1, 41 . 1." I in search of mad dragons lie ridigan Bthj Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan Searching for America in the snow r by mart' radtkein 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 1970 . This must be noted in all reprints. NIGHT EDITOR: DAVE CHUDWIN The cost of inflation WHILE ECONOMISTS and Wall Street speculators hail the recent indica- tions that the economy is finally slowing down, the news that inflation is being stopped will probably offer little solace to the thousands of autoworkers laid off by Detroit in the past few weeks. In Washington, President Nixon por- trays inflation as a major threat to our economy and free enterprise. In univer- sities across the country, economists ex- plain that the "price" of ending inflation must be a corresponding rise in the na- tion's unemployment rate, but while the mathematics behind all these economists' advice appears neat, to a worker who has just lost his job, these machinations must seem surreal. Of course economists and commenta- tors qualify their assertions by recogniz- ing that the unemployment level cannot rise beyond that imaginary limit which is "politically unacceptable" but even a man like Nixon will be hard pressed to explain to a black autoworker that he should quietly lose his job in the in- terests of the economy. FOR ONE aspect of economic reality which Washington overlooks. or re- ' ises to consider is the fact that the first and hardest hit by layoffs are blacks and poo whites holding marginal jobs with- out seniority. In a nation with over 80 million work- ers, an increase in the unemployment of one per cent is staggering when it is translated into human terms. It is all too easy for an economist or a politician to surround himself with statistics and fig- ures which make him abhorred over the idea that the dollar may lose its inter- national reputation but which lets him The fri ghtening mnaj orly JN AN IMPRESSIVE resounding tour de force all three top officials of the Nixon administration have d i s p 1 a y e d the strength of their following. Nixon himself, his liaison officer to the Almighty, Billy Graham and that ubiquitous superfluity Spiro Agnew turned out to be the ,three men most admired by Americans in a poll conducted by the Gallup organiza- tion. Apart from the shockingly bad taste displayed by the American public (they also chose Mamie Eisenhower as the most admired woman) the political import of this welling up of admiration is genu- inely frightening. Out there, indeed all around us, there is a silent majority just as President Nixon said there was. And it appears to have just the views he said -it would.. IS A group long ignored by and now fed up with the usual directions of American politics. To these men and women Nixon's fulfillment of political non-promises, Agnew's rabid anti-intel- lectualizing and Billy Graham's advice to "get high on Jesus," come as manna from above. Let us hope this last popularity contest of the 1960s does not portend the direc- tion of a whole new decade. -CHRIS STEELE rest assured that a 'small' increase in the unemployment rate is "politically ac- ceptable." However, if a politician is responsive to the human needs of those people most likely to be affected by his decisions-in this case the urban poor-,he should feel compelled to search 'for alternative methods of stabilizing our economy. MAKING THE poor bear the brunt of the fight against inflation (through increased unemployment and the cur- tailment of domestic programs) seems all the more callous when the greatest single cause of inflation-the more than $100 billion already spent on Vietnam- reeks so much destruction and hardship. It is the billions spent on Vietnam each year, without the, price controls or war profits taxes on those who make the most money from it which has been respon- sible for the pressure on our economy in the first place. But now, the Administra- tion is asking unions to give up the wage increases they need to maintain the buy- ing power of their incomes in order to fight the inflationary trend which the government initiated and continues. The Joint Economic Committee's latest report on the federal budget says that while the rate of Vietnam spending is expected to be down $8 billion by the middle of next year, non-Vietnam de- fense spending-due to exotic new pro- grams like the ABM-will be up $4.5 bil- lion by then, absorbing most of a "peace dividend" which could cool the economy or feed the hungry. WILL THE POOR have to pay twice for the war in Vietnam? First they have paid in hunger for the inflation which has reduced the dollar's purchasing power by 16.6 cents since 1964. Now the first-to- be-fired are paying again because of the Administration's deflationary program, which is based on fewer jobs and reduced federal spending. At a time when Nixon's economic ad- visors are asking for cuts in government spending, it seems incredible that the President insists on limiting programs like Food Stamps and the Office of Eco- nomic Opportunity while allowing the monster Defense Department to consume more than 40 per cent of the federal budget into the Vietnam abyss and on toys like the ABM. Recently an economist here at the Uni- versity commented that the President would be more than willing to accept an increase in unemployment in order to stop inflation because of his political constituency. After all, the voters pulling the lever for Nixon in 1972 are the ones most uptight about inflation and least inclined to support increased federal spending for the urban poor. MUST THE POOR bear the brunt of both the ups and downs of the eco- nomic rollercoaster? When Lyndon Johnson was President, he was frequently criticized for adding to inflation with his "guns and butter" policies. How