More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He was only mildly diverted by the spectacle of the Chicago police running amok. A few hundred demonstrators were peacefully sitting down in the road outside the convention center. The police were wading into them with nightsticks, savagely beating everyone, as if they did not realize they were committing criminal assault live on television—or, more likely, they knew but did not care.
It was the end of nonviolence as a political strategy, he guessed. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had both been wrong, and now they were dead. The Black Panthers were right.
Mayor Daley, Governor Ronald Reagan, presidential candidate George Wallace, and all their racist police chiefs would use violence against anyone whose ideas they found distasteful. Black people needed guns to protect themselves.
How can the US condemn Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia ? How can we talk of another's violation of civil rights?
Walli heard, from outside the room, sounds of more doors being broken down and more screaming people being dragged from their beds and beaten. “The Chicago police can do anything they like,” he said. “It’s worse than East Berlin.”
“But you’re against the war, and you favor civil rights for Negroes, albeit not too soon; so you agree with Humphrey on the issues.” “To hell with the issues. I have a wife and three kids, a mortgage and a car loan; they’re my issues.
At that moment Dave felt, with an overwhelming sense of impending doom, that Nixon was going to win.
Nixon isn’t Lyndon Johnson. Nixon understands foreign policy—better than most people in Washington, probably. Don’t be fooled by his dumb-ass talk about Commies, that’s just for the benefit of his supporters in the trailer parks.”
“Nixon will get us out of Vietnam, and
he’ll say we lost the war because the peace movement undermined the military.” “So what will bring him down?” “Dick Nixon lies,” Greg said. “He lies just...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
But few people lie as much and as shamelessly as Nixon. He’s a cheat and a crook. He’s gotten away with it until now. People do. But it’s different when you’re president.
Nixon had won. The decadent, liberal sixties were coming to an end. From now on people
would have to work for what they wanted, not demand it by going on demonstrations. America was once again going to become strong, disciplined, conservative, and rich. There would be a new regime in Washington.
Nixon wouldn’t be as bad as we all feared. He’s done more for black people than anyone ever expected.” She ticked off items on her fingers. “One: He forced the construction unions to accept more blacks in their industry. The unions fought him hard on that but he held out. Two: He helped minority businesses. In three years, minorities’ share of government contracts has gone from eight million dollars to two hundred forty-two million dollars. Three: He desegregated our schools. We had the laws in place already, but Nixon enforced them. By the time Nixon’s first term ends, the proportion of
...more
“The administration also does things that are just plain wrong—I mean criminal. The president acts as if the law doesn’t apply to him!”
“We’re so shocked because Nixon and Agnew got elected by promising law and order. The blatant hypocrisy of it all makes us kind of furious.”
Nixon used the power of the presidency to help his friends. He also attacked his enemies, directing tax audits and other investigations at corporations that donated to the Democrats.
the last two years the White House had placed a total of seventeen wiretaps, all approved by the attorney general on grounds of national security and installed by the FBI. Cam was on his way to get authorization for number eighteen.
Communism’s biggest problem was that the all-embracing authority of the party always stifled change. The
Soviet system was helplessly frozen in a terrified conservatism, just as the regime of the tsars had been sixty years earlier, when
George McGovern, one of the most unsuccessful candidates in American history, got only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Maria was amazed by Nixon. He had no dignity. As more and more people realized what a fraud he was, he did not resign, but stayed in the White House, blustering and obfuscating and threatening and lying, lying, lying.
Nixon’s approval rating fell to 44–45—the first time he had ever scored negative.
A month after the resignation, President Ford pardoned Nixon.
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was a tough anti-Communist, but Carter was cautious. However, it was election year, and Cam hoped Ronald Reagan would get in. Reagan was aggressive on foreign policy, and promised to liberate intelligence agencies from Carter’s milk-and-water ethical constraints. He would be more like Nixon, Cam hoped.
In the USA, Lili’s father said, conservatives accused environment campaigners of being antibusiness.
The government had published a draft bill on workers’ self-government that gave employees the right to be consulted about management appointments. Tanya reflected wryly that President Reagan would never for one minute consider giving such rights to Americans.
The Soviets’ worst fear was that the Polish crusade for freedom would spread to other Iron Curtain countries—and the delegates were rashly encouraging just that! The invasion now seemed inevitable.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev did not want to invade Poland. He could not afford to lose credit with Western banks. He had a different
Martial law would be declared, all freedoms would be suspended, and all agreements made with Solidarity would be reversed.
But now the workers were off guard. They were also hungry, tired, and cold. Everything was scarce, inflation was rampant, and food distribution was sabotaged by Communist bureaucrats who wanted the old days back. Jaruzelski calculated that the people would take only so much hardship before they began to feel that the return of authoritarian government might be a blessing.
“The Soviets will not invade. We know that. The Polish Communists asked them to, and they refused point-blank. But Brezhnev is pressing Jaruzelski to declare martial law and abolish Solidarity.”
The troops swarming into the center of Warsaw were not Russians, however. This was not like Prague in 1968. The vehicles had Polish army markings and the soldiers wore Polish uniforms. The Poles had invaded their own capital.
In reality Reagan’s plan was to cut Social Security and Medicare. If he had his way, unemployed men and welfare mothers would lose out to finance the boom in the defense industry.
The upshot was a rise in government borrowing. Reagan had increased the deficit. All those shiny new weapons for the Pentagon would be paid for by future generations.
“Well, at least we’re not financing them. I got the money from the Saudis—three million dollars.”
The Soviet Union is bust, bankrupt, broke. The falling price of oil is the cause of the immediate crisis, but the long-term problem is the crippling underperformance of the planned economy. And it’s too severe to be cured by canceling orders for missiles and making more blue jeans.”
“We’re going to stop subsidizing you.” “Hungary?” “All the East European states. You’ve never paid for your standard of living.
Russia is too broke to subsidize its satellites
We finance it, by selling you oil and other raw materials below market prices, and buying
your crappy manufactures that no one...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“But that’s the only way to keep the population quiet and the Communist Party in power. If their standard of living falls, it won’t be long before they st...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“Are you telling me that forty years of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe is coming to an end, and we are going to be independent countries?” “Exactly.” Bíró looked at Dimka long and hard. Then he said: “I don’t believe you.”
President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut.
people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American.
The first thing Hitler did was take over the press and make it subservient to the government. Lenin did the same.”
“The point is that we no longer have the money to subsidize our satellites—” “We have no satellites. We have allies.” “Whatever they are, they’re not willing to do what we say if we can’t pay for their obedience.” “We used to have an army to defend Communism—but not anymore.”
Dimka, too, hoped he was right. Filipov had put his finger on the flaw in Gorbachev’s strategy. It relied upon President Bush being reasonable. If the Americans responded to disarmament with reciprocal measures, Gorbachev would be vindicated, and his Kremlin rivals would look foolish. But if Bush failed to respond—or, even worse, increased military spending—then it would be Gorbachev who looked a fool.
His strategy was clear: glasnost and perestroika, openness and restructuring. His tactics were less obvious, and on any particular issue it was hard to know which way he would jump.
Gorbachev
Our ambassador to Moscow believes that the Brezhnev Doctrine is dead.” The Brezhnev Doctrine said that the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe, just as the Monroe Doctrine gave the same rights to the USA in South America.
“What about Star Wars?” “A weapons system that was never going to get beyond the science fiction stage, as everyone knew, including the Soviets.”
Obama said: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy—tonight is your answer.”
