Letters to the Editor
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You Callin' Me A Minority?
"For the first time in American history, men in authority are tallking about an 'emergency' without forseeable end. Such men as these are crackpot realists; in the name of realism they have created a paranoid reality all their own."
C. Wright Mills, a motorcycling sociologist from Texas, wrote that over fifty years ago in his book, 'The Power Elite'.
At the time, well before Vietnam, Mills himself was called a crackpot by the left and right for his work.
All he did though was wonder, with some trepidation, about the ties between big guys in the military, corporations, and government; about the revolving doors of influence between boardrooms and various branches of government, including the intelliegence services; and about the possible emergence of a permanent national security state.
Another crackpot, Dwight Eisenhower, warned about this as he was leaving the presidency. But y'know, by then Ike was ready for his slippers and a rocker by the fire.
Of course, Vietnam didn't go as well as planned.
The Sixties happened, with all its perversions of the right and true.
And grumps like John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general, practically swallowed his pipe as he predicted the country would soon go so far right no one would recognize it.
Well ... ?