long will the real problems of our society go unattended until we realize that guns alone can wreck the economy? Hopefully President Nixon will look be- yond 1972 and realize that his anti-infla- tion program may contribute more to exacerbating national problems than solving them. -STUART GANNES EVEN MUSKEGON is beautiful in t h e snow. Twelve hours of s n o w falling thickly in soft clumps can smooth over even the raw ugliness of factories, shop- ping centers, and used car lots. Rich man, poor man, and all their respective prop- erties become indistinguishable under mounds of white. Snow is the great equal- izer It is also the occasion for dusting off lots of old ideas about 11 f e in America. Neighborliness a n d rising-to-meet-the- crisis reassert themselves as people with snowblowers help their !less fortunate neighbors to dig out. Feelings of commun- ity thrive among snow shovelers and strug- gling drivers, conversation' drifts across the snow, and the family comes together again to wait out tbe dark, cold nights. Snow brings out the pioneer in people. Not that Muskegon is particularly out of date. It is a hardworking, silent majority town, roughly analagous to the A 11 e n Parks, Birminghams, a n d Dearborns of this area only better stocked with prole- tarians. BUT IT has developed over the years an opinion of what America should look like. Part of this has come from television - winning money on the morning game shows, obeying the social norms set down on afternoon soap operas, handling crises, both political and familial, on the evening serial models. Another part comes from the fear of having to change - to accept the unac- ceptable or to sacrifice the known for an unknown suggested by somebody else. Thus boys should not wear long, straggly hair. Neither should girls. A n d black history should not become part of the old high school social studies program There ought to be some respect for the laws we have always obeyed and t h e government we have always served. And people should be nice to each other, but discretely, without communes. In a particularly bleak and uninspiring way, the opinion of Muskegon represents American reality, and the o n l y reality many of us will ever know. This is Amer- ica the humdrum. It is reality made up of the endless repetition of patterns so in- flexible that even the variations are pre- dictable. It is also America the p u r e of heart, where people are expected to be kind and honest and trustworthy, al- though increasingly they prove not to be. This is the American reality that many students revisited only one month after they had marched in Washington. THE TRIP to Washington never seemed very real. We travelled at night, sleeping through hundreds of miles and awakening to find all the well-known landmarks on an otherwise ordinary horizon. Our ac- comodations and our purpose made us part of a homogeneous, largely student com- munity, injected into the city and isolated from it. The question of the weekend became, "Why are you here?" The answers have mostly been given. We were against the war, against the Pentagon, against death;, we were hoping for another Woodstock; we wanted to sightsee; it was the place to be. Yet the mood of the marchers pointed to something deeper than that. The people who wandered through t h e government area in the gray cold of Friday afternoon had come to look for America. They walk- ed around the base of t h e Washington Monument watching the living panorama that stretched from Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol, and their faces held the in- tent searching expression of cynical pil- grims., They had been bred to be patriots and now they were confronting the temple of their faith. They expected to feel some- thing, and they felt nothing. It w a s a strangely flat sensation, like receiving communion in the Catholic Church and trying to feel the presence of God in your soul -- the same nothing. The symbols of American government are impressive, all heavy stone and pillars, elegant, immovable, ancient. T h e y are calculated to inspire, but they can't any- more. The men and ideas they memorial- ize and the government they were built to house are part of the past. Today the Greek temples house a com- puterized bureaucracy, and the old ideas are more suitable for giving Fourth of July speeches than for solving modern prob- lems. But we are expected to swear alleg- ience to the old temples without reference to the new gods inside them. HAVING FAILED to find America where the guide books promised it, people threw themselves into Mobilization activities. In some small way, every participant hoped to reach out and reclaim his prodigal govern- ment. So the faces of t h e marchers against death wore the same cynical pilgrim look. One felt they were trying to feel the sig- nificance of the name card they wore and the collective movement of committed feet and the encouraging candy pushed through the rain from the sidelines. And possibly they believed that there was something to be felt, perhaps because the ever-present comaraderie was so much more real than the Greek temples, many people did find something there. The faces that walked away from the coffins in front of the Capitol were like faces I have seen coming out of a confessional. If Friday seemed like a day of Penance, Saturday was a day of Rejoicing. The rain stopped, the sun shone, and thousands of pilgrims assembled on the Mall to march to the Washington Monument .But already there were defections. A f e w marchers straggled out to visit the Smithsonian, and as the day progressed. the crowds at both the museum and t h e National Gallery grew visibly. By closing time the National Gallery was packed, not only with young art-lovers, but also with tired