#Nixonland

[deadpresidents]

Have you ever read Nixonland by Rick Perlstein?

YES, I have, and it's fantastic. Nixonland is just one part of Rick Perlstein's excellent history of the rise of the modern Conservative movement and the Republican Party as it was basically transformed in opposition to LBJ's Great Society. All of the books are incredible, deeply-researched, and -- best of all -- extremely readable. I wholeheartedly recommend each of these books by Rick Perlstein: •Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980 (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

Incidentally, Reaganland is worth buying just for the cover photograph featuring Jimmy Carter giving Ronald Reagan the most amazing side-eye ever while they were in the limousine on Reagan's Inauguration Day:

[thosearentcrimes]

Read Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. It's a very interesting book, worth reading, though unfortunately a lot of the bigger picture social theorizing is not very plausible. Still, he presents a vivid picture of 1950s and 60s US politics via the career of Richard Nixon, with engaging writing and well-chosen anecdotes.

In terms of the theorizing, while it's undeniable that Nixon benefited enormously from developments in the culture war, even Perlstein doesn't seem to attribute any particular innovations or vehemence to his use of the phenomenon, attributing that innovation more to Goldwater and Reagan. The idea that Nixon was the one to split a previously (nominally) united country into irreconcilable Nixonian and anti-Nixonian factions is thus somewhat difficult to take seriously. Nixon won the 1972 election in an overwhelming landslide, and not too long thereafter was widely reviled. That's not to say that Nixon's America was not all that polarized, just that the only use of Nixon in tracking it might be that his utter lack of principles and decent political instincts might make him temporarily an effective weathervane for public opinion.

The throughline of Orthogonians versus Franklins that runs through the book is an interesting and reasonably appropriate choice. However, I disagree with the choice to frame events and persons outside Nixon himself and his worldview in that nomenclature. Yes, one of Nixon's political successes may well have been his ability to reflect and project his own class resentments on the rest of the populace, but once we're getting outside Nixon's own mentality there is really no reason to stick with his purported high school resentments.

In fact, as defined by the author, the Orthogonians and Franklins are quite simply the petite and the grande bourgeoisie, respectively. I understand that using terminology notoriously popular among Marxists would not have been a great way to sell books in 2008 (or for that matter now), and I respect the choice to avoid those terms. That said, to those of us familiar with the terms it is not in fact going to come as a revelation that Nixon and other right-wing demagogues positioned themselves as representatives and protectors of a radically conservative petite bourgeoisie resentful of the grands and hateful towards the underclasses, all the while cultivating very close relations with and predominantly doing the bidding of large industrialists. It's just the done thing, and was long before Nixon, you know?

Anyway, I recommend people read it for themselves. It's a good book.

[freddieandflorence]

i need to get back onto the sleeping grindset. so i don’t fall ill

[titoist]

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws. That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

[…]

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

[...]

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University. It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard. Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

[...]

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

- "THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER…. HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA…. BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT." Hunter S. Thompson, May 1, 1994

[goshdangronpa]

Today's musical mood:

Different strokes for different folks

So on and so forth and scooby-dooby-doo

[gorillaxyz]

im gonna try draw him skancing now. i need to find a ska revival song that fits him though... ill be leaning more into the specials idk if any madness song would fit him. however... hmmm. ill give them a try anyway because they arent all baggy trousers and our house you know...

[azspot]

On social media, the writer Rick Perlstein has been discussing, with reference to his book Nixonland, the policing of unrest back then versus the policing of unrest now and pointing out that since 9/11, a riot-gear posture of emergency has become so ordinary that armed-up, militarized, SWAT-like equipment and attitude are common even in small towns where nothing much goes on in the way of crowd action: a militarized crowd-control vibe is simply what much of policing looks and feels like now. People taking issue with Perlstein’s history point to the many times in the ‘60’s when police and the military ran amok and/or harmed or even killed protestors, but I think that just underscores his point. Columbia (‘68), Chicago (‘68), and Kent State (‘70) are examples of uprisings where—the behavior of those cracking down aside—varying degrees of genuinely insurrectionary violence were really going on.

Students Protesting?

[racefortheironthrone]

I am not an American and I didn't know about Kissinger until today. Do you have any texts you would recommend for someone who wants to find out the shit he did?

I would start with Spencer Ackerman's obituary and maybe read Sy Hersh's book on Kissinger and Nixon, The Price of Power, or perhaps Rick Perlstein's Nixonland if you need a long read.

[shunnedmorlock]

Hi! Im so interested in your alicent = richard nixon, rhaenyra = john f. kennedy parallels thing .Do you mind explaining?

Have a good day/night!

yeah so a lot of this is inspired by Nixonland by Rick Perlstein which is one of the best books you'll find on the 1960s and early 70s and Nixon in particular. really if you're interested at all in American conservatism check all his books out, they're amazing. also want to preface this with the fact that this isn't based on their political ideologies because neither Rhaenyra nor Alicent really have one beyond "Targaryen absolutism" and "Faith-backed feudalism" respectively. there is no left and no right because there is no French revolution

but basically, Perlstein's thesis is that a lot of how Nixon viewed politics and how he gained power went back to his time at Whittier College. now Whittier had a couple of prominent social clubs, most notably, the Franklins, which were old-money, sophisticated elites. Nixon was not born into wealth - he was born to a family that did own a bit of land/business, but constantly struggled to make ends meet and were always precarious. for lack of a better term, he was white trash - the "used car salesman" thing is actually a jab at this since it's a middle-class but low-prestige occupation. naturally, he did not gel well with the Franklins at Whittier, and so he was one of the founding members of a new social club for the ladder-climbing social strivers who also felt looked-down upon by sophisticated elites: the Orthogonians. John F. Kennedy, on the other hand, was probably the living embodiment of the "Franklin" - even his liberalism came from the type of noblesse oblige that infuriated the petit-bourgeoisie Nixon. so losing to Nixon kind of drove him crazy.

