The ad ended with“ Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home,” and only ran once, but had such an impact that it turned the election and kept Johnson in office.
When I was a child we had“ duck and cover” under our desks in elementary school, and lived in fear of nuclear war. My dad seriously considered building a fallout shelter in our basement; his concern wasn’ t outside the mainstream.
When Ronald Reagan ran for president, people called him“ Ronnie Ray Gun” because he was widely seen as the trigger-happy cowboy who might start the next world war. He reminded us of characters in the Dr. Strangelove movie.
Many folks also worried that both Goldwater and Reagan might use the intelligence and military services of America to go after their“ socialist” enemies in America. Those old enough to remember can tell you how, on May 1, 1970, California Governor Ronald Reagan called students protesting the Vietnam war across America“ brats,”“ freaks” and“ cowardly fascists,” and added, as The New York Times noted at the time:“ If it takes a bloodbath, let’ s get it over with. No more appeasement!” Three days later, on May 4, 1970, Reagan got his bloodbath at Kent State University when 28 National Guard soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on an estimated 3,000 student protestors.
Over a mere 13 seconds, nearly 70 shots were fired. Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer were killed, and nine others were wounded. One of the dead, William Schroeder, was shot in the back, as were several of those injured by gunfire.
Trump, it appears, intends to out-Goldwater and out-Reagan both of those two old cold warriors and take us fully into Putin-style leadership territory.
The top two headlines on Drudge Report on October 30th were:“ TRUMP ORDERS NUKE TESTS and HOW HE LEARNED TO LOVE THE BOMB” with a graphic reminiscent of Slim Pickens.
They were followed by six subheads:
• Pentagon readying thousands of‘ reaction forces’ as DOMESTIC missions widen...
• Troops across country being trained for civil unrest...
• Top White House Officials Moving Onto Military Bases...
• The Don Swaps Decorated Admiral With 33-Year-Old DOGE staffer...
• DOD can’ t say who it killed in military strikes against‘ drug smugglers’...
• Dems excluded from briefing...
The day before, Trump told reporters that he’ s ordering his military to prepare for demonstration explosions of American nuclear weapons.(“ Tests” is an euphemism; there’ s no doubt our bombs work just fine. Exploding them is more appropriately called a“ threat.”)
Later that same day we learned that he’ s ordered all 50 state national guards to prepare“ rapid reaction forces,” not to fight a foreign enemy but to turn their tanks, drones, and automatic weapons of war on Americans who dissent from Trump’ s coming crackdowns on“ the enemy within.”
I’ ve written before about how in 1798 Federalist President John Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts— precursors to the Insurrection Act that came a decade later— to shut down the nation’ s roughly 20 Jefferson-aligned Democratic newspapers and imprison anybody who spoke out against him( including Newark’ s town drunk Luther Baldwin).
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he let most of Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts expire, but today Trump appears hell-bent on reviving and invoking the
60 The Trial Lawyer