The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    cmaukonen's picture

    The Pursuit of Happiness.....

    By cmaukonen on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 5:55pm |

    Warning. This diary does not contain any slams against republicans or democrats.

     

     

    It has been said that the two biggest motivations of humans are to obtain pleasure and to avoid pain. I believe with some variations, this is mostly true. Add into this our instinct for survival and you can probably explain most behaviors. But I am just guessing here, I suppose.

    This was a whole lot simpler when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s and even into the 1970s. We had to live with a very real - to most Americans and I would say also Russians - threat of global annihilation. I am not going into the propaganda factor here, because at the time this was not a consideration. For the people then it was very real. We had seen it right before our very eyes.

    On the television. The effects from the test blasts in the deserts of Nevada. And for more than a few, up close as well. The nuclear tests were what put Vegas on the map and made it a tourist mecca. People would flock to the area to watch. Thrilling and terrifying at the same time. It was a simple and easily identifiable threat. So clear were the consequences of a nuclear exchange, that there were few if any who could or would deny it. When you could find yourself with just enough time to hug a loved one before being obliterated or facing a life of slow radioactive death in a world plunged back to the dark ages. These were the visions in most peoples minds.

    As children we had lectures on nuclear war in school and were even given bracelets to ware for identification afterwards. As it there would be anything left to identify.

    And I believe that this one item ... one situation ... drove and influenced our political, economic and social behaviors more than anything else at the time. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first time I ever remember seeing fear on the face of my father. A time of national terror that the unthinkable might actually happen.

    Later in the 1960s the Vietnam War brought it home in a much more personal manner for the youth of the day. A possibility of nuclear war AND the very real likelihood of getting ones head blown off in some South East Asian jungle, with the war casualties climbing every day. With ones friends and neighbors being sent home in a body bag or box.

    The effect of all of this on politics was very, very strong. Seen to a large extent as walking a tightrope, politicians and peoples political leanings did not very much from center. Do not vote for anyone who might rock the boat, lest they initiate some catastrophe.

    It's why Eisenhower was picked and why Kennedy was picked and yes even Nixon was picked. If you seriously look at each one's agenda, none of them veered much from center. And it was why the ad at the beginning of this diary was so effective. Seems tame by today's standards, but at the time hit the buried and not so buried fears of the day.

    But with the decline and then the fall of the Soviet Union we on the left saw this as being free to pursue more progressive agendas. But at the same time the right was also seeing this as finally being able to undo those same progressive laws they had hated so much from the time of FDR onward. Electing those more to their own personal ideologies with out fear of initiating some immediate Armageddon.

    When you live with a fear like this day after day for most of your life, you quite often do not give it much conscious thought but it affects your actions both consciously and unconsciously.

    One has to bear in mind the thinking of the times. Nobody from the president on down really believed they could defeat the other side or stop many of their missiles or bombers or subs. Nobody in charge believed they would be safe. Not even the military. Everybody knew that none of the “holes” would accomplish anything except entomb the inhabitants.

    The whole point … the whole raison d’etre was deterrence. That if you hit us, we will hit you ten times as hard. Getting the “other side” from establishing any kind of military base or advantage went along with oil/energy hand in hand.

    This was the thinking at the time.

    But it kept everyone so focused that we became blind to other concerns. And it was sold to everyone this way.

    When this fear is removed it is very liberating but this can be a double-edged sword as it will also make what was not considered possible, conceivable. Regardless of one's beliefs and/or ideologies.

    Besides there is no physical proof of climate change and economic calamity was just some governmental fiddling in the market. No tangible cause and effect and could easily be rationalize away any way one pleases.

    For you see, the same cage that kept us from our pursuits had also kept the loonies and extremists at bay as well.

    Comments

    I post these types of diaries so that the readers will understand that our current predicament is not some bizarre twist of fate or weird historical precedent or even some mysterious conspiracy finally unmasked.

    But the natural and logical progression of the events and people proceeding it.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 8:43pm

    I would say from WWII on we have not had a capitalist system in this country but rater a stare run corporatist system with a state sanctioned black market that we were told was private enterprise.

    Which is the only way we could have won WWII and won over the Soviet Union. The only difference being that the Soviet Union did not have a state sanctioned black market.

    by cmaukonen on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 10:37pm

    It's a nice essay, c, but there is nothing really contentious about it to stir up the dagbloggers I guess.

    How 'bout an amen?

    Amen!


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 10:43pm

    Not sure it that's good or bad. HA

    But that is not the point. The point being that one has to consider all that has lead up to we we are and see it ion that context.

    Too often we take events out of context even in the present.

    Oh and thanks Emma.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 11:50pm

    I've always thought that our inordinate fear unleashed the loonies. Anticommunist fervor has always existed but didn't get truly powerful until the fear of nuclear annihilation took hold.  For example Joe McCarthy. If you look at that era you'll discover it wasn't just Washington and didn't affect just Hollywood. There were little McCarthy's with their Un-American Activities Committees in cities all across America.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 1:18am

    In the beginning of the 20TH century you had the Tempeurence movement and the evangelical roots. You have to go back farther in history then WWII and you can find lots of far right politics and uber rich greed politics. I think this is where G-man is researching his book. After WWII the general population was leary of radical politics and sent that message to politicians when the McCarthy hearings were televised. People were horrified at the witch hunt.

    by trkingmomoe on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 3:12am

    Except I do not remember anyone NOT buying into the "communist under every rock" meme to one extent or another.