kids sprawling on the marble floor of the rotunda, lounging amongst the flowers in the two gardens, and sleeping on the couches in the galler- ies. The scene looked like a refugee cen- ter, and one guard commented, "At first we weren't supposed to let them lie down, but man, they're so tired" AND SO the weekend ended and every- one went home trying to pick America out of the monuments, the marchers, and the National Gallery. Many gave up the po- litical search and looked instead at the human value of the good fellowship they had seen. Many more refused to place good fellowship within the context of America. And a month later the term ended and everyone went home, home to a particul- arly bleak and uninspiring American reality. In Muskegon very few people wear the intent searching faces of cynical pilgrims. Most of them have their America and are reasonably content with it If asked, they would probably locate it somewhere be- tween t h e Declaration of Independence and the Protestant ethic, and people it largely with good fellows. They are sup- ported in their belief by television and an occasional snowstorm and blind faith. The Washington pilgrimage seems very far away. i The south of the border, blaahs, By NADINE COHODAS TWENTY MINUTES after my traveling friend and I arriv- ed in Cuernavaca, Mexico from the Mexico City airport we were ushered into the first of a week of parties. We walked into the main room of what looked like a very stylish home amid cocktail party banter, smacking lips on offered cheeks and clinking ice in 100 or so' glasses and prepared to greet the country. A large part of my eight-day stay in Mexico was spent in Cuer- navaca, and I spent a good part of that time at parties there. South of Mexico City on the way to Acapulco, Cuernavaca is well- known, I guess, as a resort area for wealthy Mexicans and Amer- icans who can live in a much flashier style there than in the U.S. for the same price. Someone told me that only 1,000 Americans live in Cuernavaca and If I had stayed another few days I'm sure I would have met 95 per cent of them because they all stick to- gether like glue. THEY GO to each others par- ties, eat the same trays of turkey, ham, chicken 'and rolls, drink to excess and all have doqs. Except for an occasional tortilla insert- ed in the menu, the only Mexican influence at many of their homes and parties are the kitchen help and houseboys. At some of the ritizier parties one may also find a few Mexican musicians who can play "H e 11 o Dolly," "Wooly Bully" and other similarly Mexican tunes. I must extricate some Ameri- cans from this way of life, how- ever. These are the ones who live in Cuernavaca because they work there as the Latin American re- presentatives of their respective companies in the United States. But most of the Americans seem to be the 50-75 year old retirees or wealthy, wealthy typeswho have decided to capitalize on part of what Mexico can offer - cheap labor and a cheaper cost of living than in the United States. The expatriates seem to h a v e nothing to do all day except call one and other up to confirm that nothing is new or to invite one or the other over for a drink or a party. I had the ,misfortune to attend four of these parties in six days and missed two others in my eight- day stay by sheer luck. (American Airlines found room for us two days earlier than we had planned to return.) One of the more striking sights to hit my eyes at that first party was a baldheaded, 60-ish man with bushy sideburns wearing a blue blazer, yellow, blue, red and white bellbottoms and white shoes, walking suavely among the guests. All around him were pantsuits, long dresses, short dresses, s e e - through outfits, halter tops, dia- monds, topazes, gold, and a large piece of Jade (I thought it was ivory but was soon corrected) that was perched in the abundant cleavage of one woman. Scurrying Mexicans meanwhile nodded their heads for drink or- ders - the kind of English they understand - "Room and coca." THE NIGHT progressed slowly. Four medium aged Mexicans and a little boy with marachas d i d their best to entertain the guests with good old American music. My friend and I left early. But the best was yet to come- New Years Eve and a party re- portedly for 150 people. Dec. 31 - We arrived around 9:30 p.m. on the last day of the Sixties and some of the aging jet set was tottering already. By 1970 the damage was done - it was the first time I had seen women so drunk they were unable to stand up let alone hold a drink right side up. As liquor interferedwith their equilibrium it seems to have likewise loosened their tongues. The hostess, for example, a wiz- ened, brusque lady from Houston, Texas in a spangled pantsuit, treated us all to an instant teplay of her husband's strip tease Christmas night. "Whah he even had awn mah black lace braa- zeer," she croaked. "Ah married him when ah was 45 years old (her second husband, I was told) and he had a pair of purple and yel- low bathing trunks then. And ah bet him he couldn't get into them again but shore enough he d i d. Whah he stripped better 'n any stripper ahve ever seen," s h e concluded. AND THEN there was the really quite attactive American woman married, I learned, to a wealthy Cuban immigrant - "Notchy", short for Ignacio - who had got- ten out of the country with all his1 money before Castro took over. At the end of the evening she staggered over to me and embrac- ed me - not out of affection, I'm sure but simply because the im- petus of walking over carried her right into my arms. Had I moved she would have fallen flat on her, well made up face. I would go on with the cast of characters at the party, not to be believed, I guess, until they are actually seen. Like the very inebriated artist from Houston