Ed Warren [View all]

[H2O Man]

“The last two lifetimes have seen more scientific and technological achievement than the first 798 put together. The shift to a swiftly changing society has not greatly affected the surfaces of daily living. The New York of the 1980s resembles the New York of the 1930s more than the New York of the 1930s resembled the New York of the 1880s. But the shift has profoundly altered inner perceptions and expectations. It has placed traditional roles and institutions under severe and incomprehensible strain. It has cast off reference points and rituals that had stabilized and sanctified life for generations. It has left the experience of elders useless to the tribulations of the young. Children, knowing how different their own lives will be, no longer look to parents as models and authorities; rather, parents now learn from their children.
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History


Schlesinger is likely best remembered as the Kennedy administration's historian. But to my 93-year old aunt -- who died yesterday -- he was one of the founders of Americans for Democratic Action, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, Kohn Kenneth Galbraith, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Arthur was the speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson.

Those names might not be familiar to many in the DU community's younger generations. But they formed an important wing of the Democratic Party that my aunt advocated for all of her life. I'm glad to say that all of my children and their generation in the extended family learned from her. She told my kids about seeing her mother and grandmother coming home from work covered in tomatoes, due to their union advocacy. And her take-no-shit stories about her changing the dress code for girls in high school influenced my daughters.

She was best known perhaps for her life-long advocacy for animals. My father said there was never a stray cat or dog that she wouldn't take in. Right now, there is a list of people who will take in her pets and some that she was sheltering. Her only regret came when three high-ranking members of the Nixon administration bought Golden Retrievers from her in 1970. By no coincidence, this brings us back to Schlesinger in a round about fashion.

Arthur recognized that there are cycles in American politics. This is distinct, of course, from the cycles of history, which show that empires -- like all organic life on earth -- are born, grow, then decay and die. The cycles he documented were between periods of lberal and conservative political, social, and economic policy. In the years he lived -- 1917 to 2007 -- he noted that the cycles were becoming shorter. He attributed this largely to changes in technology for communications.

Another factor that Schlesinger focused on became his important 1973 book, "The Imperial Presidency." In it, he detailed how presidents tended to expand executive power by way of wars and other crises. My aunt would point out that only two presidents in her life did not do so: Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden. This, she pointed out, allowed republicans and the media to paint them as somehow weak and ineffective, the exact opposite of the truth.

In Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Bush-Cheney eras, the president (or vice president) attempted to create internal intelligence groups capable of taking actions outside of the law, for "national security" reasons. This included both domestic and international activities. These cycles shorten, each presenting new threats based on the same human failures mixed with new technology. Enough so that one might be reminded of Yeats' 1919 line about a world in chaos, where "things fall apart, the center cannot hold."

There were two things that Schlesinger was concerned with late in his life: the first was the dangers posed by attempts to bring religion into politics. He noted that in the "great religious ages" one finds the most inhumane treatment of human beings, and that science brought us out of those dark ages.

The second thing was that regarding when the center isn't holding -- when the institutions intended to benefit society either do not function, or are abused. This allows an individual or group to surf those tides in the cycle to achieve degrees of power. This alone is neither positive or negative. For example, the Beatles didn't "create" the 1960s, but their power was from the social influences that allowed them to thus influence the younger generation's thinking. This helped create a unity.

An essential aspect of the center not holding, and the institutions failing to provide equally for groups of citizens, is a break-up into smaller groups that have difficulty in working together with other groups. I think that Schlesinger's most glaring shortcoming was his opposition to what he thought was "multiculturalism." I found this odd, considering that he was an advocate of teaching the true history of America, including the terrible abuses of various groups. He noted that attempts to deny this history made society vulnerable to versions of those same injustices.

The defendant did not "create" the maga republican party we witness today, my aunt reminded people. Rather, he surfed the ignorance, anxieties, and hatreds that were already there, churning inside those who are horrified by the pace of change in society. She was looking forward to voting for President Biden this November. And she knew it was essential for good people to vote every republican possible out of office, to turn the tide.

Thank you for listening to me.

Note: I'm curious if anyone who studied the Senate Wategate hearings remembers who "Ed Warren" was?)