Chapter One
In November 1968 I was 19, going to college at Wichita State U., working at Boeing second shift, making about $500/mo, that was the equivalent of $50,000/yr now. Boeing, like oil companies, had a strong union.
I considered myself an Eisenhower Republican, probably voted for Richard Nixon. LBJ had stopped bombing North Vietnam, it was thought the war would end soon. There wasn't proof until 2017, but Nixon sabotaged LBJ's peace talks, knowing that to end to the war would help Hubert Humphrey win the election.
1968 was the most expensive year of the war in Vietnam, and had the most U.S. casualties. Two good friends from high school died in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. I'd dropped my student deferment, just waiting for the letter from the local draft boards. I had signed for warrant officer flight training, went by train to the induction center, in Kansas City, was able to opt out. Thanks to several flukes I wasn't drafted.
Nixon used his "Southern Strategy" to win votes from racist voters in the South, which resulted in flipping the South from Democratic to Republican, giving the Republican party to the religious right and their wealthy backers.
There was a third party candidate, former Democrat George Wallace, who ran on a blatantly racist platform. It's highly possible that he took enough votes from Democrats to cost Humphrey the presidency.
John F. Kennedy preceded LBJ. He had told confidants that he was considering withdrawing from Vietnam. After his assassination, LBJ and his administration used the incident in the Tonkin Gulf to justify increased bombing.
Nixon started carpet bombing North Vietnam cities. By the time the war ended in 1973, more than 60,000 Americans and allied soldiers had died, we killed more than 3 million Vietnamese, 2 million of them civilians.
The Watergate affair ended Nixon's presidency, Gerald Ford became president.
Keep in mind that presidents don't write or pass legislation. They can propose budgets and legislation, congress passes them, the president has veto power, which can be overridden. This can be a valuable source to educate children, or the uninformed, as to how our government works, and to understand how it doesn't sometimes. Since Trump uses a fourth grade vocabulary, his voters could even learn from the appropriate grade level.
Jimmy Carter was president from 1977 to 1981. He was elected with support from "evangelicals", the religious right, but lost their support because he wouldn't pass their agenda, replaced by Reagan.
I probably voted for Reagan and members of his congress, which I came to greatly regret. They gave tax cuts to the very wealthy, then increased taxes on the rest of us, including taxing social security benefits. Their deregulation caused the banking and savings and loan crisis, resulting in losses to homeowners of $billions, including my loss of $30,000 on a home sale.
"Reaganomics", created by his advisers, including Milton Friedman, not only caused that disaster, those policies set the stage for economic collapses and recessions in 2000 and 2007-2008.
Chapter Two
Economy
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