Confessons of a political nebbish
I am not very political. I grew up rabidly hating Nixon because my parents did. In the 60s I hated Johnson because it was the 60s and I was in college. I rooted for McCarthy and mocked Bobby Kennedy until I watched him get assassinated on TV. Then my friends and I wept for the nation, as we had recently buried Martin Luther King. This all happened while I was at Cornell when the Black Liberation Army took over the Student Union with machine guns, classes came to a screeching halt, and the eyes of the nation (and our terrified parents) were on us. We eagerly watched the news reports of our events, and were horrified at how distorted the stories were. Thus began the germination of my political ennui, i.e., the only thing I know is what I hear and read, which is rarely what actually occurred. I salivated while Nixon got his recompense for Watergate, but by the time Pat Nixon died and Dick nearly croaked from a thrombosis, God’s forgiveness had percolated through me enough to be able to just pray for the SOB.
I simply stopped putting faith in politics, because there is no way around “power corrupts” phenomenon on both sides of the aisle.
The next time I let myself get riled about politics was in 2000, when we had to choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, so I think I wrote in Geraldo Rivera. I supported the war when it started (even with my only son in the infantry) because I believed the arguments in favor more than those against. I listened to Ronn Owens, Gene Burns, and for counterpoint, Hannity and Limbaugh, until I couldn’t tell them apart. Two elections and countless deaths later, I am more certain than ever that we only know what we hear and read from others who say they know.
