Reply #75: OK ... let's get real [View All]

[The Traveler]

When Jimmy Carter takes office, the conditions for stagflation have already been established and the economy was headed that way. (We were already discussing it in my freshman economics course at Georgia Tech.) We were fresh from the multi-tentacular humiliations of Viet Nam (Iraq with foliage) and faced the chore of reviving a tattered military while fending off a variety of hostile powers just waiting for the chance to clean our clocks. The nation was absorbing massive change, and much of that change was unplanned, unwanted, unfamiliar, and down right scary in its economic implications.

One term presidencies are to be expected in those conditions.

Ted Kennedy ... yeah. Lots of people were mightily pissed off at him. I was merely one of many. The party was quite divided by his candidacy, people were bitter about it, and assertions to the contrary in this thread really don't jive with my recollections of those times, which include breaking up a fist fight outside Manual's Tavern in Atlanta. Of course, that was way before Internet based forums such as this so the screaming matches were considerably more tasteful and restrained. Given Kennedy's campaign against him, the outcome of certain unfortunate events on the ground, etc. Carter's re-election hopes were subject to a sudden crash.

The result ... nearly 28 years of inaction on achieving energy independence, facing up to the unfolding ecological nightmare that now confronts us, and a subtle but determined and sustained effort to revert social progress.

I'm no longer mad at Ted Kennedy. He continued his worthy work and has never surrendered. Jimmy Carter has been shown to be one of the wisest men of the 20th Century. But, still, here we are today ... confronting processes that bear real potential for turning the land of the free into a vast concentration camp of the soul.

So ... we gonna fight this thing? Or are we gonna fight each other? I don't care if a Black Man, a White Woman, or a Speckled Dwarf wins the nomination so long as that person is determined to fight this thing and has the heart, the head, and the hands to lead our people to that essential victory.