Because watching it I tear up so often it’s just a blur.
Since Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell got together using racism, bigotry and religious intolerance to move the working class to the Republican Party in 1980 I cannot recall anything good, nice, fair or gentle happening politically in this country. It has been 38 years, and it’s kids who are doing what the rest of us should have been doing all along.When I was fifteen all that was on my mind was Margaret Nelson.
The anti draft/Vietnam War protests began in 1966, it was not until 6 years later that kids [college students] managed to move the majority of Americans to their side. As a veteran I began that fight in 1969 to help win it in 1973. Along with voting rights, civil rights and women’s rights. I mistakenly thought we had won not just that battle but the war. How wrong I was.
Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell began it in 1980, Limbaugh and talk radio jacked up the hate and right-wing swill in 1988, Gingrich added Hellfire to it in 1994. Fox News poured gasoline on it in 1996, the NRA has been it at for 50 years since they went from a hunting organization to one of the most powerful right-wing lobbies in America. And Donald Trump with the blessings of the Republican Party and Evangelical Christians is now in the the process of completely destroying all that was good, fair, kind, gentle and well meaning in this country.
And to see that after 40 years of their ascendance without any meaningful success, to see these kids starting to turn the tide, the future, makes me cry.