Worse Than Nixon? Trump's Wartime Visit To Kenosha, Wisconsin, And Nixon's To The Lincoln Memorial DMT.NEWS
Article by WN.Com Correspondent Dallas Darling
2020 is starting to feel more like 1970. Not only has a pandemic killed over three times as many Americans as Vietnam, but the year has been filled with social unrest and violence spilling over into the streets of most major cities. Consequently, both Richard Nixon and Donald Trump found themselves embroiled in wars. Nixon’s quagmire was inherited, Vietnam. Trump’s wars were self-inflicted. The war against COVID-19 which he already lost was due to six months of denial and a failed response. The other war, a “culture” and ‘identity war,” has been a part of American politics for decades. The only difference is this one may be on the side of protesters.
Like the immigrant invasion he warned about in 2016, Trump thinks the nation is being overrun with “anarchists, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and violent mobs.”
Critics however say they are mostly imaginary. He created the hate and division in the street and level of violence not seen for decades. Calling himself a “war-time” president, his armed security forces and pro-Trump loyalists have beat, tear gassed, and fatally shot Black Lives Matter protesters, Wall of Moms, unemployed workers, and disgruntled youth kept from the American Dream. Despite what some call belligerent patriotism, he decided to visit Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Nixon did not fare any better. Instead of ending the Vietnam conflict as promised, he widened it by secretly ordering the invasion and bombing of Laos and Cambodia. The student strikes that followed in 1970 was a massive protest across the county. It included walkouts from colleges and high school classrooms and the bombings of ROTC buildings. The strike began on May 1 but increased significantly after the shooting of students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen on May 4. It was then that Nixon made a surprise visit to the Lincoln Memorial, where he spoke with anti-war protesters and students for almost two hours.
Why the Lincoln Memorial?
One possible motive for Nixon’s sudden visit to protesting students may have been his Quaker beliefs, which Friends members claim was his first cover-up. Nixon grew up with evangelical Quakerism, a pacifist religion. But as an adult, he kept Quakerism at arm’s length. Quakers continued to reach out to Nixon, urging him to end the Vietnam war. If it were Quakerism, this would explain his odd sentence about pollution and “sterile, without spirit,” or why he was unable to sleep that night, thinking about the four college students killed at Kent State. Did Nixon’s Quaker beliefs and conscience somehow get the best of him that night? (1)
Staging a public relations coup by provoking anti-war protesters might have been another reason for Nixon’s visit. His valet said he was hoping stones or punches would be thrown at him. When this did not occur, he gave a glowing account of his visit the next day to the press, painting himself as a gutsy, sympathetic, but in-control leader willing to confront his critics while imparting hard-fought wisdom to them. Nixon said he told students: “I hope your hatred of the war, which I could well understand, would not turn into a bitter hatred of our whole system, our country and everything that it stood for.” (2) Students that were there disagree, saying he was incoherent.
Some think Nixon’s surprise visit was due to alcoholism, since he was prone to drinking, or a dislocated personality. Author Anthony Summers writes in, “The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon,” Nixon had called NBC reporter Nancy Dickerson before making his visit. She later told her husband, “That man has not been drinking, but I would feel better if he had been.” She believed the president was suffering “a dislocation of personality,” a mental disorder characterized by the maintenance of at least two distinct personality states. At the Lincoln Memorial, the “other” Nixon was on display, a more understanding one.
Birth order may have been another reason. Nixon was the second son in a family of five boys, a middle child. Consequently, the middle child plays the role of a negotiator between siblings. Was Nixon trying to do the same with the students protesting his policies in Indochina? Conrad Black, Nixon’s biographer, also suspects the deaths of how two brothers impacted Nixon. “He just decided to sink those tragedies deep in his mind and never talk about them again.” Learning the psychological strategy to decompartmentalize conflicting ideas and separate self-states may have made him an ideal candidate for a troubled America caught up in a losing war. (3)
Why Kenosha, Wisconsin?
