J.K. Galbraith and the Forks in the Road

Galbraith died April 29, at 97. I once drove up to Vermont to interview him in his farmhouse there. It was dark out, and I drove uncertainly along a dirt road and up a driveway and knocked on the door, shouting, "Is this the home of Professor Galbraith?" "No," came an angry shout from within. "It's the home of Professor Hook." Sidney Hook, the prototypical neocon, lived on the opposite side of the hill from the Keynesian progressive, Galbraith. By no means for the last time, I reflected how easy it is in America to take the wrong road, often without noticing, and end up 180 degrees from where you thought you were headed.

My Vermont trip took place in the mid-1970s, and it was still possible, though barely so, to imagine that there might be feasible radical options available around the next corner.

From Saigon on April 29, 1975, just before midnight, CIA station chief Tom Polgar had just sent his last secure communiqué to headquarters in Langley, saying, "It will take us about twenty minutes to destroy equipment.... It has been a long fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power...."

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