The New Democrat

Oh the 1970s, a decade about sacrifice and millions of Americans learning about their government and their politicians and that they didn’t like a lot of them. But of course as George Carlin always said, “no one put a gun to your head and forced you to vote for. A or B or reelect A or B”. That we get the politicians and the government that we vote for. So who do voters who vote for the wrong people have to blame.

The 1970s starts off radically enough with the Vietnam War and millions of Americans wanting to get the hell out of there. And can you blame them with all the people we lost. To Vietnam War demonstrations with a crime family running the White House. Because they didn’t trust their own country and their own people and a lot of them voted for Richard Nixon. To Watergate and the Nixon team breaking into Democratic headquarters. That didn’t have a January heat wave in Alaska’s chance of defeating President Nixon for president. To a president essentially being forced to resign as president or be fired by Congress.

We go from Tricky Dick Nixon as president. To stumbling bumbling Gerry Ford as president, our own president who was never elected president or vice president. It gave Americans a taste of what communist rule looks like and they spit that out by voting for a peanut brain, I mean peanut farmer in Jimmy Carter for president. Whose idea of leadership was to blame America for the country’s problems.

It is a good thing I was only alive for four years of the 1970s. Because if I had to go through that whole decade and old enough to remember all of it, I might have ended up being institutionalized for depression. Because the 1970s was a depressing decade. Sure the women’s designer denim jeans revolution of the late 1970s helped and was great for men to see, but most of the rest of the decade was depressing.