Nixon and Hungry Ghosts

The Collapse

This is a four part series. In order to get caught up on the conversation, read part one, two, and three here.

I was in high school from 1967-71, which means I was a teenager during a time of turmoil in America. Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X were assassinated. The USS Pueblo and crew were seized by North Korea and held as prisoners for over a year. There were violent riots in cities across the country: Chicago, Los Angeles and Birmingham. All along, the Vietnam War escalated with each passing year. Friends, families and the political environment itself were divided regarding the war. The country faced the largest division since the Civil War in 1865.

I knew boys that went off to war and returned as somber faced men. My first real boyfriend was a Vietnam Vet. (Which I will write about in a later blog.)

This brings me to Nixon. But I’d like to float one more idea before I dive into Nixon’s legacy, the notion of hungry ghosts.

In Zen Buddhism a hungry ghost is a part of the personality that is a bottomless pit in which the identity feels lacking. It could be admiration from others, or money in the bank or owning things. A clue to someone’s hungry ghost is to consider what they have in abundance. Is it awards, military medals, followers on social media even educational degrees? Most people get a handle on their hungry ghost, sometimes by allowing small bites throughout their lifetime. But for others, that ghost is a trap and the feeding frenzy begins.

Let me say, when I started this post, I was prepared to bash Richard M. Nixon. I wondered how did a guy like that rise to power? After weeks of research, my compassion for him has grown. I still don't trust or like him, but I have considerably more compassion for him.

He graduated from Duke University with a law degree. In 1942, he enlisted in the Navy Reserve. During the war he was stationed in the Pacific Theatre and remained at port to manage supplies. To pass the time, he played poker with the soldiers before they shipped out for battle. Poker with soldiers that are about to face fierce fighting is a cutthroat game. They have nothing to lose. Nixon learned to win and over time managed to send home to his mother around $6,000.00. That would be about $86,700.00 in today’s money.

After the war, in 1946 he won a Republican congressional seat in the House of Representatives, and by 1950 was elected a California State Senator. In 1952 he became the Vice President under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

That is a remarkable rise by anyone’s standards. One thing repeated many times about Nixon was his discipline. Vigorously prepared, he read every bill and issue before the House and Senate and was able to speak effectively about them at a moments notice. There were costs to his ambition, he drank heavily and took a drug called Dilantin for back pain and insomnia. These were not good to mix, and he did.

In 1960, he ran against Democrat candidate John Kennedy for President. He lost by a very small margin. A crazy 10,000 votes made the difference to give Kennedy the win. There were reports of voter fraud, but Nixon showed courage and understood that the country needed a clean win to believe in the system. Publicly, he graciously conceded to Kennedy, privately he vowed to return and win. Privately he drank too much and his wife Pat took the brunt of his rage. She needed surgery to repair the damage to her face. She almost filed for divorce, but didn't.

His mission when he ran again for President in 1968 was to win. He mustered all his political savvy and underhanded ways. His opponent was Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey. (Side note: how many H’s do you need in a name?)

Quick history reminder, Humphrey was Vice President under Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson had inherited the Vietnam War and in an effort to end it, escalated it.

My father, a WWII vet, watched the news, from 5:30-7:00 PM Monday-Friday. At the time, I was a young teen (fourteen-seventeen) and was horrified watching the clips of bloodied soldiers pulled out of harms way, helicopters crashing into the jungle, and firebombs blasting villages night after night on the television. I can only guess it was part of my father’s self-inflicted sense of duty to keep abreast of current events. And so we watched.

Anyway, back to Nixon, aka, Tricky Dickey, (a name in my opinion he deserved) and his second bid for President. He used connections he made while Vice-President to secretly sabotage the 1968 Paris Peace talks.

President Johnson had set these up to resolve the Vietnam War. Nixon used a back channel to ask that the delegates from South Vietnam walk away from the table. They did and that eroded public confidence in the Democratic Party’s ability to end the war. Nixon won in 1968, but again not by a large margin. The margin is important as it sets in motion his actions in the coming years.

When Nixon was elected, the Republican Party scored a banner year. Contributions grew in the upcoming years. Crazy amounts of cash stuffed in shoeboxes, folded in brown paper bags and stacked in briefcases were silently dropped off at Republican offices. No party had ever gathered so much money before. They made a slush fund which was set aside to pay for covert operations against the Democratic Party candidates.

For his re-election, Nixon couldn’t merely win he needed a landslide. Every action he and his team did in the year prior to his re-election was geared to that desire. It was something Nixon’s ego demanded. Hungry ghost? Maybe.

Next post: How Cults are Like Medieval Dragons