How did American politics cross over into insanity?

[Cyrano]

For anyone who doubts that we are in the realm of insanity, let me mention the names Christine O'Donnell from Delaware, Sharron Angle from Nevada, Rand Paul from Kentucky, Palladino from New York, and of course, the woman who's currently running for nothing but controlling so much, Sarah Palin.

There are many more of these tea bag crazies running this year, but they're names are not as well known.

How the hell did we get here? How the hell did the unacceptable become acceptable? How the hell did so many Americans become so brain-dead? How the hell have we ended up on the verge of our very own self-induced destruction?

I could be wrong, but it might have started with the election of Ronald Reagan. And then it got even worse when he was elected again.

The years between then and now are nothing to brag about. Especially the eight Bush/Cheney years that may very well have driven a coffin nail into American democracy.

We're two weeks away from a midterm election. And I live in fear that the (most crazy) the Republicans, will take away the congress from the less crazy (the Democrats).

But I've left out the answer to the headline in the original post. How did we get here? We're here because of the obscene wealth and power of corporate America. Thay've managed to buy our politicians, our MSM, and every person in this country incapable of grasping the power of bigotry, hatred, and the nature of propaganda.

I don't know if there's much we can do about this. But I'm open to any suggestions.

[Arugula Latte]

1. I think Reagan was the tipping point, too.

Corporations have been making a concerted effort to get back to the days before unions and the New Deal. They are more sophisticated this time around and they have bought our government and our media entirely.

[Xenotime]

11. Agreed. We have had too much conservative crap over the years.

We need several progressive administrations to flush it out.

[tiptoe]

52. The Will of the People is being undermined by systemic GOP election fraud, evidenced 1988-2004.

The Right shifts more righteous and the left shifts center, responding to vote outcomes that do not reflect "reality" and to false "mandates" that invert political priorities.

See for yourselves, here, and notice the increase in average discrepancy in vote-margin, exit poll to vote count, 2004, and the overall one-sided favoring in the direction of the vote-count.

It's not the exit polls, morans...It's the vote-count, stupid.
And take note of what occurred in 2008: the consortium of news outlets FOX, CNN, AP, ABC, CBS, NBC -- the self-described "national" election pool -- withheld from the American people the results of the un-'forced' Preliminary-national and unadjusted state exit polls of their own contracted exit pollster, exercising private rights vs public-interest disclosure, just as the voting machine vendors use trade-secrecy to fend off public investigation of the hardware system intervening between voter intent and the count of their vote. VULGAR, ^%(#)^Q%^ CORPORATE-POWER *$^@$%&# --- like Cheney's mind and goals on 9/11 (when he allowed the Pentagon to be struck despite leadtime warning, witnessed and testified by Norman Mineta, excluded from the White House Commission Report) and Tony 'I want my life back' Hayward's gestalt and actions during the Gulf disaster recovery (see here) and the King Karetaker of Kounting (maybe not a CEO, but serving their NAZI-like, anti-democracy interests vs those of American citizens) -- in suppressing the data, treating America's interests as secondary to corporate interests, and protecting control over their electoral power system by hiding the data that would expose an outageous exit poll discrepancy with the official 9.5 million recorded vote count margin by confirming Obama's True Vote margin of 22.8 million.

Someone should hang.

No votes for Whitman and Farina. "Business and government don't mix." (Robert F Kennedy?)

The MSM 'Likely Voter' Polls are Preparing the Cover for Nov GOP election Fraud. Learn here.

[whistler162]

2. Happened nearly 215 years ago.....

two guys named Jefferson and Adams running for office!

[peace13]

3. * and his 'small dose of religion' into the mix...

has blossomed into a true hate fest with the 'Christians' against everything that is not. It seemed so harmless to my Dad when * first ran. He said he liked *, everything but the little bit of religion that *e threw into the political conversation. My father died shortly after the stolen election and I am sure that he would be mortified to see how religion has morphed in this country. It would shock even him, a full blooded Republican, Bible tapping Lutheran! Too sad.

[CJCRANE]

4. It's not just corporate America...

The difference with Reagan's time is that it's a corporate planet now...
with huge capitalist economies in China and India and even more petro-dollars in Russia, Venezuela and the Middle East.

[Cyrano]

16. Yep. Like all diseases, the disease of corporate capitalism keeps growing and spreading.

[JackRiddler]

5. Compared to when?

[elleng]

6. You are right to be fearful, and my only disagreement may be with timing.

The 'current' repug p.r./propaganda machine was in the works well prior to reagan, and the repugs have so refined it, and Dems have so failed to counter it, that we are, indeed, facing 'our' demise.