you can do even more psychoanalysis on Nixon and his class resentments of liberal elites (READ NIXONLAND) but i'll stop it there. Rhaenyra is a Franklin: she has never once been in doubt that she will live an extraordinarily privileged life. For her, being an elite comes so naturally that she often doesn't even register that she is an elite. encounters with the lower classes engender a mix of disgust and patrician obligation. Though this self-assuredness can make her arrogant and reckless at times, it also gives her a sort of magnetism that draws people to follow her (Alicent, Criston, in the books all those random petty lords and hedge knights and smallfolk in the Riverlands who remember the Realm's Delight). She has vaguely liberal/cosmopolitan sensibilities (caring too much about homosexuality or adultery is just so gauche, darling), but isn't a revolutionary.

Alicent, on the other hand, is an Orthogonian. she doesn't come from nothing - far from it! but the privileges she does possess don't come from dynastic wealth, but her father having a good job that he got through (relatively) meritocratic means. Alicent and Otto are painfully aware that whatever privileges they possess come from Otto being useful to the Targaryens, and should either make a misstep, they would have to go to their brother/uncle on bended knee to beg for a handout. This makes both Otto and Alicent both deeply neurotic and even paranoid, but also extremely hard-working and driven.

important to keep in mind that neither of these are strictly speaking "good" things to be and the vast majority of Westerosi people (peasants, laborers, pretty much all commoners except maybe wealthy merchants or artisans) do not fall into either of these categories

[woodsteingirl]

the forty hour nixon book is called nixonland and i feel like it’s thee authoritative text about him in the same way that robert dallek’s an unfinished life is the authoritative kennedy text

[frankenshane]

so i'm listening to the audio book of perlstein's nixonland and i cannot overstate how punchable dick nixon is as a person before politics even enters the equation. this is also a very well-written book and i appreciate that it's very california-forward.

[deadpresidents]

Do you really read the books that you recommend? Someone asked about Nixonland and you not only said you read it but conveniently read all of the other books by the same author and it just seems unlikely to even have every one of the books from the author that the person who asked the question just brought up. I'm not saying you aren't being honest but I'm just curious!!!!!!!

Here's a Proof of Life photo for the Rick Perlstein (author of Nixonland) books you were curious about.

I don't recommend a book unless I've personally read it. I have a lot of books. I don't sleep very much. And I don't have a very exciting social life. So I read a lot of books. I certainly wouldn't want someone to suggest a book to me if they've never read it, and that's not something I'm ever going to do.

[freddiegoesmetal]

3 + 22

3. What were your top five books of the year?

rebecca by daphne du maurier, poisoner in chief by stephen kinzer, secret city by james kirchick, nixonland by rick perlstein, and all the president’s men by bob woodward and carl bernstein ‼️

22. What’s the longest book you read?

either nixonland or the brothers karamazov.. i’m unsure because i don’t remember the exact page counts of my books so i’m going off of the goodreads ones.

[freddieandflorence]

my hips are killing me

[kneworder]

hey, just checking in to make sure you're doing okay. i've seen the posting about the us election, and i know everything seems bad right now but i just wanted to say i hope you're doing alright, and that you're taking care of yourself throughout this time <3

deregulation is the scariest thing in the world to me �� learning about propaganda and the neutering of the FCC in high school is what made me choose to major in media + cultural studies in college — so the schedule F stuff is SO hard not to go doom mode about when deregulation is some of the longest lasting least reversible and most long-term devastating legislation passed under Reagan and Bush, as far as I can tell. we’re still fucking paying for it every god damn day and it’s a massive part of the reason (if not the main one) we’ve ended up where we have — seriously, look into the fairness doctrine and then think about how people responded to Nixon’s impeachment vs Trump’s and try not to want to walk into the ocean.

still. we’ll be fine. we’ve done it before, and we can do it again. I just need to keep reminding myself that lots of things have gotten better even in the wake of reaganomics and fucking nixonland so they’ll get better in a post-Trump world. there’s little wins to celebrate every day! gay marriage wasn’t legal at all 10 years ago! things will get better even if some other things get worse.

thank you for checking in!! it’s been a tough semester if I’m so honest (when hasn’t it been) so the election was NOT the spark of hope I kind of needed right now but now that the shock is wearing off like I’m fine. I’m not the most high risk demographic in a Trump administration by a long shot. it still sucks ass to think of going back into the awful 2016-2020 headspace of bracing for the worst news alert you’ve ever heard gracing your lockscreen in the morning but it’s not surprising and it’s not the end of the world. we’ll keep fighting and we’ll keep living and we’ll keep working and taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other and the world will keep turning. I’m doing okay!! I hope you are too!!

[evilrichardnixon]

sorry to bother but is there a definitive nixon biography or a few good ones about him that you’d recommend? I’m trying learn more about him, preferably with a focus on his politics

While I personally don’t think there is one definitive Nixonian text, a rather comprehensive start would be Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland.” It’s a good mix of biographical and political analysis. With Nixon I’ve found the two are pretty intertwined. There are also different books that focus on key moments in his political career.