AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973 ---- Episode 1

                 THE 1970s : WHEN THE SHIT HIT THE FAN 

   In the early seventies, the system seemed out of control---it could not hold the loyalty of the public. As early as 1970, according to the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, "trust in government" was low in every section of the population. And there was a significant difference by class. Of professional people, 40 percent had "low" political trust in the government, of unskilled blue-collar workers, 66 percent had "low" trust. 

   Public opinion surveys in 1971---after seven years of intervention in Vietnam ---showed an unwillingness to come to the aid of other countries, assuming they were attacked by Communist-backed forces. Even for countries allied to the United States in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or Mexico, right on our southern border, there was no majority opinion for intervening with American troops. As for Thailand, if it were under Communist attack, only 12 percent of whites interrogated would send troops, 4 percent of nonwhites would do so. 

   In the summer of 1972, antiwar people in the Boston area were picketing Honeywell Corporation. The literature they distributed pointed out that Honeywell was producing antipersonnel weapons used in Vietnam, like the deadly cluster bomb that had riddled thousands of Vietnamese civilians with painful, hard-to-extricate pellets. About six hundred ballots were given to the Honeywell employees, asking if they thought Honeywell should discontinue making the weapons. Of the 231 persons who returned the ballots, 131 said that Honeywell should stop, 88said it should not. They were invited to make comments. A typical "no" comment : "Honeywell is not responsible for what the Department of Defense does with the goods it buys. . ." A typical "yes" comment : "How may we have pride in our work when the entire basis for the work is immoral?" 

   The Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan had been posing the question : "Is the government run by a few big interests looking out for themselves ?" The answer in 1964 had been "yes" from 26 percent of those polled. An article in the Political Science Review by Arthur H. Miller, reporting on the extensive polling done by the Survey Research Center, said that the polls showed "widespread, basic discontent and political alienation." He added [ political scientists often took on the worries of the Establishment ] : "What is startling and somewhat alarming is the rapid degree of change in this basic attitude over a period of only six years." 

   More voters than ever before refused to identify themselves as either Democrats or Republicans. Back in 1940, 20 percent of those polled called themselves "independents." In 1974, 34 percent called themselves "independents." 

   The courts, the juries, and even the judges were not behaving as usual. Juries were acquitting radicals : Angela Davis, an acknowledged Communist, was acquitted by an all-white jury on the West Coast. Black Panthers, whom the government had tried in every way to malign and destroy, were freed by juries in several trials. A judge in western Massachusetts threw out a case against a young activist, Sam Lovejoy, who had toppled a 500-foot tower erected by a utility company trying set up a nuclear plant. In Washington, D.C., in August 1973, a Superior Court judge refused to sentence six men charged with unlawful entry who had stepped from a White House tour line to protest the bombing of Cambodia. 

   Undoubtedly, much of this national mod of hostility to government and business came out of the Vietnam war, its 55,000 casualties, its moral shame, its exposure of government lies and atrocities. On top of this came the political disgrace of the Nixon administration in the scandals that came to be known by the one-word label "Watergate," and which led to the historic resignation from the presidency ----the first in American history ---- of Richard Nixon in August 1974. 

  It  began during the presidential campaign in June of 1972, when five burglars, carrying wiretapping and photo equipment, were caught in the act of breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in the Watergate apartment complex of Washington, D.C. One of the five, James McCord, Jr., worked for the Nixon campaign : he was "security" officer for the Committee to Re-elect the President [CREEP]. Another of the five had an address book in which was listed the name of E. Howard Hunt, and Hunt's address was listed as the White House. He was assistant to Charles Colson, who was special counsel to President Nixon.