Status Updates From Ages of American Capitalism...

On behalf of a nationalist economic agenda, seeking a restoration of world U.S. manufacturing supremacy, Nixon had in fact brought forth a new day without precedent in world economic history: an international monetary system of fiat money—state-issued currencies backed only by the imprimatur of governments, whose relative values were determined by open market trading.

In May 1970, New York construction workers, members of a particularly racist and corrupt union, assaulted “hippie” antiwar protestors, culminating in a 100,000-large hard hat rally of Nixon supporters. An aide noted to the president “their admiration for your masculinity."

it is extraordinary how consumerism promotes dissatisfaction with consuming without undermining fantasies about the pleasures of consuming again.