So I'm halfway through the excellent four part CNN series on the triumph and the tragedy of the LBJ year. [For you Millennials, Gen Xers and Yers, that's Lyndon Baines Johnson — the original LBJ, the 36th President of the United States — not the Akron phenom who produced tragedy for some when he twice left NE Ohio before and after his triumphant return).
Don't ask why, it just happened that I watched the last episode first, followed by the opening episode, where Johnson becomes President after President Kennedy is assassinated and surprisingly leads Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the most meaningful civil rights legislation since the Civil War.
Watching the series is a reminder of that brief time when it seemed for a time that white America might put aside its prejudices in collective pursuit of a Great Society. That dream ran afoul, in large measure because of even the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen was not willing to spend enormous sums of money simultaneously for both guns and butter. Guns, i.e., the Vietnam War, won out, as they always seem to in these United States.
Today's posts on The Real Deal Press digital news platform remind us of that William Faulkner quote about the past not even being past. [We're taking the space to say digital news platform because so many of our favorite people, aka our readers, have different ways of describing this product — blog, newspaper, email, website, news site — that we thought we would share our evolved term of choice. We see ourselves as a daily digital news platform. But you can describe us however you want, just please keep rewarding us with your time and interest, as record numbers of you did last month, when we recorded more than 23,000 visitors and 73,000 plus page views.]