General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan any of you get or give a picture of what's happened to the country over the years?
I think I understand the political shifts and wrangling after the Civil War and up to and through the Great Depression and into the Second World War. Coming out of the war, during the Eisenhower years, I understand the re-entrenchment of immense wealth and the now infamous Military Industrial Complex. I know about the solid south, I lived through the Civil Rights years, I watched Nixon's Southern Strategy convert the Democratic south straight over, every bigot to a man, straight into the hands of the Republican party. But after that it all becomes a blur to me. Where on earth and by what mechanism, other than the injection of pure money, did the jump take place between the Party Reagan inherited and the Tea Party of today? I tend to date all current failures back to the Reagan Presidency and Administration but other than a convenient icon I really can't see where he had much to do with this conversion to lunacy.
So the question to you is this, can you explain the transitions in our national body politic from about 1950 (or 1980) to present in any way that makes sense? I could handle a good number of comments on the Democratic Party too of course, I have mixed emotions about the Clinton years to this day. Love the man though I do, he was no friend to the Government employee during his years, particularly one who was devoted to the Union.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)is a backlash to the 1960s, second-wave feminism, and the growth of what they see as the nanny state.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)to push back. Honestly seems like everything has been shifting to the right, going back on civil rights and workers rights in general since I was born. It is past time for things to begin shifting the other way.
MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)And now all you have to do is Pic=Romney
Feel Good?
Think. Choose. Vote.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)mostly because the adults I knew were surprised an actor was elected. Did read this really cool book once though that talks about social and economic cycles through history called the Fourth Turning. Maybe that could help?
southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)Then when G.W. Bush was given the job of president. I think we saw how that has worked out for us. I get the impression that republicans think they are entitled to the white house no matter what. The with the religious right and the tea party hijacking the republican party and stopping cooperation.
lib2DaBone
(8,124 posts)I see Bill Clinton.. who passed the NEOCON Nafta.. and sent our jobs to China.
I see Bill Clinton who passed Neocon Media De-regulation in 1996 and allowed FOX NEWS to take over our media...
No, I am not anti-Bill CLinton... I just want to point out .. that American workers were Job-jacked.. and their jobs sent to China... thanks to Ronnie Reagan and Bill Clinton...
Glitterati
(3,182 posts)There were times when there was the big "issue of our day." Now, nothing gets done. Bills that are passed are few and far between, and they are useless to the common person. Silly bridge namings, etc.
And, yes, it started going horribly downhill with Reagan, but got tremendously worse during the Clinton years. During that time with Newt Gingrich as the Republican leader, nothing got accomplished, because each day, new monkey shit got thrown in the fan. There's no longer an issue of our day - EVERYTHING is an issue, because Republicans MAKE new issues daily, and none of them get addressed.
Hell, we're all so tired of just trying to become knowledgeable about today's issues, we're running ourselves ragged and incapable of offering the support to our DEMs before there's another big blow up of monkey shit hitting the fan on a DIFFERENT subject.
Congress jumps from health care to gay issues to farm bills to Iran to Iraq to Afghanistan, every single day.
We're perpetually in CRISIS mode. With a new crisis every damned day.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)But the Tafft Hartley act of 1947 started the war against labor. No, did not start with PATCO. IT allowed for the rise of Right to Work States and the slow, in the beginning, almost imperceptible, war against Unions. This was the first reaction to The New Deal from Republicans that was successful, They have been trying to get rid of this since 1935.
The 1950s also saw the begging of the civil rights movement that finally exploded with the deployment of the 101 to a certain HS (That Clinton attended a few years later) and the rise of the right wing in the south. Until the passage of the 1965 civil rights act, the South was Democrat, and conservative... these days it is Republican and Conservative. The only thing that changed was party allegiance. Thurmond was a Democrat until he became a Republican by the way.
1965 can be seen, and has been seen, as the natural end, in some ways, of the Civil War.
1964 (which we may see a repeat off this year) was also a seminal year for the American right. which was emerging from the 1950s in establishing the beginnings of an intellectual basis for it. Goldwater got trounced, seriously trounced. SO the Republicans not only started their designs on media and county seats, but also organized and kicked the crazy uncle out... at the time the John Birch Society, also formed by the Koch family, in that case dad.
Watergate got the Republicans desperate to impeach a President, why you got partly the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal, and Reagan was the beginning of a Conservative revolution that has crested. I forgot, dummy me, the PATCO strike was the true accelerant to the war on labor, and then you have Globalization and the lowering of our standards of life for the sake of everybody else.
This is pretty much the Cliff's Notes of this.
AndyTiedye
(23,500 posts)It was Goldwater who got trounced in 1964.
I cast my first Presidential vote in 1972, for George McGovern. At least he won the state I was living in at the time.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Will correct
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)profits over people not only became a cancer to our society, it is shredding the very fabric of our democracy. Hoarding cash & firing people became signs of power, while having compassion became passe. It has eroded our unity as well. When Reagan said "Govt is the problem" it undermined democracy & waged a war on our own Govt., the very reason for the Constitution. Since then the problems we face is one where it is believed the Govt can no longer be used as a force for good, hence no more Hoover Dams or any other major Govt achievements, leaving us feeling distant, oppressed, & un-unified. We have become a slave to the almighty private sector who we are told shall be the only ones to be allowed to save us. Until then you will be starved bare & wait in their mercy or die. We can end unemployment right now with the Federal Govt, but Govt has become a dirty word. Even those on assistance are now referred to as parasites. Humanity has become devoid of empathy.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)For what's happened since, see Rome, Britain, and other empires and the histories of their descent into has-been.
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)All these forces caused our economy to become more financial services based and less manufacturing based. More Imperial, less democratic.
All this was rationalized by a War on Communism, and, when the USSR fell, a War on Terror.