    McCarthy was an embarrassment because of his methods, not necessarily because of his message.


    by cmaukonen on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 8:26am

    Yes, in the end McCarthy's methods and personality were unappealing and were rejected. But let's not forget that HUAC was just the tip of the iceburg.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Loyalty-security_reviews

    In the federal government, President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds...for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States."[11] Truman, a Democrat, was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists.[12]

    When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham, Chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things."[13] The following year, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, was stripped of his security clearance after a four-week hearing. Oppenheimer had received a top-secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954.

    Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation. In 1958 it was estimated that roughly one out of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review.[14] Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, it could be very difficult to find other employment. "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board. "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job."[15]


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 4:07pm

    "The people" are never any one thing. Some were horrified, some were cowed, some were supportive, some were asleep. Same as always.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

    "In January 1954, a Gallup poll found that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while 29% had an unfavorable opinion of the senator."

    "McCarthyism was supported by a variety of groups, including the American Legion and various other anti-communist organizations. One core element of support was a variety of militantly anti-communist women's groups such as the American Public Relations Forum and the Minute Women of the U.S.A.. These organized tens of thousands of housewives into study groups, letter-writing networks, and patriotic clubs that coordinated efforts to identify and eradicate what they saw as subversion.[36]"

    Not even "The Historians" agree on what caused the "end" of the McCarthy era. While changing public opinion had some effect I, and others, would argue that several Supreme court decisions had the greater effect.

    "Much of the undoing of McCarthyism came at the hands of the Supreme Court. As Richard Rovere wrote in his biography of Joseph McCarthy, "[T]he United States Supreme Court took judicial notice of the rents McCarthy was making in the fabric of liberty and thereupon wrote a series of decisions that have made the fabric stronger than before.""

     

     


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 3:58pm

    Ocean-kat, it's good to see you commenting here; that is all I got to say. smiley


    by artappraiser on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 7:47pm

    Thanks, I wondered if anyone would remember me.

    In brief: A year and a half ago I moved to Arizona to work as the caretaker of the ghost town Ruby. No electricity, no drinking water, no phone, and worst of all, no internet. I had to repair a house to live in, figure out how to take care of my basic necessities, save up enough cash from this low paying job to purchase a solar system and, finally, get satellite internet.

    Its been a long hard 18 months with almost no news being the worst part of it. I've been trying to catch up these last 4 weeks on some of what I've missed. And lurking here to see who is still around and what you all are talking about. I've really missed the lively discussion of the old TPM crowd that moved to Dag. It feels great to be back.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 9:19pm

    Holy smokes, you've been living a Wim Wenders movie! The European vision of the American West! wink Hey, as tough as it all might have been, bet you are gonna smile remembering this past 1 1/2 years when you're in your 90's.

    How far did you have to go to get provisions and a newspaper? Are you alone most of the time?


    by artappraiser on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 9:49pm

    Well, hopefully I'll smile more about the next few years now that I have a relatively comfortable life here. I don't think I'll ever smile about last summer with no electricity sitting in 100 degree heat, no fan, next to a propane lantern for reading with moths and flies flying around it and landing on my sweat drenched body. For just one example.

    I'm 12 miles from the nearest small town, Arivaca. But its 7 miles of rough dirt road and takes about 30 minutes to get there. The small store is too expensive for anything but basic necessities so I travel 60 miles, 120 round trip, to a larger town once a month or so to stock up.

    I'm mostly alone (with my dog) but Ruby is a pretty popular ghost town so there are frequent visitors. We don't converse much, I just give them some info about the town and its history and let them walk around. The buildings are all about 100 years old and compared to most ghost towns in good condition. Though it is falling apart most of the walls are still there and most buildings have roofs so history buffs can actually see how people lived back then.

    I could only get to town once a week and the store has no newspapers so I just let go of the news. In a way that was good though I missed it. I was a news junkie and being a pretty far left liberal the news just got me depressed or angry.

    If you or others I know are ever in southern Arizona you can contact me and I'll put you up for while in one of the buildings in somewhat rustic comfort to check out the place.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 11:26pm

    I knew these people, these two people...


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 07/13/2012 - 3:51am

    Dude.


    by Qnonymous (not verified) on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 8:46pm

    It never dawned on me the fall of the Berlin Wall was also the fall of bipartisanship, but I can see it now and note the pieces do fall into place and is the pattern of what we're experiencing today. I remember the Cuban missile crisis and the start of the Vietnam war when I was in grade school (4th grade) and by the time I graduated high school (1981), the war in Vietnam was still running hot, the draft in full force and the economy sucked. And I remember the politics of the day were vicious at times ... I was in Alabama when school busing became an issue ... but in the end, everyone accepted what was served on their plates. So once the governor ... the hatred/fear of communism ... to our political system was eliminated, each political Party was freed and began to work in earnest on their own unique political agenda, not realizing the glue that once held everything together would no longer work. And it also freed the radicals of both Party's to run amok and stir up trouble in the name of causes near and dear to selected niches within teach Party that felt the past injustices needed to be struck down with a vengeance. Seems we lost more than what we gained with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

    by Beetlejuice on Sat, 07/14/2012 - 3:53pm

    Well I think if you pay attention closely though you will find that the - ahum - new management is trying to put the country back to the way it was economically with the cold war.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 07/14/2012 - 9:51pm