Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

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There are many outstanding books that cover the Vietnam era, so I suspect that this one gets lost in the mix but it does an excellent job of capturing the mood of the country during this volatile time. a) Vietnam – its immorality became too painful, the American dead unignorable – 50,000 by 1970; and the draft meant that YOU or your son might be next up And just when you think – oww, my mind is obliterated, this is death by facts – along comes something you actually always wanted to know about, and how it fit in to the 60s, Attica, Soledad, Angela Davis, Jerry Rubin, all those half-heard names. Here they all are, bawling in your ear, dancing in your face.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. Two contending sets of rumors circulated: that cleanup crews found “nothing but bras and panties – you never saw so many”. And that two marchers had been dragged into the building and summarily executed. P 216 The rise of twin cultures of left- and right-wing vigilantes, Americans literally bombing and cutting each other The first part of the Yippie program is to kill your parents. And I mean that quite literally, because until you’re prepared to kill your parents you’re not ready to change this country. Our parents are our first oppressors. P475A man of the left, Perlstein agrees his books are as much about the failures of liberalism and the media as the success of the right. This isn’t a presidential biography or political essay--it’s a painting--a mural--of the political culture of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s indispensable for a person like me that didn’t live through it. The storytelling and analysis cuts through all of the cliches, the iconography, the superficial and reductionist history books. And damn, is it entertaining! Perlstein never abandons the reader--he never strays too far, never becomes redundant, never bores with unessential details. The thing is, he makes all details feel essential! Overall, “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America” provides a unique and frequently fascinating window into the social and political fabric of Nixon’s era. It is vibrant and engaging, with dramatic characters and powerful themes. But readers hoping to observe Nixon’s presidency, his political philosophy, his ascent or downfall in detail will need to look elsewhere. 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...

We laugh to keep from crying,” Perlstein counters, “and the serious point being made is that as Richard Nixon said, ‘If you want a serious political job done, you hire a rightwing exuberant.’ For the original working subtitle for Nixonland,” Perlstein says, “I borrowed a phrase from one of Philip Roth’s novels: the politics and culture of the American berserk. I mean, if you’re not writing about the berserk, you’re not writing about America.” ‘Writing is mind control’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. In the Nixon presidential years a wide variety of illegal activities ranging from revenge upon the president's long list of enemies to the hiding of international war crimes conducted in southeast Asia occupied much of his time even before the Watergate break-in was conducted.

As we all know, the sixties was in part the story of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the New Left, the anti-war movement, the counterculture, and the hippies. These public and disruptive protests antagonized the social conservatives of society. Nixon capitalized on this resentment by convincing people that this resentment, though not visible, not heard, was in fact, the real majority, the real America. The angry masses of demonstrators didn’t really represent you, the average, law-abiding, patriotic, hardworking middle-class American. With great success, Nixon positioned himself in such a way to draw the line, intensify, and capitalize on the culture wars: So what was Nixonland? It was the beginning of the Culture Wars. It was left-wing rebellion and right-wing working class resentment, with each side “heightening the contradictions:” “The cops got the confrontation they wanted. The revolutionaries got the confrontation they wanted. Lo, a new crop of revolutionaries; lo, a new crop of vigilantes: Nixonland.” I put Perlstein’s Nixonland on my "to read" shelf, after I read a very effective and thorough review of the book in the September 1/8, 2010, edition of The Nation. Perstein's book is a must-read for any one interested in the Republican Party's calculated obliteration of whatever tatters and remnants of New World democracy still informed the American polity during the years that Perlstein examines.Four years later, LBJ declined to run again knowing that he may not even be able to win his own party’s nomination, and the country was tearing itself apart along right wing/left wing battle lines. And Richard Nixon got voted in as a president leaving everyone to scratch their heads and wonder what the hell just happened. Between 1965 and 1972 America experienced a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know today was born. Ah, that old one – wasn’t our fault! They made us kill all those women and children! A song which has been sweetly sung by everyone at one time or another, most recently by President Assad. They make me kill these children just so that I look really bad! How mean of them! Don’t you realise their little game?

I mean, do you take the good with the bad? Do you throw out the baby with the bathwater? Ronald Reagan always said a half-loaf is better than no loaf.A Gallup poll found 58% blamed the Kent State students for their own deaths. Only 11% blamed the National Guard. P489 Asking huge questions about American identity that are just as relevant now, is a powerful look at the lasting legacy of Nixon’s era.