Can you believe that today is the 50th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon as President?

Remember this scene?

A mere 680 days after winning the Presidency in a landslide, winning 49 of 50 states, and a mere 303 days after having is Vice President abdicate in the face of political corruption charges,  the President of the United States of America, one of the most powerful nations ever to exist, was forced into abdication.

In true American style, in his last official act as President he boards the helicopter flashing the “V” for victory sign.  It’s all about the messaging, I guess.  What’s going through my mind, though, is not Watergate or “V” for victory or any of that, but rather the fading of communal memory.

Many of us in fact don’t remember this scene because we weren’t old enough to understand what was going on or we just plain old weren’t born yet.  I myself at 58 years old am just on the cusp. With that passage of time, the feelings of embarrassment over having a President need to resign and run away and hide are also fading.  What President Nixon did seems trivial by modern standards, even laughable.  In lieu of a resilience, we seem to have doubled down on trickier and smarter over moral and ethical when it comes to our politicians.

It’s good that pain fades with memory.  I certainly for one don’t want to be feeling every pain I’ve experienced in my life over and over.  I don’t want to be reminded of it all.  Hopefully our memories have trained us to avoid whatever caused us pain.  At a minimum, if avoiding it is not possible or not feasible, then hopefully our memories have prepared us to experience the revisiting or replaying of the painful events with resilience and flexibility that will allow us to grow from our collective experience.

I do lament that this process of growth does not seem to be part of our current collective psyche.  I hope one day, for the sake of this nation, that it makes its way in that direction.

Rev. Ed