One hope is that the tea group will prove to be so out of control that the 'standard' repugs won't be able to control them, leaving a disunited 'other.' In order to succeed against such, of course, Dems should be somehow united, and as we know, this is a difficult thing, herding cats and all. Prez O is smart enough and charismatic enough to do it, imo, but it won't work if the self-identified Dem base keeps bashing him.

'Let us pray.'

[stray cat]

7. voters trying to teach parties lessons with their votes instead of electing with votes?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

18. You don't think the years-long ongoing right-wing radicalization is insanity?

You had to pick a months-old phenomenon?

[Cyrano]

20. Of course the insanity has been going on for years, if not decades.

But on DU, as on other sites, it's sometimes necessary to refer to the more recent past because of the age of many members.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. I didn't know we had toddlers posting here. -nt

[Cyrano]

23. Many here were only 10 years old when Reagan was elected

And they were 18 when he left office.

Do you really think most of them were aware or sophisticated enough to grasp what was going on in the realm of politics?

At that age, and even a bit older, very, very few people are aware of the realities of the world, who is screwing them, or even that they are being screwed every day of their lives.

Use the term "toddlers" if you wish, but time really moves fast. Today, many born during the Reagan era are in their 30s. Their life experiences are different from those who are older and learned from the Nixon years. Then again, that's only to be expected.

For anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, life is something that happens to you while you're making other plans.

[NNN0LHI]

8. It happened at the exact moment Bush had a +90% approval rating

I know a lot of people around here want to forget that time period that but don't think the Republicans have. Because they haven't. They realize they are dealing with a lot of idiots.

Don

[SpiralHawk]

9. +1,000

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lzRf9b1vduk/SqStXX-4V2I/AAAAAAAAACc/0CphKSkYiQY/s320/nailed+it.jpg

[TwilightGardener]

10. Yep. I remember hearing that and thinking, why am I the only one left

who thinks this man is an incompetent fraud?

[Skittles]

48. OMG I remember that

fucking sickening beyond BELIEF :puke:

[Winterblues]

12. If you ever get the opportunity watch the documentary "Capitalism, a Love Story"

It pretty much shows in full detail how we got here and what is going to happen to us because of it...

[Bitwit1234]

13. i think it really took of when Jerry Farwell and Dobson got into

politics. The south has always been in the "religious kick" thing and I think Farwell and Dobson stoked that fire. I really truly from the bottom of my heart think some religions are really evil. They do not practice the religion of Jesus Christ. The support discrimination, torture, hate, violence and any person who is not a mirror image of them and a mirror image of their thinking. Ventura hit it on the head.

And that goes for the religious extremist in the Middle East they are as bad as the southern religious nuts in this country.

[DirkGently]

14. We have emboldened our idiots. Thank a Republican.

[ooglymoogly]

15. The evil seed was the grotesque assasination of JFK and the subsequent

Warren commission coverup. The flower was Nixon and the fruit of that evil seed was the B actor Reagan and his neocon administration; who aimed this country toward hell; where I'm guessing RR is siting on the right hand of Lucifer, if not he himself.

[Greyhound]

28. I'd put the seed back further, the end of WWII when we were the only nation with a mature

manufacturing industry left on earth. Thanks to the system set up under FDR (far from perfect but still a great improvement over the 19th century looting that crashed the economy), the middle class exploded and more equitable sharing of wealth was required to meet demand. This is the period where so much of what we've come to think of as normal, such as medical care through employers, started.

The war profiteers were faced with resistance to a return to their "good old days" on all fronts and they fought back. They never stopped fighting back even as we sunk into complacency.

[slackmaster]

30. I'd put it back still further, to the formation of the Confederacy

:shrug:

[Greyhound]

32. Certainly. In fact we could go back to the original royal land grants that

established/continued the preservation of the parasite class in the New World, or even further to the concept of a "Divine Right to Rule", but I was trying to limit it to the more contemporary context. We did make great strides toward correcting this ancient inequity prior to the war.

The establishment of our independent nation was a prototype for the ideals of The Enlightenment. The Civil War was a result of the parasitic backlash against egalitarianism.

[ooglymoogly]

37. But then it really started in Dickensian England; or somewhat earlier, when debtors

and criminal prisons emptied mostly into what is now the southern United states.

But then one could say it started with the Hyksos invading the Nile valley, or perhaps earlier when Narmer incorporated upper and lower Egypt, but it truth it had to be when Hammurabi, first ruler of Babylon laid down many of the laws we live by today on whose logic the constitution is written and on which our saner codes of law are based, religious input being the insaner and dividing side of those codes.

But in reality it was when the ancient Hebrew Bible was written dividing the earth into waring factions, dutifully misconstrued on the ramparts of Masada.

