CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Political Tinsel Town in the Mid-1970s

Still from Taxi Driver.

Breakdown: 1975 is a Netflix documentary highlighting U.S. politics and society via popular films of that year, but also years before and after, as critics note, correctly. Morgan Neville is the director and producer. Jodie Foster is the narrator. I select a few of these films and characters below to give readers a flavor of Tinsel Town’s political-social vibe.

One influential factor is President Nixon’s resignation amid the Watergate scandal, a failed cover-up of a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. “Tricky Dick,” born a Quaker, rode anti-communism, a popular ideology in America, to the highest office in the land before his fall from power. 

Another related factor is the U.S. humiliation at the Vietnam War’s end. The failure to militarily defeat the enemy in Vietnam resulted in widespread revulsion against what President Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex, a bipartisan creation of the political duopoly benefiting war corporations in all 50 states. A military draft also powered such revulsion. 

Nixon’s disgrace and the U.S. loss in Vietnam helped to set in motion the demise of a postwar economy. America’s global economic supremacy with strong labor........

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