Political Context
Ruptures in the Nation
Widespread social and political disruption throughout the nation defined the American 60s and 70s. Four presidents held office in the 60s, each confronting crises that reshaped public trust in the country’s democratic institutions. The Vietnam War, spanning across all four administrations, was among the most straining issues of the day. As the war waged overseas, civilians were fighting battles of their own at home as mass protests, partisan conflicts, and civil rights dominated domestically.
International tensions, exemplified by the Cold War, expounded these pressures. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which many consider to be the closest the Cold War came to becoming nuclear,1 revealed the intensity of the confrontation between Capitalism and Communism globally. The Vietnam War itself acted as a proxy for this broader political and ideological confrontation and its cost echoed throughout the U.S.
Americans’ distrust of government worsened as Watergate broke in the early 70s. Revelations of corruption and presidential misconduct eroded public faith in government and worsened partisan division.2 The years between 1966 and 1974 saw an definite decline in public satisfaction with political leaders, with the voting majority feeling as through their wishes were “very imperfectly translated into institutional response”.3 The scandal was only one of many developments drowning Americans in the news cycle, worsening existing political tensions and adding to the disquiet felt by many. In creating Scenes from Life, Arnest considered how these effects impacted (or failed to impact) American society and the people comprising every level of it.
The Nixon Administration: Vietnam and Watergate
The scandal, corruption, and violence that saturated the country’s affairs and their consequences for average Americans inspired Arnest to create Scenes from Life. His unpublished introduction for SfL, which includes quotes mostly from or related to Nixon, suggests that his disapproval arose from the consequences of the administration’s involvement in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. These events would have been common knowledge to most contemporary viewers of SfL and add important context to the series. As such, an overview of the events is provided.
Elected in 1968, President Nixon presented himself as the candidate that was going to ease America’s economic woes and international dilemmas. However, within his first year, anti-war sentiments continued growing among the public as the presence of U.S. troops in Vietnam reached its peak.4 On November 9th, 1969, in one of many coming efforts to discredit the press, Nixon delivered his “Silent Majority” speech, in which he suggested that the media wildly exaggerated the public’s disapproval with his administration. Nixon was seemingly vindicated (or at least demonstrated his ability to control his image in the public eye) as he won the 1972 election in a landslide victory against George McGovern.
On June 17th, 1972, shortly before Nixon’s reelection, D.C. police arrested five men trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel, kicking off what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. The scandal had little impact on the outcomes of the 1972 elections: the White House successfully impeded investigations and the accountability process plodded along slowly.5 Watergate quickly began unraveling in the subsequent two years after Nixon’s reelection, consuming his second term. Throughout 1973, numerous White House staffers were either convicted or resigned because of Watergate investigations or other scandals.
Investigations primarily centered around the “White House tapes,” or recordings of Nixon’s phone calls and conversations in the Oval Office since 1971. Investigations were arduous and, even with a growing pile of evidence and calls for his impeachment, Nixon and his aides defended themselves vigorously, going so far as to erase subpoenaed material.6 Impeachment grew imminent as the Senate investigation surged on. Although Nixon maintained his innocence (“I am not a crook!”),7 he became the first and only U.S. President to resign from office.8 Shortly after, Vice President Gerald Ford took on the presidency and granted Nixon a full pardon for all acts committed during his presidency.9 The Watergate scandal was so prominent culturally and socially that the suffix “-gate” has come to describe any matter political scandals or dubious acts.
In Colorado
Colorado experienced its own political and social upheavals during the 1970s, paralleling developments throughout the country. Colorado Springs, in particular, evolved through its military presence, rapid urbanization, and emerging ideological factions. Both the state and Colorado Springs followed national voting trends,10 but national electoral outcomes betray the complicated political realities within the state and its cities. A closer look at the specific sociopolitical developments in the state and in Colorado Springs helps explain the nuance with which Arnest portrayed his society.
