Ever since Donald Trump’s victory—a phrase I still find hard to write—I’ve been trying to soothe freaked-out millennials by telling them: (1) I can remember a time that may have been worse, and (2) don’t worry, our local leaders, like Mayor Rahm Emanuel, won’t abandon us in this fight.
For those who might be thinking, Oh, but Nixon wasn’t as bad as Trump is, I urge you to read Tim Weiner’s book One Man Against the World, which is based largely on transcripts of conversations Nixon secretly recorded in the White House.
On election night Nixon came before a cheering crowd of well-lubricated Republicans chanting “12 more years”—an allusion to vice president Spiro Agnew, who was as loathsome in his race-baiting rhetoric as Bannon is now, and who was presumably waiting in the wings to carry on Nixon’s legacy.
Again, my point here isn’t to say that Trump doesn’t pose a grave threat to American democracy—he does—but rather to say that we’ve faced such threats before.
Then, in 1974, Nixon himself stepped down—one step ahead of impeachment—as the Watergate scandal unraveled. Someday, if you’re lucky, I’ll treat you to Benny’s diary entries on that.
“We know what it feels like to be seen as ‘the other,’” Pawar wrote in a letter to his constituents. “Economic policies, widening income inequality, and a lack of investment in communities manifested itself in the results on Tuesday night. We must deal with these issues and hear people before suffering forces more people into the arms of a demagogue.”