who, everytime she rewrapped her- self in her rose-colored sari inad- vertently left one side of her black long"line bra exposed for public consumption. The most surprising thing about the New Years eve fiesta, though, was that by the next day the exact same crowd was at an annual New Years day open house to begin the whole routine all over again. APPARENTLY these people en'- joy their lot. It certainly isn't a demanding one, except maybe on their respective constitutions - most assuredly not on their minds. These people needn't have a thought about anything except where the next party or casual luncheon will be or what the Mex- ican help has broken today. Perhaps it is a misnomer to say these people live in Mexico. True their houses, cars, clothes a n d bodies are there but their life- styles remain in the United States. I'm not sure there is any point I wish to make, any moral judg- ment I wish to proclaim except maybe to note rather sadly that it is possible to travel 1500 miles beyond this country's borders and not know you have ever left. .9, JAMES WECHSLER ' The most important crusades AMONG SOME hitherto severe adult critics of youthful poli- tical activism, a cautious note of relief is now being aired. It has been stirred by the news that a number of energetic student lead- ers are turning their attention away from the war and its griev- ious impact to what is viewed by these elders as the healthier topic of environmental pollution. Thus columnist William S. White, one of the most fiery type- writer warriors against the anti- war movement, reports with sat- isfaction that "private conversa- tions with many students support the. estimate of various public au- thorities and, specifically; the Nix- on Administration that the prob- lems of our environment - pol- lution and smog and so on-are succeeding 'revolt' as such as a center of student concern." One can almost hear him breathing more easily as he writes that "if 'the kids' can indeed be further en- couraged farther along this road, where their sense of passion against things as they are is both healthy and useful," 1970 will be a "far better new year" than prev- iously indicated. Although I have so far failed to encounter the new breed of the environmentally engrossed,. their existence has been widely report- ed, even evoking a Page 1 notice in The Times for a national round- up of their activity. A Student Council on Pollution and the En- vironment (SCOPE) has already been formed. President Nixon seems to feel he has at least found common ground - other than a football field - with young Amer- ica; he has belatedly intimated that the anti-pollution struggle is the battle of the century, perhaps one in which David and Julie Eis- enhower and Kim Agnew can join hands. IT IS NO disparagement of the earnestness of this student mani- festation to express a mild suspic- sent threat to human survival em- bodied in the continued accessibil- ity of hydrogen bombs still trans- cends all other perils afflicting the universe. To put the matter a trifle primitively, the big atmosphere and water cleanup being visual- ized contains large elements of irony as we dwell in the shadow of the great blow-up. One might even contend that an obsession with the dangers of contaminated food can become a distraction from awareness that far too many people in the universe endure on the edge-or reality-of star- vation. Obviously thisescapism need not be the case. Not many weeks ago some5000 University of Cali- fornia students joined in the chant "We Want to Stop the War, End Pollution--and Beat Stan- ford," thereby indicating a reten- tion of priorities perhaps at var- iance with White House expecta- tions. IT MUST ALSO be said that, despite the welcome it has receiv- ed as an expression of clear-head- ed, clean-shaven constructiveness, the environmental movement may swiftly open many new domestic cans of worms, if the expression will be forgiven. One group at the University of Texas has already filed 58 complaints against t h e university (No. 1 on the gridiron) for pollution of a creek. Nader's raiders have collided bitterly with the auto industry on air pollution as well as on safety questions. Con- servationish students have clash- ed with the Army Engineers Clear Creek Dam project in southern Ohio. charging that it was prepar- ing to flood a cherished natural area used by science students. Drug manufacturers are under fire for obnoxious waste. On many levels many varieties of entrenched industrial and spec- ial interests may find themselves the targets of SCOPE and allied groups pursuing the search for sal- vation from climatic suffocation and other man-made afflictions. Thus what are cheerfully des- cribed by Mr. White as "fresher winds blowing across the campus"J could be the prelude to many un- predictable storms once "the kids" begin asking too many questions about who has done what to Moth- er Nature. And Mr. Nixon's pro- claimed dedication to this con- cern with the deteriorating qual- ity of life will very shortly be put to the test of how much money he is prepared to invest in the count- er attack to supplement the rhe- toric. No small sums will mean anything. So let nothing said here be construed as signifying disdain for the anti-pollution crusaders, or any allegation that their thing, is contrived to take our minds off the casualty lists, no matter how much some would like to have it turn out that way. The real ques- tion is how 'one manages to main- tain any sense of priorities in a time when so many matters bur- lesque the condition of modern i C WISTMA PR$t 11 'E RlJ/W~ MK HU5MAlJP 6AVJ I7TO 1ME. RO coo/ Ii fr6 -~W RoWO s(7E AAMC t1 f r Y 900 JGHL)V~J 2. / CWRY C({QISTh1A6 I P.MtW 71A- / u77N~ 13 II ! I Illf 1 _ x(11 f if// -.. /'T Il fly'/ L --