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Blog Post 11/3

In Zinn’s chapter, “The Seventies: Under Control?”, Zinn talks about the distrust that the public had in the government during the 1970s, and how the government tried to solve it. The beginning of the seventies saw the general public being very critical of government violence. Any trust that the people had in the government was thrown out with the Watergate scandal in 1972. I always thought that Nixon’s resignation was a step in the right direction for trust the people had in the government, but Zinn talks about how nothing truly changed in government. Nixon’s successor held the same political views as Nixon, so the public did not really see change happen in the administration. I was surprised to see such a lack of change in public view before and after Nixon’s resignation, which I thought to be a turning point in the relationship between the government and people. Towards the end of the chapter, Zinn talks about how the public belief in power stayed low throughout the 70s no matter the action taken by the government. There was a lack of trust with foreign policy and the economy was at a low too, both not helping the public gain trust in the government. This really shines a light on how much the Vietnam war divided the two.

The second part of the chapter that I wanted to talk about is how Henry Kissinger decided, through all of the public criticism, that the United States needed to declare itself as a world power. I was again surprised to see another military cover-up in the Mayaguez affair happen in the middle of the public having little to no trust in the government and foreign affairs already. Though this secured the United States as a dominating power around the world, it seems ironic that the government tried many different ways to gain the publics’ trust, but then decided to create another cover-up. I was very interested in how the tension between the public and the government not only continued after the Vietnam war but actually got stronger throughout the beginning of the 70s.

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One Comment

  1. Tess Keating Tess Keating

    I also find it hard to believe that Nixon resigning was “a step in the right direction”. It seems to me that he sort of just took the easy way out without owning up to what he did.

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