Tattered Nation

Between the January 6 prime time committee presentation on Thursday and CNN’s series about Watergate that began tonight, American history is brimming right now with painful memories. The crimes of the Nixon administration were somewhat pale compared to Trump’s, but a difference seems to be that during the Watergate era people really cared whether or not there were criminals in the White House. There is mounting evidence that what occurred on January 6 was in fact an actual coup attempt and not some spontaneous dust up: Trump had told the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by,” so when he told them that the election had been stolen from him and he needed them to come to DC and be wild, they did. It is extraordinary to me that so many people see this as simply old news.

All that will play itself out, of course, but the reason I wanted to jump on tonight is to share a quote from the Watergate era that sent chills up my spine. I had known that the War on Drugs was Richard Nixon’s diabolical political concoction, but I came across this quote from John Ehrlichman that spells it out more. Ehrlichman was a very interesting character. After serving a year and a half prison sentence for his role in the Watergate cover up, he seems to have gone full on honest and real. I remember seeing a TV interview with him and could hardly believe he was the same man.

When asked about America’s War on Drugs, these were his words…

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

“We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

The War on Drugs has been a staggering, infuriating and tragic failure, destroying way more lives than it has saved. Even Nixon admitted we didn’t really have a drug problem when he mounted it. And in all these decades no president has had the courage to simply call it off.

We’re in the middle of a decisive moment in the United States, as millions of people seem to be taking stock of just how much they really care if our democracy survives. I can’t even believe I wrote those words but they seem to be true. Each of us needs to dig deep down inside right now and ask ourselves what this country means to us. We’re a very tattered nation now and it will take all of our best efforts to inaugurate a season of repair.

Thank you for your patience while I finish my book. I so look forward to sharing some of it with you.

(One last note: I thought you might like to hear my interview on the Bari Weiss podcast. I think we talked about some important things)