America’s Last Liberal President (TM) Responds To Attica
By 
As most of you know, on September 13, 1971 New York state troopers executed a violent takeover of Attica Correctional Facility, killing 10 hostages and 33 prisoners and seriously injuring scores more. Richard Nixon, America’s Last Liberal President (TM), and his administration had been working with the governor of New York and encouraged a violent takeover rather than a negotiated settlement. When he first heard about the takeover, he told New York’s governor that “I back you to the hilt” and said that, like the massacre of protesters at Kent State, it would “have a salutary effect.”
Not that it’s much of a mitigating factor, but at the time of Nixon’s initial response the media was dutifully spreading the lies of the New York state government, who asserted that the hostages had been tortured and killed by the prisoners, “necessitating” the violent takeover. This lie, however, was quickly exposed. Monroe County medical examiner John Edland performed autopsies on the killed hostages and found they had all been killed by gunfire, which given that the prisoners didn’t have firearms settled the question of whether the hostages had been killed by the troopers or the prisoners. He also found that the alleged castration of a hostage did not happen. New York’s Republican authorities reacted in a familiar manner: by threatening Edland and portraying the conservative Republican as a radical hippie revolutionary bent on smashing the state. After two more medical examiners ignored implicit and implicit threats and also found the bodies of the hostages riddled with bullet holes and without their throats cut, the official narrative finally crumbled (although, of course, once a narrative takes hold it is difficult for mere facts to dislodge it.) Here was Nixon’s reaction upon hearing the news:
As you can see, the violent takeover was enthusiastically ordered by Saint Nelson Rockefeller, another Republican some liberals and left-of-liberals like to compare favorably to contemporary liberal Democrats for roughly the same reasons (and with the same factual basis) that sports broadcasters like to say stuff like “baseball is 90% pitching” and “you just. put. the. points. on. the. board. in. the. NATIONAL. FOOTBALL. LEAGUE!”
In conclusion, if only the liberal Richard Nixon rather than the neoliberal Barack Obama had been president the left might have actually gotten something out of the last 8 years.
All of the facts about Attica are from Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water. I will have a longer review published later this month, but it is a monumental accomplishment and you should read it.