You should look up LBJ’s comments about race and poverty. It clears a lot of this up. Say what you will, because as a person LBJ had a TON of faults, but overall he did have a heart of gold in several important ways.
Missed a big one, the Ehrlichman quote, "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." Goggle it. Ehrlichman was a top aide of Nixon's who went to prison for Watergate. Quote is from an interview after he got out. He relates the whole purpose of the "War on Drugs " was to go after blacks and hippies who they saw as their enemies. It was the only Federal jurisdiction that was available, since law enforcement is mostly state and local.
This was brilliant! Thank you Erin (yes, your voice is purrfect) and thank you Crooked Media. Love your work. Big hellos from Adelaide, South Australia
One BIG fact left out of this lesson: Roger Ailes was a young Nixon staffer - who went on to found Fox News. That’s an important link between the culture wars of yore and the culture wars of today! I’m surprised you guys missed that link. That would be a good topic for a follow-up video to this one.
This is great - thanks, Crooked. 1968 was what turned 13 year old me into a radical liberal little peacenik hippie freak - it’s why I’ve been a lifelong liberal Democrat. My dad & I battled nightly at the dinner table about the war, civil rights and Nixon. God rest his soul, he went to his grave believing Nixon was framed in Watergate. Don’t even get me started on the Southern Strategy….
Really really thorough - I love how specific it is. I never even really put all these pieces together but now that makes SO MUCH sense. I'm just terrified of how much longer this could go on - I feel that it gets much more dangerous each and every term yikes.
A good summary of the Political history of the culture wars. Brevity obviously matters in this form, but would be interesting to have more detail on the 'people' side of the story post-Nixon. I.e. it makes sense that the politicians adopted it after it worked, but why did it continue to work for the people between the 'scared of change' narrative of the 60's to Al being angry at immigrants in the 2010's, even in periods without assassinations and mass civil rights movements. Feel like there's some interesting things there but I don't know enough social history.
I’m a Regan Republican. While i dont agree w/ your generalizations entirely, you did an excellent job of making your case, especially the more subtle ones through the use of images recognized by those of us who are old enough to have lived through much of it. And here is one back to you, from president Andrew Shepard in 1995: “We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she's to blame for their lot in life. And you go on television and you call her a whore.” Art imitating reality and back again.
Erin, as one who lived through the time before the rise of student protests and through the counterculture, I want to advise you that you have your dates wrong and you don't really understand the student protests or the counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. There is so much more to this story that you have overlooked. You need facts, stories and perspectives from those of us still alive before we pass on because history gets corrupted the farther away from it we get.
I would like to ask who is the oldest person advising the writers of this episode? People who lived through the 1950's to now might disagree with your take on events.
As a Minnesotan, YOU'RE WELCOME. =P That "old Nixon with a head injury" is the best thing I ever heard about Trump. And Erin delivering the line makes it all the better. She's got the "he's an idiot" voice down pat.
Going to totally disagree with you...Think about Al...not the one in your video-Al Smith Just because anti-Catholicism is still a culture war thing doesn't mean that Bobby Kennedy's speech and understanding, came out of no where and Reagan's big contribution to the culture war was the mythical and reviled "Welfare Queen"
The democrats abandoning working class politics for neoliberalism definitely has nothing to do with inflaming the culture war. Because their shift to a party of corporations and the professional managerial class means their interests are aligned with republicans on economy so their confrontations with conservatives must now be cultural. But a succinct video by former Obama staffers, with a nice advertisement in the middle for index fund “Demz” 😂, curiously omits this.
You said “and we all know what happened next” … are You sure everyone actually knows? All I know is “watergate” but really I don’t know what it means….
