’t politically aware as a child) and pondering the swings
back and forth between what we now call “left” and “right”. My first conscious
recollections were from conversations between my parents when Truman was
president in the early 50’s.
He seemed to be respected but not particularly exciting.
When Ike came along the mood seemed to change to one of relief. We expected our
“general” could keep us safe so we could get into action, building our
infrastructures and developing new economic opportunities. Despite the nagging
fear that we could at any moment, be bombed into oblivion, it seemed to be a
period of prosperity - such that I grew up thinking that was just the way the
world was. Prosperity was an “is”, a guaranteed future.
Kennedy came along and defined a new set of hopes. And after
he forced Russia to stand down during the Cuban crisis, we sighed relief that
maybe we could actually somehow no longer fear a nuclear holocaust. Hope and optimism
were front and center again. This is about the time when I remember the terms “right’
and “left” coming into use, mostly on TV.
When Kennedy was assassinated it was a psychological blow to
our solar plexus. The lesson seemed to be that hope and optimism were emotional
inventions and were subject to instant eradication. The mood was sadness. We mourned.
Although he tried, Johnson could not stem the downward
emotional spiral we had fallen into. We weren’t just morning Kennedy, we were
mourning the loss of our hopeful innocence.
When Nixon entered the picture the mood of the country went even
darker. It wasn’t just a shift to the right. It was a shift in what had constituted
the purposes of our leaders. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson had all
seemed to be organized around serving their country. With Nixon, I remember
being worried, perhaps for the first time, that our prosperity was threatened not
just by foreign “enemies”, but also by the very politicians we had elected to
lead us. It now seemed clear that they put themselves before the country they
aspired to lead.
Ford seemed to stem that drift as he seemed decently
organized around the good of country before himself. Carter turned our attentions
back toward the values and hopes of the left, followed by Reagan and Bush (1) who
seemed more centrists and less about themselves. Maybe we hoped, it could be
that the intentions of our leaders were once again trustworthy.
Clinton wanted to be, and clearly was to some extent, a
resurrection of the Kennedy hope, now labeled by journalists as “the Left”. Noticeably
he also reveled in the notoriety and adulation. Even so, we enjoyed a period of
relative safety and prosperity.
Bush (2) then swung our attention back toward what we needed
to be afraid of. We now faced enemies all over the middle east and learned
through our media that we needed to fear and be suspicious of Muslims, jihadists,
and weapons of mass destruction.
Then Obama swung us right back to the hope theme, now not just
for white-middle-class-America, but also for African-Americans and other minorities. We now hoped we
could finally all get along together. Still there was, and remains, a festering
unspoken undercurrent of bigotry and covert fear-based righteousness. These fears were finally given voice, given a political theater from which to act
out, to resist, and hopefully, even defeat that nascent hope and innocence of Obama's presidency.
And now Trump seems to be telling us we need to turn back to
the right, to hunker down and defend our shores against all kinds of enemies
some real, many imagined, all fodder for dramatic narratives, and wildly invented
realities.
And so it seems, we swing back and forth between a national
mood of hope, then fear, then hope, then fear. The hope survives briefly until
we invent a new threat to its future, then we dive back into the fear syndrome,
righteous about our need to protect ourselves.
What’s so interesting is that none of machinations ever seem
to be fully realized. The mood of the majority swings back and forth. We’re
either certain of our impending doom, or our next revived optimism. Now, our
mood is fearful - looking for some hope to grasp upon, wanting to invent our next
calling.
Of course, I have my personal preferences. And even though they seem to be under assault right
now, I’m reminded, we have until now, and I expect will in the future, survive.
Whether for four years or eight years, Trump is by his very actions and
behaviors, laying the ground work to swing the pendulum back toward “the left”,
whatever the hell that is. A little drama gets the blood flowing again, yes?
