Chapter 30: Protestations

Tuesday, October 30, 1984

Cammie and Mel were a bit out of sorts in the morning. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d been expecting friction to turn up sooner or later. Oh, there had been the occasional minor spat within the couples. Even Jas and I weren’t immune, though (ironically, perhaps) it was my ability to put up with a lot of things that caused the friction. Sometimes Jas expected me to complain more about something that really wasn’t a big deal to me.

Still, we’d done very well. I couldn’t imagine that Cammie and Mel’s issue was going to last. They had too much invested in each other for a minor disagreement to really matter.

The ‘debate’ between John Kenneth Galbraith and William F. Buckley, Jr started out with quibbles over the forum’s name. That’s often not the best sign.

Galbraith asked to change the name, and the organizers went along with it. It was now ‘Is Strong Government Socially Desirable?’ The change from ‘Big’ to ‘Strong’ was ostensibly because ‘big’ is relatively meaningless, while ‘strong’ means something.

For me, neither title was all that good. ‘Big’ just references size. A large, do-nothing government is pointless. ‘Strong,’ on the other hand, called to mind governments like Nazi Germany’s. That government was very ‘strong,’ but not at all desirable.

Nevertheless, the semantic argument somewhat set the tone for the rest of the evening. Galbraith, in many ways, acted as a proxy for Walter Mondale, while Buckley acted as a proxy for Ronald Reagan. I thought Galbraith scored more points in calling out the failures of Reagan’s more Keynesian policies and pointing to the ballooning deficit and growth in the size of government without the government actually accomplishing more. Buckley weakly defended those by pointing to improving economic indicators, but my take on it (with the blessing of hindsight) was that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’

Yes, some of Reagan’s policies helped that tide rise. It’s arguable that Reagan’s biggest contribution, ironically, was increased deficit spending to strengthen the government as an employer. Borrowing and spending worked, putting the country on a stronger footing in the short term and allowing the private sector to expand with confidence that they would have a market.

That was anything but ‘trickle-down,’ of course. The spending that mattered was spending on wages.

Tax cuts were bandied about back and forth, again without much clarity. It seemed inarguable that some tax rates had been too high (though effective rates had been far lower, what with all of the deductions) before Reagan, but cutting them drastically had proven neither effective nor sustainable, as Reagan himself had tacitly agreed.

My thoughts were of the future. Over the next few years, if history repeated itself, Arthur Laffer’s fairly sensible, if somewhat overhyped, ‘Laffer Curve’ would be transmogrified into a mantra whereby all taxes were always too high and no taxes could ever be raised. Grover Norquist’s crew had done considerable disservice to the United States over the next few decades, in my opinion.

From a 2021 perspective, there was at least substantial evidence that, if ‘trickle-down economics’ had ever worked, it was no longer working. That said, if you went back to the original work on it (such as that was), it was only supposed to work in specific circumstances, and we hadn’t had those circumstances in decades.

It was interesting watching these two notable figures debating things that they understood better in the abstract than I did, but without the historical context to know when that ‘abstract’ was just plain wrong. Of course, even in 2021, there had been large numbers of people clinging to ‘trickle-down’ as their mantra. Arthur Laffer, bless his heart, had inadvertently created a religion where faith triumphed over reason and evidence.

Everyone agreed that it was well worth our time. Even if we hadn’t learned anything (and some of the girls definitely had learned some things), seeing these two wrangle with each other was a lot of fun.

That, in turn, said something about what sorts of college freshmen we were. The average college freshman likely didn’t consider ‘a spirited debate over the nature of government and economic policy’ to be ‘a fun evening.’ That’s usually reserved for going to the bars, trying to pick up girls (or get picked up), and maybe having a bit (or a lot) too much to drink.

We were, as always, who we were. Even those of us who really were ‘only’ 18.

Wednesday, October 31, 1984

Today felt weird. It felt weird for me, at least, but I think for all of us.

