ABSTRACT

The presidential race had begun in earnest. The major party nominees, Hubert H. Humphrey for the Democrats and Richard M. Nixon for the Republicans, were energetically making their appeals for public support. This chapter presents a story whose point is not to argue that the behind-the-scene actions affected the outcome of the 1968 contest—the Vietnam War and public disillusionment with Lyndon Johnson took care of that. In 1994, it was disclosed that thousands of Americans had been treated as human guinea pigs during the Cold War by their own government. Other once-secret documents show the extraordinary preparations the US government undertook in preparing for a possible nuclear war. Still Seeing Red tells the story of the politics of the Cold War. Whatever happens, the people, the survivors of the Cold War, must ask themselves once more: What does it mean to be an American?.