The Greatest Political Sleight-of-Hand Trick Ever

I was reading a comment on The Other McCain today:

I’m almost 70 years old. I marched against the Viet Nam War in the 60′s. I considered myself part of the “new left” but now understand the failed ideology of that time – and I am repentant. My parents objected to my positions but they didn’t understand those positions then – but they would approve of my present positions, even if they did not understand the evolution.
Obama is the most dangerous politician in my lifetime!! Previously, I believed it was LBJ, but I was young and naive then. -- Nomadic100

That moment in history never ceases to fascinate me.

All those young people, rioting against civil rights abuses, an "unjust" foreign war, the draft, "speaking truth to power," fighting "the man," etc. were rioting at a time when Democrats had controlled all three branches of the federal government for the entire decade (up to Nixon's inauguration in Jan. 1969 -- pretty late in the game by any fair measure). U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was entirely a product of the policies of Kennedy and Johnson. The Democrats had for many decades -- a century, really -- been the party of the Klan and southern racists and segregationists. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, while bi-partisan, was more strongly-supported by Republicans than Democrats.

And yet ... nearly all those protestors somehow turned into Democrats, and Nixon, who ended the war and brought an end to domestic civil rights unrest, who was a vigorous proponent of most of the progressive policies these young idealists (to use a very charitable description) supported, became the bogey man. Yes, the quote above mentions antipathy for LBJ, but for some reason, decades later, the name LBJ does not, like Nixon, fire up hate in the hearts of most of the generation who protested in the 60s. Perhaps because, while he was responsible for Vietnam, he was also responsible for the even more destructive Great Society, which is, along with the New Deal, part of the foundation of modern liberalism/progressivism.

It just boggles the mind.

To this day it's not uncommon to hear someone lionize John F. Kennedy as nearly a saint in one breath and then condemn Vietnam in the most vehement of terms in the next. As if the two are unconnected.

It would be as if all the membership of Code Pink and MoveOn and everyone else against the Iraq War had, in the same breath they were condemning Bush-Cheney and the "War for Oil," joined the Republican party en mass.