thoughts

I was watching Colbert tonight at 8pm so it was actually yesterday's show but he had George McGovern on as a guest. They were drawing parallels between this year's presidential convention and the one where McGovern lost to Hubert Humphrey.

It sometimes seems that my incessant thoughts go in waves or cadences. Sometimes the cadence is good and sometimes it is painful and chaotic. All beginnings are painful. So said Chaim Potok at the start of a good book. The problem with this concept is that things are always beginning. I am a devotee of vistas and where water meets land. I watch our world and try to be an actor in it to the best of my capabilities.

The world continues to, in my opinion, keep choosing pessimism, judgment and false walls. I still believe that their is power in conscience and living according to one's deepest held beliefs, but it is a fight and I wish it weren't so.

Prairie Populist

In the 1972 election, McGovern ran on a platform that advocated withdrawal from the Vietnam War in exchange for the return of American prisoners of war^[8] and amnesty for draft evaders who had left the country,^[9] an anti-war platform that was presaged, in 1970, by McGovern's sponsorship of the McGovern-Hatfield amendment, seeking to end U.S. participation in the war by Congressional action. However, during a meeting with Democratic Governors conference, Nevada Governor Mike O'Callaghan asked McGovern what he would do if the North Vietnamese refused to release American POW's after a withdrawal. McGovern responded, "Under such circumstances, we'd have to take action," although he did not say what action.^[10]

Tom Eagleton and George McGovern on July 24, 1972 cover of Time Magazine

McGovern's platform also included an across-the-board, 37% reduction in defense spending over three years;^[11] and a "demogrant" program giving $1,000 to every citizen in America ^[12] that was later changed to creating a $6,500 guaranteed minimum income for Americans, and was later dropped from the platform.^[13] In addition, McGovern supported ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. An infamous incident took place late in the campaign. McGovern was giving a speech and a Nixon admirer kept heckling him. McGovern called the young man over and said "Listen you son of a bitch, why don't you kiss my ass!" Mississippi Senator James Eastland later asked the Senator if that was what he had said. When McGovern said yes, Eastand replied that was the best thing he had ever said in the whole campaign.