Nixon, the monster, is outdone by Trump, even more of a monster

By SJ Otto

Back in the 1970s we had this president, Richard Nixon. While he was in office, I didn’t always agree with him. But it took a few years, many of them after he left office that I realized just how awful he really was. As the years went on, I learned more about politics and the more I learned the more I hated the guy.

He was the closest thing to a Nazi I could remember at the time. He wanted “no knock” policies to kick down the doors of suspected drug dealers. He was adamantly against legalizing pot. He kept coming up with laws designed to curb the fourth amendment.

Then there were his attacks on the president of Chile, Salvador Allende. Allende was a socialist and a Marxist, the first elected in Latin America. I was a big fan of his. He seemed very democratic and a Marxist at the same time. It almost seemed to me that Nixon hated a democratic Marxist more than a non-democratic Marxist as Fidel Castro. Castro hated Nixon enough that he always printed his name with a swastika rather than the “x” in the middle of his name, any time there was a story about him in the Cuban newspaper Granma. It would take many years later for me to realize just how bad his overall foreign policy was.

 Nixon hated the young and the youth movement. He shrugged of the four young people killed at Kent State University, in Ohio. He also hated the left. Another famous writer I have always admired, Hunter S, Thompson, also hated Nixon. A writer friend of mine, Tim Pouncey, once said "You and Thompson have made a career out of hating Richard Nixon."

So why am I interested in Nixon? That is because in this day and age, we have a president who is actually worse than Nixon. If we consider the long range affects of a man’s career, former President Ronald Reagan caused this country more damage than any other politician in my life time. He pushed this nation to the far right and it never recovered.

But for just plain meanness, for out right biased treatment of the USpeople, for just plain spite against leftist opinion, President Donald Trump now wins. He is hateful, without any regrets. He attacks leftwing persons relentlessly. He is almost an outright racist. He is even further to the right than Nixon. His foreign policy is just as bad. Just last year he spoke of removing socialism from all of Latin America.

“The days of socialism and communism are numbered, not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and Cuba as well," Trump told a crowd gathered in Miami.

For leftists as myself, that is as close as he can come to a declaration of war.

Just recently Trump refused to meet with Jacob Blake’s family. He clearly treats the “Black Lives Matter” movement as un-American and his mortal enemy. He has praised his right-wing thugs that have tried to confront and stop recent protesters over the loss of black lives. He has made no effort to try and pull this country together. Nixon at least, made flimsy efforts to look as if he cared about all Americans, even if those were hollow gestures. Trump does not even make hollow gestures. He is for the far right and he makes no bones about it. He is the most divisive president in the last 60 years. He is a man of the right and he has no interest at all in healing the rift between the American right and left. He has never made any effort to bring this country together. No president in the 60 years has gone out of his way to avoid bringing this country’s people together. For Trump, there is no healing. There is no effort to pull the American people together. Trump is for his people and his people only. He has made it very clear that he has no need for or interest in those people who are not aligned with him and his agenda. It is as if this country is in a state of civil war and he has made it clear whose side he is on.

So as people try to tell me that there is no real difference between Joe Biden and Trump, I say there is just one difference and it is a big one. Trump is a despicable human being who clearly hates about half the people in this country. He doesn’t just disagree with them, he HATES them!! Biden is kind of an ass hole, and I dislike him for many reasons. But he doesn’t treat me as an enemy of the state. He doesn’t hate me. He may disagree with me and laugh at my concerns? And I hate it when some one laughs at things I feel I need. But Trump is hateful towards me and that is the difference.    

 Pix by Trump is sounding a lot like Nixon.