One advantage of living a long life is that it offers a broader perspective: What appears to be a one-off event turns out to be a recurring pattern, bubbling up from a deeper impulse.
Coming of age in the 1960s, I lived through a time when our nation was more deeply divided than it is today. It reached its zenith during President Nixon’s reign of imperial overreach, including his doubling down on the war in Vietnam.
Like our current administration, Nixon’s was riddled by widespread corruption, overt lawbreaking and naked retribution against his enemies. His administration pitted older Americans against the young, city dwellers against rural folks, and divided what Nixon called “the silent majority” (meaning white older Americans) against those who were Black and Brown.
To illustrate the severity of this polarization, I need only point to how many of our leading voices were gunned down, a group including JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X. It was hard to avoid the polarized violence, whoever you were.
As a long-haired college student working construction to put myself through college, I’ve had to occasionally dodge industrial-sized nuts and bolts dropped by steelworkers from the structure above.
And once, after a “stop the war” protest in New York City, a friend and I were surrounded by rampaging construction workers wielding crowbars and clubs, part of the “Hard Hat Riot of 1970.” We were saved from a nasty beating or worse by the swift arrival of NYC’s Men in Blue.
But, in the end, it wasn’t Nixon’s imperial overreach that brought him down, but a second-rate burglary: the famous Watergate caper where Nixon got busted for orchestrating the break-in of the Democratic Committee Headquarters as part of his broader illegal campaign of political espionage. Nixon was forced to step down as a result of a courageous Congress standing up to him, forcing him to resign.
Our nation was chagrined by his unlawful conduct and passed new laws to hopefully prevent similar actions by future rogue presidents. In the next election, American citizens spurned typical run-of-the-mill politicians and elected an up-to-then unknown Georgia peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, whose campaign pledge was “I will never lie to you.”
Jimmy Carter was the opposite of Nixon.
Religion was the cornerstone of Carter’s life, guiding his moral compass, political decisions and post-presidency humanitarian work as a deeply committed Christian. It drove his dedication to human rights, racial equality and peace, including the Camp David Accords, which led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.
Unfortunately, Carter was defeated in his bid for reelection by a charismatic movie star named Ronald Reagan. Carter, lacking a magnetic personality, lost. Among other reasons, our country was going through an economic recession, along with Carter’s troubling relationship with Congress, in no small part because of his uncompromising moral stands.
Here’s where history might repeat itself.
Once again, in the person of Donald Trump, we have a rogue president who, like Nixon, is unabashedly corrupt and immoral. His latest and most damaging action, starting an unwinnable war against Iran, will be the final nail in the coffin of his presidency.
The question is, who will we elect to succeed Trump?
What are the chances it could once again be an unknown candidate from the South, another deeply devoted individual like Jimmy Carter? A Christian committed to reclaiming what he sees as core principles of their faith in American political life, including compassion for immigrants, helping the poor and loving one’s neighbor.
Against all odds, I believe that person has arrived: his name is James Talarico. He’s now catching fire all around the country, emerging as a “rising star” following his recent unexpected victory in the Texas Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.
But perhaps this isn’t just a strange coincidence. Maybe it’s evidence of a deeper spiritual urge that underlies all societies, announcing itself in the specific faith of the country under threat: a sacred force pulling us back up whenever our community falls into the darkness of a dog-eat-dog world where the only law is survival of the fittest.
Jean Stimmell, retired stone mason and psychotherapist, lives in Northwood and blogs at jstim.substack.com.