By Charlie LeDuff
Politics is rancid in America. I'll give you that. Watching TV gives you the feeling the wheels are coming off their axles.
But are things in America at their worst point ever, as people recently asked me on a trip to Manhattan?
I doubt it, I said. Not even in my life time. Not even close.
Suffice it to say, the New York crowd picked at me like some kind of hayseed blown in from the Midwest.
The latest example they pointed out is the so-called pipe bombs that have been mailed to Democratic movers and shakers and media outlets, including Barack Obama, George Soros, Hillary Clinton and CNN.
Naturally, my new New York pals and many Americans believe the perpetrator(s) were motivated by President Donald Trump, his bellicose applause for the beat down of a reporter in Montana, his bromance with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, and his wishy-washy condemnation of white nationalists at Charlottesville, Va.
Again, maybe.
Truly bad times
But, I personally remember the anthrax attacks of 2001. That terrorist, too, targeted Democratic law makers and the media through the mail. It began one week after the Sept. 11 massacre and he ended up killing five people and infecting 17 others before killing himself a handful of years later. It was first believed to be the work of Al-Qaeda.
While working at The New York Times at that moment (covering Ground Zero, no less) I led emergency responders dressed in moon suits to the cubicle of a reporter who had received an envelope of white powder that she spilled on herself. It was a hoax, but those were truly bad times indeed.
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and more than 100 cities burned simultaneously in America. Imagine if there was social media then. That same year, Bobby Kennedy was murdered by a Palestinian nationalist. The radical left wing Weathermen were convening in Ann Arbor, Michigan and would go on to launch a multi-year bombing campaign across America, including the nation's capital.
The Black Panthers were on trial for murdering cops. The Democratic National Convention ended in a riot, with Chicago police attacking protesters. George Wallace, the segregationist and an independent candidate for president won 46 electoral votes, almost sending the election to the House of Representatives to decide who would be president. It was the bloodiest year in Vietnam for American servicemen. Richard Nixon was elected president.
Nixon and Watergate
In 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency in the wake of Watergate, setting off a constitutional crisis. President Bill Clinton was impeached 25 years later for lying to a grand jury as American politics turned dark and uncompromising. In 2000, there was the dangling chad debacle in Florida, with the Supreme Court all but deciding that the election went to George W. Bush. Some Americans still claim the Republicans stole the election.
Then, the following year, came the 9/11 terror attacks. Then in 2003 came to disastrous invasion of Iraq. I was there too. And believe me, it was a disaster -- no weapons of mass destruction, no armor on the Humvees, no plan. Then came the Abu Ghraib torture scandal that irreparably damaged the American reputation abroad and led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Then the economic collapse of 2008, from which the country and the world have nearly really recovered. Then the American urban centers exploded in glass and fire in 2014-15, spawned by police brutality on black men and a lack of opportunity in general.
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So now we have a weekly crisis to end all crisis. The Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court sex debacle even though we had the Clarance Thomas Supreme Court sex debacle 27 years ago.
Frothing and hypertense
Social media and 24-hour TV has left people frothing and hypertensive. Everyone is a commentator. Everyone is a revolutionary. But in real life, farmers still farm. The beer truck driver still drives. And presidents always receive a second term unless the economy goes belly up.
Want to know which way presidential politics will turn? Keep your eye on Wall Street and the housing market.
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't have cable TV. The only way I gauge America is what and who I see on its streets. As individuals, it seems we're getting along decently enough.
If you're unhappy with the mood of things in America -- and who isn't? -- the best thing to do is use the voting booth. Exercise your right. Demand representation from those who ask to represent you. It's the only time the billionaire and the penniless are truly equals. Vote. And turn down your television.
