The long shadow of Richard Milhous Nixon still defines America’s hip Left v. awkward Right.
The battle has been going on for almost 200 years and still rages: The United States of America versus Globalist Socialism (the old British Empire, or whatever you want to call it).
Back in the 1940s, freshman congressman Richard Nixon chose sides in the famous trial of Whittaker Chambers versus Alger Hiss. Hiss was accused of being a communist spy. Nixon took the side of his accuser, Whittaker Chambers—who had spied for the Soviet Union; Chambers defected when he saw what a monster Stalin was.
It’s a truism that Americans have short memories.
When Nixon allied himself with Whittaker Chambers, American patriotism was at least as cool as socialism.
But in the “cool contest,” socialism began to gain the upper hand in the early 60s.
Nixon would eventually symbolize all that was uncool.
This is not an attempt to re-write Nixon and call him good, or God forbid, cool. But Nixon needs to be better understood.
Whittaker Chambers was cool. As a student at Columbia University, the young writer belonged to the Boar’s Head Society, whose members would include John Berryman and Allen Ginsberg. Chambers became a Soviet spy in the 1930s as a neurotic but idealistic young man.
Like Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley also defected from the Soviet Union. She eventually named 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage. But who remembers Elizabeth Bentley?
Whittaker Chambers was not only a Man of Letters, he seems to have been a flawed but honorable man. Alger Hiss, jailed for perjury, was an unimpressive figure, but considered “respectable,” a high-ranking State bureaucrat, with leftist, globalist creds: pro-Soviet Union and pro-United Nations. Chambers was not some random accuser; he was a senior editor at Time magazine, and prior to defecting (and losing his woke status?) he ran a spy ring for the Soviet Union in Washington D.C. Both his affiliation with communists and his defection from them seemed sincere. The Left never forgave Nixon for taking up the cause of Chambers, though history really doesn’t show Hiss as the better man.
Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers both came forward at the same time and testified before HUAC. Joe McCarthy, who became the great iconic target villain of the Left (ironic, considering how the Left behaves today) had nothing to do with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee—the famous HUAC resided in the House; Joe was a senator.
Nixon, the young congressman who defended Chambers back in 1948 at HUAC, probably thought he was acting nobly—and only someone highly partisan would see it as anything more than a member of congress attempting to defend his country.
But Nixon eventually became a tool of the Left—Nixon’s semi-successful journey to his Watergate “Waterloo” finally betrayed patriotism and anti-communism—making these things highly uncool.
In the meantime Nixon “opened up China,” helping the Chinese communist regime (who supported Pol Pot, the genocidal communist, in the 1970s)—a Deep State strategy we see playing out (the Bidens) in a large way today.
After he lost to Kennedy (by election fraud?) in 1960 and the California governor’s race in California in 1962, Nixon is rumored to have made a “comeback” deal with the devil (Rockefellers, Deep State).
Nixon being “Watergated” was part of a plan to forever destroy the Republican party and turn the left (Washington Post) into heroes. Nearly 50 years later, many say that journalism has surrendered to activism, and is no longer journalism.
Communism became heroic and sexy during the Vietnam War, thanks to rock music and college protests. In the wake of the 1960s, Nixon and Chambers gradually became very popular bad guys. Through relentless cultural dissemination, communism became cool (even as Playboy initially made fun of un-sexy socialism—mock spreads of large Soviet women posing on tractors, etc). The HUAC was both anti-communist and anti-fascist (it was formed when both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were U.S. adversaries.) There shouldn’t have been anything uncool about Americans defending themselves against Nazi and Communist spies. But in the famous, unfolding career of Nixon, that’s what happened. And as America became the bad guy during the Vietnam War, communism and America-hating became super cool.
For instance, today the Left equates fascism with hyper-nationalism. According to this formula, learned by reading the Washington Post, an American patriot who hates fascism, loves his country, and defends his country against fascism, is a fascist.
In 2020, communism (thanks to the new Chinese economic dynamo and its American corporate allies) is sexy, rich, and winning. Ask Eric Swalwell. The Chinese are buying America and the world, including the Democrats.
I remember the John Birch Society saying a long time ago—I was a pimply kid in HS when I read this—the Rockefellers and the Communists secretly shook hands, and that’s how the bad guys (the Deep State, the oligarchy, etc) were going to win. The pimples are gone, (and I was never a ‘Bircher,’ just a curious kid) but I never forgot that simple observation. What is the Deep State? A bunch of former intelligence officials signing on to “Russian misinformation” as the source of the Hunter Biden story, a lie abetted by Big Media and Big Tech before the 2020 election. That’s it, I think.
A post-election article in Vogue by the daughter of Erica Jong says Hunter is not the issue; Jared Kushner is. Checking the author bio, she says in an interview that she only became interested in politics when Hillary lost and she cried for a week. No wonder this Vogue writer can’t the tell difference between Middle East peace deals and selling out to a gulag adversary. Molly Jong-Fast will lump Richard Nixon, George Wallace, and Donald Trump together in her fashionable mind, and go her merry way—I look forward to her future, ultra-hip pieces for Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Vogue, and the New York Times.
The liberal litmus test for hating Nixon was the Vietnam War. The founding of the EPA and opening up China, and other policies under Nixon, were fine. The Vietnam War was the egregious thing. All the other stuff, the taking the U.S off the gold standard, tax policy, no personal charisma, was small beer.
Where is Trump’s Vietnam War?
Liberals now invent and spin to hate Republicans, because you know…Nixon.
In 1968 liberals reviled LBJ because of his ferocious napalm bombing of children in the Vietnam War.
(That was a small detour, however. LBJ gradually became cool to liberals.)
Today, liberal heroes like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden resemble LBJ and Nixon—hawks who hate Russia and love China. (And they dissemble and spy on Trump in a way that makes Watergate look like child’s play.) The press now censors what used to be normal debate between left and right—in complete deference to the left. We might as well be living under Stalin. (Liberals have a soft spot for the Soviet Union, but don’t like Russia.) The Left in 2020 thinks about U. S. politics as if it’s 1974, the year of Watergate. The Left thinks Nixon is the ultimate litmus test, hoping everyone else will, too. But the times they are a changing. Aren’t they?