How the fuck did we get here?

[Cyrano]

An insane president.

A Republican congress that won't oppose the insanity of a crazy president.

About 30% to 40% of voters who are okay with a madman in the White House.

How the fuck did we get here?

And most importantly, what is sane America going to do about it?

[jrthin]

1. A few items: Russia; rightwing media; bothsideism media;

for profit news. This is just to name a few things that has led us down this road.

[MrScorpio]

2. How did we get here, indeed.

[BigmanPigman]

3. Fux Ruse propaganda

and a percentage of the population who has a sack of rocks where their brains should be. There is a sucker born every minute, in the case of the current US population it should be "... is born every second".

[Cyrano]

7. Yep. But there ain't no intelligence test for voting

I'm really not sure that being taken in by a cult-leader/con man, is related to intelligence. But who knows?

[oberliner]

4. Isn't this where we were in 2003?

Insane president: check

Republican Congress that won't oppose the insanity: check

30 to 40 percent of voters okay with madman in WH: check

What we did about it was take back Congress (eventually).

[PaulX2]

5. Fox News Is Big Brother - I Just Figured It Out

[wryter2000]

6. Two words

Ronald Reagan.

[volstork]

28. Spot on!

N/T

[Quemado]

8. An unresolved ending to the Civil War

In a way, the Civil War never really ended. It continued on as a cold Civil War.

[Cyrano]

10. Yes, I get your meaning. But that's a complex

discussion that needs one, two, or a hundred threads of its own. ... Probably a book of its own.

[Quemado]

31. Where the fuck do we go from here?

My suggestion: Divide the country into two entities. One entity is comprised of blue states that are annexed by Canada. The other entity is comprised of red states that becomes its own country.

I, for one, would gladly live in one the blue states annexed by Canada.

[Drunken Irishman]

9. How we got here has its roots in 1993...

When Bill Clinton took the Oath of Office and Hillary Clinton became First Lady.

We're here because Hillary had the audacity to not just sit back and bake cookies, instead focusing on substantive issues like women's rights as human rights and healthcare. We're here because, in 1993, Bill Clinton made Hillary the focal point of his healthcare bill and Americans didn't like that, so, the bill died a quiet death. We're here because the right-wing made it their mission in the 90s to discredit, belittle and attack Hillary in every possible fashion. We're here because, for over twenty years, there was a coordinated assault on the Clintons, specifically Hillary, and that consistent assault had traction. Hillary became divisive and unpopular. Sure, none of it was based on fact or justified, but it was the perception and therefore, it was the reality.

We're here because, in 2016, the Democrats nominated a candidate who had spent 20-plus years under the crushing scrutiny of the public eye and biased media, heightened by right-wing talk radio and hate groups that couldn't ever imagine Hillary succeeding. We're here because enough voters decided, with help from the Russians, they'd rather have Trump as president than that caricature that had been built up as Hillary Clinton for the last twenty years.

Hillary was always going to be a tough candidate to run for Democrats. We knew this in 2008 and we knew it again in 2016. Even today, even though she's largely stepped out of the public eye, many Americans still do not like her. Is it fair? No. Was it based on lies and hate? Absolutely. Is it reality? No question.

To be president, you've got to be more liked than your opponent. Obama was more liked than Romney and McCain, Bush was more liked that Kerry and Gore and Clinton was more liked than Dole and Bush. Trump, barely, and with some Russian persuasion, was more liked, or at least tolerated, than Hillary. Couple that with apathetic voters who bought the line that there was no difference between Hillary and Trump, therefore leading to either third party votes or no votes at all, and you've got the mess we're in.

We're in this mess because, in the 90s, Hillary did the unthinkable - she became a vocal female leader.

[Aristus]

12. 100% This.

[Cyrano]

13. Short answer, Drunken Irishman. Exactly and entirely right.

[oberliner]

16. Is our current situation much different than 2003?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

23. +1000

[shockey80]

11. We are here because the Democrats do not fight hard enough.

Republicans win because they are able to convince 10s of millions of Americans to vote against their best interests. Democrats could not stop that, Why? The why doesn't matter, democrats lost, thats all that matters.

[LanternWaste]

17. Ignoring 'why' is akin to ignoring the search for solution.

Pretending otherwise is itself, ignoring rational thought.

[Cyrano]

20. Republicans win because of

gerrymandering, "lost votes," voter suppression, "scrubbing" of registered voter rolls, Russian help, and assholes who eat transparent propaganda. And to top it all off, these fools always show up to vote.

There are more of us than there are of them. If all Dems turned out to vote in each and every single election, the Republican Party would cease to exist.

[shockey80]

14. Lies are beating the truth in America.

Think about that.

[LanternWaste]

15. I think truckloads of books will be written about this.

After 2020, analyses, treatments, and a host of non-fiction material regarding how we came down with this fever, and how it finally broke will be a cottage industry.

In the here and now, the best we have are educated guesses. And my guess is a LOT of idiots (i.e., MAGAs) are more passionate (in between drunk-blackouts and Sport Illustrated Swimsuit marathons) about voting against what they hate, rather than voting for what they believe in.

[oberliner]

18. I hope you write one

You have a way with words.