I don't know that it's in the brief for the series (though it might be, since the history of presidential scandals and their coverage is certainly notable for today's political atmosphere) so, for a basic breakdown: Watergate was a break-in overseen by members of Nixon's white house to spy on the Democrats, where the burglars got caught, the White House tried to cover up their involvement and got caught, and the scandal got dozens of people fired, several went to jail, and Nixon had to resign. For a mildly more thorough breakdown: Nixon has always been kind of paranoid, and during his administration, there's a huge leak, the Pentagon Papers, that proves that LBJ's administration lied about Vietnam. Nixon hates this, and his staff creates a clandestine group "the plumbers", to 'stop the leaks'. Basically a little group of spies for Nixon in his own White House. Like, they break into the office of the psychiatrist of the reporter who leaked the Pentagon papers to try and get dirt on him. This group ends up interacting with the Committee to Re-Elect the President, a group that's raising funds for Nixon's re-election/serving as a money-laundering front for some of the sketchy shit the Plumbers are doing. And the two go a little crazy on plans to help the campaign. Like straight up "what if we performed acts of espionage and sabotage on Democrats/activists?" Stuff like "Let's kidnap protest leaders and leave them in Mexico!" and "let's convince Democratic senators to come onto a house boat that we'll have filled with prostitutes, and take pictures of them for blackmail!" (It should be noted that the CRP has a couple ex-CIA and FBI guys in it, so presumably they're the ones who come up with this.) The White House says "Jesus, this is crazy, tone it down a little." To which the group goes "Okay, fine. We'll just break into their office, take pictures of some documents, and bug their phones." Which is still hugely illegal, but like, at least it's not "blackmailing senators". And hey, they already did that one break-in, so sure, go ahead. They break into the DNC's offices (after a first failed attempt), which were in the Watergate Hotel, and place a couple bugs. The ONE bug they place that works at all ends up going bad within a week, so a little over a week after that, they break-in again to replace it and take more pictures. During THAT break-in, they get caught. And it's a BAD catch. Like, two of the burglars have the names and phone-numbers of White House personnel with their gear. The burglars have personal connections with the Plumbers, and within a couple weeks, it'll be found that some of the burglars were PAID in checks made out to the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Now, there's some evidence that, until after the break-in, Nixon is completely out of the loop. He's not mentioned as being informed, he doesn't sign anything involved with it, there's a conversation a couple days later where he seems to learn about the White House's involvement. When he DOES, he orders it covered up. And the cover-up is where it all goes wrong for Nixon. Like, with the hindsight of history, it seems pretty clear this was ALWAYS going to be traced back to the White House: there's the address book, the checks, a member of the Plumbers has to have his own wife kidnapped for a couple days because one of the burglars on the news was her friend and she would definitely identify him to the press as "someone who works with my husband", there's just too much evidence. You might have been able to pull a "I never knew, and I'm ashamed my friends and advisors would stoop to such a level" to get out of it, but trying to cover it up just made him a part of it too. EDIT: cleared up a couple little typos. "raising" instead of "raiding", and clarifying that the reporter did not work in the psychiatrists' office, but rather it was the psychiatrist providing him care.
The DEMZ thing grossed me out and I turned off the video. The democrats will keep losing as long as they keep aligning with monied interests like that. We need the party to get back to truly being a working people's party, like Wellstone said. Trying to have it both ways reads as BS to voters, and only plays right into rightwing talking points about liberals.
Just flat out wrong. That's what happens when an English major writes history, based entirely on internet sources (written by other English majors). Dozens of award winning books by historians and political scientists with PhDs (i.e., trained) tell a different story about Nixon and his legacy. Some of those authors are still teaching at a college near you, and would love to help out.
@@andrewmastin4312 PSA is not even telling you 1/2 the story, there is really no history in the pod. It’s just a blank accusation that Nixon is bad and Rep started the culture war. Anything about the hippies outside the Wight house chanting “ hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today “ that drove LBJ crazy. Nothing really on the fact that Nixon was extremely popular when elected. It was a wight wash of history to ding wight men and Ben Shipero.
@@rsmith6366 And the simulated right-winger was, sorry, dumb af.... that definitely didn't work. This host, Erin, isn't dumb or bad. This piece, however, imo, missed the mark. It's not a personal attack, simply an opinion from a Crooked Media subscriber and huge fan.
@@ChristiaanHartNibbrig Explain a bit about how this missed the mark? I know this isnt the format for an elaborate response but a few bullet points, please.
@@weston.weston I did. It was reductive and oversimplified. There were many factors, along with Nixon, that "invented" the "culture wars." The simulated, single right-winger was dumb af, in my view. I learned nothing. I don't think the host, Erin, is terrible, and it's not personal. But this wasn't good. I'm a huge CM fan, btw, especially the core five.
