Deja Vu

I was thinking yesterday about how I was a stupid angsty kid during the McGovern race. I remember being in love with George, no kidding. He was the cat’s ass to me. George was the next best thing to a 5-hosed hookah. I remember looking at Richard Nixon and thinking, yeesh what a miserable old fart! What beady eyes! How could anybody vote for him?? He always looked like he had a day-old beard, also known as “Five O’Clock Shadow”. God, he was odious!

Today I know “how” people voted for Richard Nixon in a historic landslide. Nobody really thought he was so great. The problem was they refused to vote for McGovern.

Really, as I look back in retrospect, George McGovern was a gentleman. Next to Barack Obama he was brilliant and honest. He had the experience and the service to his country to add to his resume. He actually had a real resume. His resume made Barack Obama look like a Playground Director. And he was a pleasant enough guy as well. He didn’t offend women at all either.

George’s problem wasn’t George. His problem was his followers. We were angsty. We wanted “change”. We wanted somebody who inspired us. What kid doesn’t? George was it for us. Pass the bong!

George was also rather academic. That meant smart! They called him an “egghead”. That was the equivalent word at the time for “elitist” and “snob”. George didn’t relate much to “regular folks”. He was….well….at a higher level. We young people understood what that meant. Our parents did too. They just didn’t attach the same meaning to it. Sound familiar?

George was beloved by all the kids.

He was beloved by all the college professors, especially the professors who taught Socialism and Communism.

The hippies loved George. He was like one of them only older.

George knew all the cool mannerisms and buzz words. And he knew our music. He turned us on.

The old SDS people loved George.

The anti-war people loved George.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn for sure loved George!

The American Communist Party loved George.

The American Socialist party loved George.

George was the quintessential fringe candidate.

I remember discussing how cool and Far Out George was and how odious Dick was with my parents and they gave me that “Are you crazy??!” look. I didn’t get it. McGovern was going to pull our troops out and end that stupid war. My parents wanted that war to end as much as anybody. We had relatives and friends who died there for Chrissakes. McGovern was anti-war. Nixon was not. Nixon was nothing more than the establishment. The same old boring crap! Yet my parents were going to vote for Nixon! What the hell was that all about?

What had happened to my parents? I thought they were smarter than that! Was it like some pod thing? As my generation went, I had parents I could talk to. I mean, they were pretty cool. They kept me under check and acted like real parents, but other than that annoying problem, it wasn’t as if I had to hide things from them. Except the bong of course. The truth is, these were not completely Uncool or dumb parents. Yet, here they were planning on voting for Nixon! I could see they didn’t like Nixon, so why the hell were they going to vote for him??!!!

I’m telling you, I was just so freaked over my parents’ opinion of George McGovern that I seriously thought I should leave home while I still knew everything. I mean it was clear to me that these people who spawned me had morphed into completely stupid excuses for adults. Same with my grandparents. They were all voting for Nixon. My grandfather, the card-carrying Carpenter’s Union guy! They were losing it! How could Democrats abandon their party when they had the best damned candidate ever???At this point, I was so angry at my parents that I barely tolerated allowing them to feed me, heat the house, pay the mortgage, take me on cool vacations and buy me lots of stuff.

I didn’t “get it” then, but I get it today.

The fact of the matter is, George McGovern’s followers offended and terrorized the American Electorate more than the war did!

George McGovern received 38% of the votes that year, a huge bashing. Today we would call it “Handing your ass to you on a plate“. And there we were, stuck with Dick Nixon again.

What was it about George’s followers that made Americans trip over themselves to go to the polls and vote against him? How did adult America perceive them?:

They were mean. They were nasty. They never shaved. They burned flags and bras and shit. They rioted over simply everything. They had rock concerts that destroyed entire cities. They demonstrated and held up traffic. They were all dependent on their parents and had a lot of free time to be pushy and arrogant. They were often on TV doing something that reviled the rest of America. They took drugs. They had sex all the time. There were socialists and communists and radicals of dubious intent hanging around with or worshipping George. Some of them did dangerous things like blow up buildings and crap. Now who could I possibly be referring to?

The amazing thing is, they didn’t even have the internet in those days, where McGovern followers could terrorize, insult and thwart Nixon supporters. Technology was scant by comparison to today, yet McGovern’s followers were very well “known” to the electorate. Of course, in those days, reporters actually reported the news instead of creating it. There were no Keith Olbermanns or Chris Matthews-type people stirring the pot and working diligently to make things come out the way they wanted them to be. There were no nasty bitter old men like Jack Cafferty to sneer and snort and peddle his own opinions as if they were fact. News wasn’t blocked out because it didn’t “suit” the political ideology of the networks. If it happened, it was reported, even if the reporter didn’t like it. And boy-oh-boy, did those noisy rallies of screaming angsty kids put people off.

So, in 1972, people sat around their TVs and watched the bad behavior of McGovern’s followers. They chanted for George. They hooted. They yelled. They rallied in huge crowds. They chanted some more. Everybody around him looked about 12 years old to most of America. Some of them showed up at the Democratic Convention as Delegates, displacing elected officials that Americans knew and loved. 19 year-olds were making history, so they thought. Some of them hadn’t even grown beards yet in the eyes of their ATMs known as “parents”. They wouldn’t even take out the garbage and here they were as Delegates at a convention, trying to tell everybody who should be president.

Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and their Declaration of A State of War were well established household Nightmare names by that time, and the words used to describe them weren’t pretty. Their most recent Pentagon bombing was fresh in everyone’s mind. America had watched their crap on TV over and over again, and most parents silently thanked God they didn’t produce sociopaths like those two. To America, these were two insane maniacs blowing up the country and Declaring War on simply everybody.

In 1972, People also still remembered 1968 and the violence associated with that year. That was the year Richard Nixon won his first term thanks to the behavior of Young Democrats and the infamous unruly convention. Two great men were assassinated that year, and the result was yet more violence. It was not a pretty time and voters weren’t going to give these fringe crackpots anymore shots at crashing and burning down America and promoting socialism. It was as simple as that. When I think of Recreate 68, I think, Thank You! You are helping to defeat today’s George McGovern, Barack Obama. Please keep doing what you are doing!

The electorate chose Nixon because they felt America was safer with smarmy Him in charge. If nothing else, he would reign in the angsty young I-Know-Everything “new voter registrants,” also known as “dependents” — and hopefully keep them from destroying the entire country’s infrastructure. And there were a lot of new young voter registrants in 1972. This was the first year 18-20 year-olds were allowed to vote, so the number was massive. Remember, these were the Baby Boomers — The largest block of young voters in the history of America. This voting block was far larger than the youth voting block of today. Yet……..George McGovern got 38% of the vote that year.

Nobody helped George McGovern lose that ‘72 election more than his young followers did. They were a Gift to Richard Nixon.

Today, those Baby Boomers are still a huge voting block. Except now they are grown up and they know shit from shinola.

I rest my case.