page 4
daily nebraskan
thursday, november6, 1980
Voters endorse
consumption
Editor's note: Parts of the following editorial are based on
a June 26, 1980 Summer Nebraskan column, originally
written by the current Daily Nebraskan editor.
Ronald Reagan's Tuesday victory presents no
new challenges for America during the next four
years. The challenges already are there, and
Reagan and the Republican Senate must deal with
them.
If a democracy always is right when it makes
its majority decisions, we were wrong in our
liberal views, at least concerning the presidential
race. But this newspaper seriously questions if the
values we have tried to convey really are the
wrong ones.
The country definitely wanted conservatism.
Whether that was the right choice, and whether
that desire is in our long-tern interest won't be
revealed for several years.
This country's turn toward right-wing havvk
ishness devel ped rapidly after the seizure of hos
tages in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghani
stan. It manifested itself as early as the primaries,
when California's 43rd congressional district
made its Democratic nominee Tom Metzger, Cali
fornia Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Harold
Covington, the leader of the U.S. Nazi Party, won
43 percent of the Republican primary vote for
attorney general of North Carolina.
Now we're going to make America great again.
The evident view is that building every nuclear
and conventional weapon we can dream up will
make us great . . . again.
It is overly simplistic to believe that changes in
international affairs since World War II were
caused by a lack of American military strength, or
that increasing that strength will make the world
the way it was, or the way we'd like it to be.
Domestically, social justice and all those other
noble-sounding goals found in our constitution
are not the current goals of the majority. The
majority is much more concerned with making
payments on two cars, getting loans for home im
provements, eating affordable steak every night
and being able to get credit cards.
No, no, America need not conserve. We can
go on overconsuming until there's nothing left
to consume, and if we've got enough guns, no
body will stop us while we're at it. And if we have
to take it away from someone else, that's their
problem for not having the weapons to stop us.
The year: A.D. 476
The place: Rome . . . And you are there!
After all, we're the chosen people, (iod has
blessed us; it says so on our coins, and Ronald
Reagan says so, so it must be true.
Oh, yes, we are moral. That's why the gap be
tween the rich and poor in the world has more
than doublet! since we began our wonderful,
altruistic overseas investment schemes.
That's why bellies bloat all across the Third
World while some Americans make money on an
industry dedicated to taking fat off Americans.
We're moral because millionaires can give $1,000
to CARI- and pretend they've done their part.
What exactly did we do to deserve our grand
life style? Well, we conquered the Indians and im
ported blacks to pick cotton for the shirts on our
backs. We used the only atomic weapons ever
used against a population and 25 years later
napalmed unarmed, illiterate Asians. It's easy to
see why we deserve this lifestyle.
But most of all, we believe in majority rule. If
we really believe hi majority rule and the equalitv
of all men and women, we should be very afraki.
because 70 percent of the world has only 30 per
cent of the wealth. They are the majority, ami
they don't like us.
Ronald Reagan said this spring in (iraml Islainl.
"It's time that the United States let the world
know that we don't care whether they like us or
not; we're going to be respected."
They've never liked us, anil they can't possihh
respect us. Thai's what we deserve. They are
afraid of us. That's what America has decided il
wants to reinforce.
Earth and nation will endure petty machinations
I flew across the country the other
day . . .
I wonder what my grandfather would
have thought of that casual statement. He
was born in San Francisco. To him, cross
ing the country was a great adventure a
f G
nebraskan
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473-7301.
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week on the train, a long rattling week of
cinders, sweet coal smoke, lowing whistles,
clanging grade crossings in the night and
starched white napery. And his parents had
"come around the Horn" six months or
more on a creaking, heaving sailing ship.
To him. this was the vastest of lands.
The Fast was virtually another country.
Washington was a world away. And the
president was a scratchy voice from a radio
or a gray flickering figure on (he Fox
M'wietone News.
"I fhw across the country the other
day. Grandpa."
hoppe
"Who do you think you are. boy,"
he would have said with that deep chuckle
of his, "Peter Pan?"
Yet I did. As thousands of others do
each day, I flew across the country with
out much fuss in less than five hours. I
thought, as we took off, how small our
cou ntry has become. Now New York is
only an area code -just three digits-farther
than the house next door.
President Carter and President-elect
Reagan visited me almost nightly for
months in living color just across the
room. I know them well. We Americans
live close together in this shrunken global
village. And we know our presidential can
didates too well.
Grandpa was for Herbert Hoover. Ik
said the country would go to "H-F-double-toothpicks"
if Mr. Roosevelt got in. But
I'm sure he didn't mean it. The White
House was so far away, the president so
distant, the land so vast and so enduring.
But now . . . now so many of us arc so
sure that the next president will prove an
unmitigated disaster and bring this nation
down in ruins. We know both of them so
well in this crowded, packed-tight techno
cracy. I thought of this as the jumbo jet
thundered off the runway, circled to the
east and climbed six miles up into the clear
autumn sky. And I was surprised when I
looked down to sec how little the land has
changed, really, since my grandfather's
day.
The suburbs crept farther inland of
course, from the California coast. But
in no time, the golden foothills and then
the dark green Sierra swelled up beneath
us, lake-dappled, verdant, sm.w-dusted and
untouched as far as the eye could sec.
Now below us the great Western descrl
stretched on beyond horizon after horizon
raw, tortured, silvery grays, acid others'
burnt siennas only a rare-thinly-penciled
highway indicating man had every passed
this way.
Gradually, as the hours wore on, this
eternal emptiness yielded. The Rocki
thurst up. white tipped, then down into
the yellowed plains and over the quiltoil
Middle West, the neat patchwork of
browns and greens gliding by league after
league, the browns and greens of the age
old foods of mankind.
The stewardesses served us our plastic
lunches on our plastic trays and we sal
shoulder-to-shoulder nine abreast, sipping
cot fee from plastic cups. I was asked to
lower my shade so the others might watch
the movie, but I raised it an inch or so lo
peek occasionally.
How few towns there were, even as we
reached the Fast, and never a city. Yet
towns and cities are all that exist in our
global village.
And I came to feel as we finally sailed
down over Manhattan's towers in the set
ting sun that my grandfather was right and
that the telephone, the television and the
airplane are all illusions, all distortions of
reality.
And even if Mr. Reagan is as incompe
tent as his detractors contend, which I
doubt, the very vastness of this land
insures it from the petty machinations of
men.
The nation will endure. The earth
abides.
Copyright Chronicle Publishing Co., 1980
