And to think that I grew up in a household wherein

[PCIntern]

my Parents basically sat Shiva for eight years because Eisenhower was elected president over Adlai Stevenson. If Ike were running as a Republican candidate against Trump my parents would re-register as Republicans and go out and vote for him.

Well, maybe not. Voting Republican was not in their religion. But you get my drift.

Actually, to their dying day my mother did not stop talking about how Stevenson was called an egghead and the idiots elected Eisenhower because he was a war hero. She was however able to appreciate what Eisenhower did early on for the civil rights movement and had no vicious animosity towards him, possibly the only Republican whom she did not despise with every fiber of her being. This included the Republican dogcatcher. For everyone in that generation knew that we defeated an enemy which would have destroyed the world as we know it, and that Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the allied forces which did so.

My father on the other hand, with a pragmatic guy who understood America as America. His mantra was that you get up and go to work and do your best for those around you and vote and educate your children.

[enough]

1. Yep, my first clear political memory was my parents crying that election night. NT

[agingdem]

2. I think we're related...

my parents were Jewish holocaust survivors (Auschwitz)..my mother was Polish and my father was Lithuanian...my first language was yiddish...and Adlai Stevenson was their guy..they cried when he won the nomination in '52 and '56 and went into mourning when he lost...they did not like Eisenhower but they loved America and life went on...they watched the news every night but I remember one particular night when both were staring at the tiny screen, tears rolling down their faces and my father demanding I sit, watch, and listen..it was Joseph McCarthy.. Trump is not the beginning of this tragedy we are living through..Trump is the culmination of all those christian white nationalists that came before him...I am in my 70s and would crawl on glass to vote for a folding chair if that meant ridding this country of Trump and his sycophants and so would my parents

[uponit7771]

3. +1

[PCIntern]

4. Yeah, exactly...

Same story. Howdy, cuz.

[hunter]

5. There's no comparison possible between Trump and Eisenhower.

We are currently living in an idiocracy.

We have learned that a third of all U.S. Americans are deplorable racists and fascists as Trump has inspired them to show their true colors.

During and after World War II those U.S. Americans who had supported Hitler before the war had the good sense to shut the fuck up.

My grandfather was an Army Air Corp officer during World War II, and then an aerospace engineer. He was solidly an Eisenhower Republican. He was also friend or acquaintance of Republican mayor of Los Angeles Sam Yorty. (My grandfather's personal relationships were always a mess. I suspect he was somewhere on the autistic spectrum, a genius in some ways, utterly clueless in others...) He did not like Nixon and voted for JFK.

My mom and dad and the rest of my grandparents were liberal Democrats.

If we can't change the deplorables, we can at least shove them back into the closet. They have cheated our elections to remain in power, but reasonable people outnumber them. Everyone who recognizes the damage Trump and his sycophants have done to our nation needs to vote for Biden and a Democratic Congress so we can break the corrupt Republican machine.

[PCIntern]

6. Oh, I am well aware that there is no comparison

Of course, I was simply trying to say how far we’ve come and how frightening every day has become. The one thing I’ll say about the 50s as rough as they were and of course the 60s is that you never felt that your own people were trying to kill you. Maybe the Russians, maybe the Chinese but not your own.

[smirkymonkey]

7. K&R