"[Fill in the blank] rips GOP ‘Old Guard.’"

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Political bickering isn't new
By Gary Kroeger, July 28, 2013

My school was demolished last month.

Yes, I’m an ex-Price Lab rat and one of the many former students, parents, teachers and citizens angered and saddened by the decision to rid the University of Northern Iowa of its school to train teachers. It offered a unique and rewarding learning environment for both students and student-teachers. It makes me angry to see a research and development school rendered irrelevant.

I drove by the mountain of dust, bricks and twisted metal where my friends and I grew up and learned — well, everything — and it made me sad.

But the closing is not what I’m writing about. A little treasure resulted from the Board of Regents shortsighted, politicized decision. When the building came down, a time capsule was revealed in the cornerstone.

Placed there in 1952 when the bricks that became our school were first laid upon each other, it was opened at our annual Northern University High School picnic during the Sturgis Falls celebration. It was a tin box, rusty from over 60 years of Iowa weather that challenges even the most carefully sealed treasures. Given that this box wasn’t entombed even remotely with such care, it was a small miracle when it opened.

Inside were plastic bags that protected manuscripts that appeared to be mimeographed. Remember mimeographs? An entire generation of students got a thrill each day as freshly mimeographed tests were passed out. Every one of us put the cool, slightly damp, paper up to our noses and inhaled. There was something strangely relaxing and intoxicating about it, but I digress.

Among the artifacts was a Waterloo Courier.

With deference to my editors who allow me to fill this column once a month, I will say that to include The Courier in this capsule was a masterstroke. A masterstroke because nothing sheds light onto the temperament of an era better than what was in the news at that particular time. We can then compare and draw contrasts to what occupies our news today and determine whether or not we’ve progressed.

The headline of The Courier on Oct. 30, 1952, was: "Truman Rips GOP ‘Old Guard.’" I was taken aback. It seems nothing has changed.

Today we are in what seems like the most politically contentious time in history. But it occurred to me as I strained to read the article over the shoulders of the UNI archivists that maybe we’ve always been this divided. Maybe we simply have more tools and avenues to voice our contentions these days and fan the flames.

From the back of a train on his Waterloo whistle-stop, President Harry Truman said: "We are in a fight to stay out of World War III, but if we follow the Old Guard Republicans as they vote in Congress, we would lose our allies, and we would be face-to-face with the Russians, all alone. … You can see that the Republicans never learn anything. ... Ever since 1932 the Republican Old Guard has been voting against progress."

Has anything changed? That observation is not meant as a condemnation of Republicans, but as a reflection on opposing points of view. You can decide for yourself whether Truman’s words remain true. My point is that the rhetoric is eerily the same, and perhaps we can collectively draw some relief from realizing that we’ve always been this divided.

And we have survived.

What is undeniably true is that we have more platforms by which to voice our differences. Information — as well as misinformation — travels at light speed. If our political consciousness has changed, it may not be the result of evolving perspectives but the fact that wireless, high-speed Internet and 24/7 infotainment news have turned us into an impatient society. We jump all over each other more quickly and with less substance.

That reality may only get worse. But maybe if we took a little more time considering what hasn’t changed about us, we could start to find more things that we have in common.

Like missing the smell of mimeographed tests.
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