This was the first Halloween in years where there was no dance to go to (admittedly mostly on a different night, but still connected to Halloween) and no trick-or-treaters to hand out candy to. There was a limited tradition of college students going door-to-door trick-or-treating for alcohol, but most people didn’t participate. The idea of college students going out looking for candy was fairly absurd, at least in my opinion.

At least whatever had come between Cammie and Mel seemed settled down. If anything, they were a bit more affectionate than usual.

Who knows? Maybe ‘make-up sex’ had something to do with it. That had really never worked between my ex-wife and me, and perhaps that was a big part of the problem. Who knew? Figuring out why that relationship went wrong had so many obvious answers that trying to pursue ‘make-up sex’ as part of the problem was pointless. Anger management had been, by far, the biggest concern.

The film society was showing ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ as their Halloween activity, and we decided that sounded like enough fun to be worthwhile, even with tests coming up next week (and thus needing to study). Perhaps we would have followed their advice to ‘wear costumes’ had we known about it enough in advance, but we hadn’t. None of us had costumes handy or felt like improvising something.

Angie made the amusing point that, if we had Candice and Sherry next year, and if they showed ‘Snow White’ again (which they probably wouldn’t), it would be hilarious if I went as ‘Snow White’ and the girls all went as the dwarves.

I really, really wanted to break out into the ‘Happy Working Song’ at one point, but it would have been lost on everyone there. Only Laura had a chance of knowing it, and we’d never discussed whether it existed in her first-life universe.

Of course, perhaps someone would have recognized it. That would have been a big deal! Still, that was true of any anachronistic reference in any crowd. Enormous potential payoff, but also enormous potential risk.

Thursday, November 1, 1984

In general, I tended to think the libertarian, tradition-challenging policy of SWAMP was a good thing for A&M. Today, I largely disagreed with them. They’d taken what might have been a partially correct statement (‘A&M traditions no longer reflect the views of the majority of students’) and applied it in what I thought was one of the worst ways possible: respecting the grass around the MSC.

The Memorial Student Center is, by definition, a memorial to Aggies killed in military service. Respecting the building and the grass around it is a pretty significant tradition, and one that holds almost no downside for the average student. It’s not much of an inconvenience one cannot sit on the grass, because there are grassy areas a very short distance away that are fine. It’s no inconvenience one cannot walk on the grass, either, because there’s almost no place at which the grass would make a worthwhile shortcut.

The upshot of all of this was that an enormous number of students turned out to block SWAMP from standing on the grass. To my mind, that proved that the majority of students (or at least the majority of students who cared even a little) had the view that the grass was to be respected. There was no pro-SWAMP contingent hanging out cheering them on.

SWAMP’s leaders did have a point: their demonstration permit had been denied, and police had been sent ready to arrest protesters, while recently in San Antonio the KKK had received a permit for a demonstration and were not arrested. Had they made their focus ‘A&M blocks student groups from holding protests,’ their point would have at least arguably been made.

In the end, SWAMP members made no attempt to step onto the grass and the entire thing was peaceful (if loud, with a great deal of shouting back and forth).

They had a point. Heck, they had many points (as befitted an organization opposing ‘many problems’). This, however, was not their finest hour, and I think even SWAMP’s leadership came away from the whole thing realizing they’d blundered in pushing this particular point in this way.

We had three study groups in the house tonight. I had my Computer Science friends over, Cammie and Mel had four people from their Physics class, and Angie and Paige had a few girls from their accounting class.

We split up between the basement, living room, and kitchen. It seemed perfectly manageable.

I still hadn’t done anything about whiteboards. We might need several of them, if this kept up. And, really, I think we all wanted the study groups to keep happening. Making new friends was important.

Friday, November 2, 1984

We hit the road as quickly as possible after classes let out on Friday. Even with that, we didn’t make it to the Dallas area until 8:30. Under the circumstances, we decided to get dinner before going to the hotel.

Angie and Jas pretty much insisted on another steakhouse outing. Cammie and Mel were very hesitant about the cost, and just as hesitant about Angie or me paying, but let themselves get talked into it.