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A conversation on my 79th With students and friends a half-century younger - Robert Reich
Friends,
I’m 79 years old today.
I’m spending most of my time with people 50 years younger — my graduate students, my colleagues at Inequality Media Civic Action, and young people to whom I give lectures and seminars.
We communicate over a vast chasm of half a century. They have no direct memories of Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt, the Vietnam War, or when JFK was killed. They barely remember 9/11. They find it hard to believe that I grew up before the internet. That I was born before television. When I tell them I once worked for Gerald Ford, they look at me like I’m a fossil.
I am a fossil.
A few days ago several of them sat around a big oak table in my house and asked me questions.
Do you remember anything as bad as what’s now happening to America?
1968 was almost as bad. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Our cities were in flames. Tens of thousands of us were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. The Democratic convention in Chicago was a disaster — National Guard teargassing young people. And Richard Nixon was elected president. I thought the nation would never recover.
Was Nixon as horrendous a president as Trump?
Nixon was bad, but Trump is far worse — the worst president in my lifetime or arguably all of American history.
Did you lose your optimism in 1968?
I despaired for America, as I do now, but I was never pessimistic.
How about cynical? Did you ever think America was hopeless?
No! Cynicism is the enemy of positive change. The Trump regime wants us all to become cynical so we give up and let them take over everything.
Are you angry at Trump?
Of course. Furious! But he’s only the culmination and consequence of decades of neglect.
Neglect of what?
The system!
What do you mean?
I’m 79 years old today.
I’m spending most of my time with people 50 years younger — my graduate students, my colleagues at Inequality Media Civic Action, and young people to whom I give lectures and seminars.
We communicate over a vast chasm of half a century. They have no direct memories of Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt, the Vietnam War, or when JFK was killed. They barely remember 9/11. They find it hard to believe that I grew up before the internet. That I was born before television. When I tell them I once worked for Gerald Ford, they look at me like I’m a fossil.
I am a fossil.
A few days ago several of them sat around a big oak table in my house and asked me questions.
Do you remember anything as bad as what’s now happening to America?
1968 was almost as bad. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Our cities were in flames. Tens of thousands of us were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. The Democratic convention in Chicago was a disaster — National Guard teargassing young people. And Richard Nixon was elected president. I thought the nation would never recover.
Was Nixon as horrendous a president as Trump?
Nixon was bad, but Trump is far worse — the worst president in my lifetime or arguably all of American history.
Did you lose your optimism in 1968?
I despaired for America, as I do now, but I was never pessimistic.
How about cynical? Did you ever think America was hopeless?
No! Cynicism is the enemy of positive change. The Trump regime wants us all to become cynical so we give up and let them take over everything.
Are you angry at Trump?
Of course. Furious! But he’s only the culmination and consequence of decades of neglect.
Neglect of what?
The system!
What do you mean?
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/a-conversation-on-my-79th