Colorado’s 1970s marked a period of major political change. Motivated by national disenchantment and the need for a more modern government, voters approved sweeping reforms that restructured both the state’s executive and judicial branches. In 1970, they empowered the governor’s office—originally designed by cautious framers to have limited authority—while adding provisions to ensure local communities retained autonomy.11 Alongside the enhanced governorship came reinforcements to the home rule system that enabled counties to function as their own form of government. The political skepticism that Coloradans shared with their compatriots was nothing new: Colorado’s founders struggled to secure statehood in a time of great demoralization with the federal government.12 Coloradans have tried to keep their government in check ever since.
Perhaps the single most notable effort to strengthen the democratic process was the overwhelming approval of the Colorado Sunshine Act by Colorado voters. The law, passed in 1972, introduced a host of provisions enhancing government transparency in the state. It expanded the public’s access to government meetings and policy-making sessions while requiring lobbyists to disclose how much they spend on influencing legislation.13 Common Cause’s Colorado Project director, Craig S. Barnes, described the amendment as “perhaps the most significant single act of legislative reform in Colorado’s history.”14 As a pro-democracy watchdog organization, Common Cause played a prominent role in consolidating the voices of frustrated and disillusioned voters in Colorado.
Common Cause was at the vanguard of several other important campaigns in the state, as well. The organization successfully advocated for an initiative process more accessible to people with limited funds. Through this process, Coloradan’s passed a 1972 referendum preventing the 1976 Winter Olympics from taking place in Colorado. Despite opposing Colorado’s strongest business interests, voters succeeded in shutting down what they felt was “fiscally misguided, environmentally dangerous, and the product of a corrupt establishment that undercut the democratic process.”15 Amid all the political misconduct happening on the national stage, Coloradans like Arnest were keenly aware of the need to change how the average citizen existed in a broader political landscape.
Colorado Springs acted as a microcosm of the developments happening statewide and provided a central hub for social and political activity throughout the 70s. Racism, like in many other parts of the country, was a prominent point of tension. Over 200 students and 19 faculty members from Colorado College marched to town hall in solidarity with the 1965 Selma civil rights march.16 In 1970, the killing of a black educator, Roosevelt Hill Jr., received national attention and was the subject of its own protests after a grand jury in a closed trial refused to indict Hill’s killer.17 By the end of the decade, Colorado Springs witnessed a brief resurgence of Klu Klux Klan activity (which provided the basis of Spike Lee’s 2018 film, BlacKkKlansman, and the memoir on which its based).18 Arnest does not feature racial commentary explicitly in his work, but race-based violence was publicized and commented on more than ever before when Scenes from Life was created. The conversations that emerged in response to racial violence around the country represented the social attitudes—both positive and negative—that Arnest commented on. Race-based violence and related activism was very likely influential, if not a large consideration, in the production of the series.
In the midst of civil rights activism, El Paso County had some of the highest absolute population growth in the entire state, second only to Jefferson County.19 Widespread urbanization in cities like Colorado Springs, by now the second largest city in the state, led to the creation of Colorado’s 5th congressional district through the 1970 census.20 Since its creation, Republican have won every race for the district seat.21 The large growth spurts experienced by cities like Colorado Springs weren’t statistical blips: they were the recipients of extensive federal funding and employment opportunities.
The U.S. government was massively responsible for increased traffic to the select locations within the state. The latter half of the 60s saw the creation of numerous direct and indirect government employment opportunities as well as increased enrollment at the young Air Force Academy. By 1970, a quarter of the civilian workforce worked for some branch of government while many others worked in private manufacturing and research for various federal departments.22 At the same time, the Vietnam War’s demand for pilots led to the graduating class of 1970 being over three times that of 1961.23 With the population of Colorado Springs booming—and federal employment opportunities with it—the city began developing its reputation as a conservative military center and became an increasingly powerful political force in the state and nation.