When Trump announced his visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers warned the president’s visit “will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward together.” (4) That work concerns Jacob Blake, a 29-year old Black man who was shot four times in the back and seriously injured by White police officers. Left clinging to life and paralyzed from the waist down, protests erupted across the city. The shooting followed other incidents of police brutality, like the death of George Floyd who also was Black. A White police officer applied pressure to his neck for over eight minutes as Floyd said, “I can’t breathe,” more than 20 times and suffocated.
The president’s visit came days after 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, an armed vigilante and ardent Trump supporter from Illinois, shot and killed two people during protests in Kenosha. Rittenhouse’s arrest has been denounced by the president and right-wing pundits. They defend the shooter who is facing six criminal counts, including first-degree intentional homicide, on the basis that he was trying to restore law-and-order and acting in self-defense. Critics disagree since he traveled across state lines and was not allowed to possess a weapon. Video moreover shows he was the aggressor, the one that put the night of violence into motion.
As Trump visited Kenosha, he met with police and responders, saying he wanted to “increase enthusiasm” and “love and respect for our country.” As for not meeting with Jacob Blake, Trump said,
“I thought it would be better to not do anything where there are lawyers involved.”
The president also lauded his own Trump loyalists, noting they were protesting the media failing to condemn violence in Democratic-run cities. He again suggested the Kenosha protest shooter-Rittenhouse-acted in self-defense when he killed two protesters and injured a third. “He was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed. It’s under investigation” Trump said. (5)
Critics say Trump’s visit to Kenosha was a photo-op for white-nationalists, a call for his army to declare war on “this horrible left-wing ideology” and “Democratic politicians.” Others note his malignant narcissism, or how his ego is fed when people fight over him, or his inability to identify with the suffering-comparing police officers who shoot unarmed Black suspects to golfers that “choke” and “miss a 3-foot putt” in golf. They point to his support for Rittenhouse and refusal to meet with Jacob Blake’s family.
Joe Biden went to Kenosha today and did what a president should. He listened and centered the people in the communi… https://t.co/r9chhulM4O
2020-09-03 20:06:42
19782Will Democrat Governor Tony Evers – or anyone in the media – ask Joe Biden to stay away like they did with Presiden… https://t.co/bJq82Kl6xa
2020-09-03 13:19:08
17676This is a lie. The paper Ms. Bennett chose not to read from was from her own organization, Black Lives Activists Ke… https://t.co/MKgCYAkJoE
2020-09-03 21:07:53
14“We’re still suffering because there are two justice systems. There’s one for that white boy that walked down the street and killed two people and blew another man’s arm off. Then there’s one for my son,” said Jacob Blake Sr. (6)
Worse Than Nixon?
Trump’s round table visit to Kenosha came after other visits to areas of racial and social unrest, the most controversial being Lafayette Park and St. John’s Episcopal Church. To portray himself as a courageous, law-and-order, and wartime president, and to appeal to his mainly White-Nationalist and Evangelical-Right base, he ordered peaceful protesters to be forcibly removed from the area. Security forces acknowledged they beat protesters, used rubber bullets and chemical agents, and detained two foreign journalists covering the spectacle. (7) After Lafayette Park had been cleared, Trump staged a photo in front of the closed church with a Bible in hand.
It would be easy to argue Trump is worse than Nixon, especially when considering their visits to Kenosha and the Lincoln Memorial. Indeed, some psychologists have diagnosed the president as a sadist filled with vengeance. “Get even with people … screw them back,” writes Trump in “Think Big.” (8) But this would miss a much larger picture: the Vietnam conflict that led to the deaths of six million people. Trump is not even near this number as a wartime president-at least yet. Still, he is a desperate leader that has declared war against a certain part of America and against actual Americans. With five months left until a new president is sworn-in, almost anything can happen.
Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)
(1) https://www.friendsjournal.org/book/nixons-first-cover-up-the-religious-life-of-a-quaker-president/.
(3) https://www.businessinsider.com/us-presidents-birth-order-2018-7.
(5) https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/kenosha-wisconsin-riots-violence/2020/08/31/id/984781/.
(8) https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-obsessed-with-revenge
via https://www.DMT.NEWS/
by , Khareem Sudlow