[Snellius]

19. Opioid and crystal meth use is much higher in Trump-addicted states

Last edited Thu Jul 26, 2018, 05:17 PM - Edit history (1)

It is very likely that the Tweaker in Chief is a user as well. Who else obsessively binge-tweets at 3 in the morning? Repeating the same catchphrases over and over again? And stares absent-mindedly at Steve Douchey when he gets up?

[Trumpocalypse]

21. 30 years of Right wing media

From Rush to FAUX to Brietbart, Where the only message is to hate minorities, immigrants, women, liberals and Democrats because they are responsible for everything wrong in your life.

[Power 2 the People]

22. Telecommunications Act of 1996

Consolidated ownership of our media into the hands of a few companies. All right wing billionaires.
Made it legal for the news divisions of networks to be moved into the for-profit entertainment divisions.
Gave Rupert Murdoch the opening to create Fox News. It passed in January of 1996 and Fox was launched 10 months later.

Once this monstrosity was passed,we never had a chance.

That's what happened.

[lpbk2713]

24. We trusted voting officials to maintain a high level of security.

Their trust included allowing the hardware and software
providers to assure them everything was safe. And they
in turn assured the public everything was indeed safe.

[FiveGoodMen]

25. Thirty years of Southern Baptist Preachers

telling their congregations that god hates liberals more than anything.

The SBC is a far greater threat than all the angry foreigners there could ever be.

[orangecrush]

26. Fuck if I know.

[beachbum bob]

27. Jill stein voters and the bulls it on not supporting the lesser of 2 evils

Very simple...

[C_U_L8R]

29. My mom used to say

if you watch too much TV, your brain will rot.

Who knew she was presciently talking about Fox News.

[Initech]

30. 40 years of nonstop lies, slander, and bigotry.

And much of it unchecked.

[Caliman73]

32. This has been in the works a LONG LONG time.

The moment that FDR signed pen to paper on the New Deal, there were wealthy people who worked feverishly to reverse it. Remember that GW Bush's grandfather Prescott was named by Smedley Butler as part of a group who wanted to draft him in a coup against FDR. Even before that another Roosevelt, Teddy pissed off a bunch of rich people with the Progressive Square Deal and use of Federal Government to preserve natural resources. This project has been a long time in the making. We had relatively sane Republican Eisenhower in the 1950's although he did support a good deal of chicanery in foreign policy with his support of various coups in Iran and various Latin American countries. Right wingers like the Dulles brothers always had their fingers in American foreign policy.

The real crap storm however, did not start in earnest until Nixon. Nixon was the first real crook president with a crook administration. One of the first to really consider creating a whole separate universe of right wing media. One of the first to really conspire with foreign adversaries to interfere in American democratic process. Nixon and Roger Ailes brainstormed the eventual Fox News model. Nixon hated the press, used the Southern Strategy to solidify the racist Dixiecrats into the Republican Party and began the process of demonizing the Press. Nixon talked about the "silent majority" in his attack on progressive values. He was the first to really vocalize the imperial presidency even though there were some Republicans who saw the writing on the wall and pushed him out of office.

Reagan really cemented the long con with his "terrifying words..." "I'm from the government and I am here to help". His own treachery with Iran, Iraq, and Central America leading to the Iran-Contra treason in stealing the election from Carter and his breaking of PATCO and war against the Unions. His voodoo economics behind his goofy smiling facade was a dedicated right wing zealot. Reagan didn't have a full fledged media universe backing him up though, so he still had to go through the motions of bipartisan politics. He did however, court the evangelical vote, turning them into a solid block based on social issues like abortion and LGBT rights. Reagan also eliminated the Fairness Doctrine which gave rise to radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh in the late 80's and 90's.

Simultaneous to the overt political developments pushed by conservatives and the Republican Party, the development of 24 hours news really had an impact on where we are today. In a bid to fill a 24 hour cycle, the blending of opinion with news reporting was taken to a new level. There were short cycles of news reporting followed by hours of opinion and analysis of that news. In 1996 Fox News Channel entered the game with a specific agenda to report the "conservative perspective" though they claimed to be fair and balanced. Throughout the late 1990's their MO was constant attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton and the "Liberal Media" which became a short hand for everyone except Fox News or outlets that reported just like Fox News. With that came the internet explosion of right wing media outlets from Drudge to World News Daily. Even with that, Clinton assisted in the demise of balanced media with the loosening of restrictions on media consolidation. Right wing media groups like Clearwater, Sinclair, and others bought up radio and television stations and started pumping out more and more right wing or at very least, corporate friendly propaganda.

There are players like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, right wing judges like Thomas, Scalia, and Roberts who played roles in where we are today, but the point is that this didn't just happen in the 90's, with Bill and Hillary. It has been a LONG TIME COMING and Donald Trump and the current Congress are the natural culmination of where it was going to end up.

[Awsi Dooger]

33. Nominating Obama and Hillary in the wrong order

That's hardly all of it but it's a huge variable. Obama was wasted in 2008 compared to how desperately the more charismatic nominee was needed in the more difficult cycle of 2016. Trump never gains traction with the wing nut base if he doesn't have that birther issue to fixate on.

I argued in 2008 for Hillary, with Obama held in the wings. But, as always, situational aspects are never a strength of this party, as opposed to tunnel vision.

Hillary and her handlers screwed up 2008 by failing to identify the value of the par 3 caucus states as opposed to par 5 states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.