As he created Scenes from Life, Arnest was witnessing a profound irony in Colorado. Despite the Centennial State’s historical aversion to government, they were increasingly dependent on it at a moment when disillusionment was high. Voters may have rarely been in consensus about the best path forward (Republicans and Democrats traded election victories with regularity),24 but bipartisan cooperation at critical moments helped to define the state and the nation’s history. The public’s role in steering political and social movements in a time of extraordinary turbulence became evident in history, as reflected in Scenes from Life. People, whether Coloradans or Americans more broadly, were not mere subjects to everything going on in the world, but rather political actors in and of themselves: a theme prominent throughout Arnest’s drawings.
[1] Len Scott and R. Gerald Hughes, The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal, (Routledge: 2015), 17.
[2] Alistair Horne, Kissinger’s Year: 1973, (Simon & Schuster: 2009), 370-71.
[3] Everett C. Ladd, Jr., Where Have All the Voters Gone? The Fracturing of America’s Political
Parties, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), xiv-vi.
[4] Spencer C. Tucker. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, 2 ed., 4 vols., ABC-CLIO, 2011.
[5] John Nichols, “Nixon’s Watergate Cover-Up Succeeded When It Mattered Most,” Nation, June 17, 2022. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/nixon-watergate/.
[6] Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History, Oxford University Press, 2022, 546.
[7] Graff, Watergate, 549-50.
[8] Graff, Watergate, 661.
[9] Graff, Watergate, 668.
[10] Robert D. Loevy, “Colorado: Sometimes Red and Sometimes Blue,” in State of Change: Colorado Politics in the Twenty-Century, ed. Courtenay W. Daum, Robert J. Duffy, and John A. Straayer (University Press of Colorado, 2011), 19.
[11] Curtis Martin and Rudolph Gomez, Colorado Government and Politics, (Pruett Publishing Company, 1976), 212.
[12] Martin and Gomez, Colorado Government and Politics, 141.
[13] Jeffrey A. Roberts, “Fifty years ago, voter approval of the Sunshine Law ushered in a new era of government transparency in Colorado; It also meant no more beer for the state Capitol press corps,” Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, October 6, 2022, https://coloradofoic.org/fifty-years-ago-voter-approval-of-the-sunshine-law-ushered-in-a-new-era-of-government-transparency-in-colorado-it-also-meant-no-more-beer-for-the-state-capitol-press-corps/.
[14] Craig S. Barnes to John W. Gardner, December 12, 1972. Common Cause Records, Princeton University Library Special Collections. https://coloradofoic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/MC054_Box270_Gardner_Barnes.pdf.
[15] Adam Berg, The Olympics That Never Happened, (University of Texas Press, 2023), 157.
[16] John Kuglin, “Over 200 demonstrators march to Springs City Hall,” Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, March 17, 1965, A1, PPLD Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.ppld.org/nodes/view/1019400.
[17] James Michael Brodie, “Remembering Roosevelt Hill Jr.” Denver Urban Spectrum, December 31, 2025. https://denverurbanspectrum.com/2025/12/31/remembering-roosevelt-hill-jr/.
[18] Robert Moore, “1970s probe of KKK saw evidence of resurgence in Colorado,” Durango Herald, August 19, 2018, https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/lifestyle/1970s-probe-of-kkk-saw-evidence-of-resurgence-in-colorado/.
[19] Martin and Gomez, Colorado Government and Politics, 6.
[20] Martin and Gomez, Colorado Government and Politics, ix.
[21] Joshua Dunn, “Who Governs in God’s City?” Society 49, no. 1 (2012): 24–32. https://doi-org.coloradocollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s12115-011-9499-3.
[22] Martin and Gomez, Colorado Government and Politics, 12.
[23] Bill McKeown, "Cadets Learned True Meaning of Service During Vietnam War," Colorado Springs Gazette, Spring 2004.
[24] Loevy, “Colorado: Sometimes Red and Sometimes Blue,” 19.