Or was it the conflicting story told by the dead sea scrolls carefully hidden away in the dry caves at Khirbet Qumran on the Dead Sea;

Or did the Big Bang cause some split in the space time continuum, that can never be reconciled?

[Greyhound]

45. I'm with you as far as the advent of the desert God of death, but as for us and the crap

we have to deal with today, I'll stick with the end of WWII.

Even I'm not cynical enough to blame it on the Big Bang, especially since there is no evidence to support the notion that hierarchy is a product of nature.
:hi:

[ooglymoogly]

51. Yes I see what you are saying; just carried it a little far;

though I think examples in nature are there. The barren island of Queimada Grande, has one dominant species and no mammals; the deadly golden lancehead cannibalizing and eating away at its ecosystem, a branch of the species fur de lance; causing more deaths to humans than any other snake in the Americas. It now subsists on migratory birds, having consumed just about everything else on the island.

Perhaps a snapshot of where uncontrolled capitalism or "survival of the fittest", will inevitably end.

[ooglymoogly]

53. Sorry; that last post was not clear.

I meant it was me who carried it to for. You are of course correct in that it was a great milestone in our demise as are all the other milestones when they are able to force the pendulum to swing out of control in their favor.

This mind set of greed and self importance, has been whittling away at even the thought of a bill of rights long before the constitution was ever begun. A bill of rights is anathema to exploitation of the weak, by the powerful;

Exploitation is the pug parasites lifeline and path to authoritarian dominance.

These ruthless folks have kept progress in check in varying degrees from the beginnings of mankind; using religion as their most important and most successful tool; a veritable sword of Damocles.

Without them we would long ago have been colonizing the stars.

[Kind of Blue]

17. I keep catching the last part of PBS's "God in America"

I'm not sure but I think this may help a little in answering your question. http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/view/

Episode Six, "Of God and Caesar"

The final hour of God in America brings the series into the present day, exploring the religious and political aspirations of conservative evangelicals' moral crusade over divisive social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Their embrace of presidential politics would end in disappointment and questions about the mixing of religion and politics. Across America, the religious marketplace expanded as new waves of immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America made the United States the most religiously diverse nation on earth. In the 2008 presidential election, the re-emergence of a religious voice in the Democratic Party brought the country to a new plateau in its struggle to reconcile faith with politics...

[AndrewP]

19. There are many answers to this

It's FAR from THE reason, but....


I give a special nomination to how well Pat Robertson did in Iowa in 1988. There had been many a loon elected before, but that result was an indicator at how much power the Evangelical Right had in America. I think that planted a seed in Bush Jr

[CanonRay]

22. I actually think we tipped in the mid 90's

with the multiple meaningless investigations of Clinton, the militia running around, black helicopters, UN takeovers, etc ad nauseum.

[Greyhound]

24. President Carter told us to grow the hell up and face reality.

Although far from liberal, he understands what is and recognized that the course we are no can only lead to disaster. We preferred to pretend that the cliff was just the next rise and that the road surely continued on...

So we put the pedal to the metal and have been accelerating ever since.

[Cyrano]

25. Yep. Carter had the right message. But he was the wrong messenger.

This is one of the greatest weaknesses of the human species.

Jimmy Carter told us we were about to run off a cliff. But he didn't have great charisma or a booming, "God-Like" voice, so no one believed or listened to him.

And down we went.

[spanone]

26. when did faux news go on the air?

[Initech]

27. Limbaugh started and is responsible for a lot if it, other, more insane individuals followed suit.

[Swamp Rat]

29. Simply, our government was infiltrated and taken over by national and international robber barons

This started long before Raygun. He was just one of many puppets.

Things may have to get very ugly before we see real change.

[Cyrano]

42. You're more optimistic then I am, Swamp Rat.

Yes, it all started long before Reagan. But the real issue is, can we survive this current "dark age."

It's fully in the hands of human beings as to whether or not our species can continue to exist on this planet. And I'm not speaking of nuclear destruction. I'm speaking about an overpopulated world in which all resources are being depleted.

Today, the greed of the very few, that is virtually unstoppable by the desire for survival of the many, may just be the epitaph on our tombstones.

I'm not saying this will happen. But I am saying that it is a danger that most human beings choose to ignore.

And our modern day robber barons are blindly hastening the process.

[Junkdrawer]

31. The Bat Shit Crazy Right From Central Casting…

From one year ago:

At the beginning of August the Senate, the Administration, and Blue Dogs in the House had a problem. On the one hand, they resolved the differences between competing corporate interests and had a pretty clear idea exactly what “Health Care Reform” would look like. On the other hand, public opinion polls show something like 70% approval for a Single Payer solution and they knew that not even a viable Public Option was likely to be included in the final legislation. Add to that the all-too-necessary Individual Mandate and it was clear some heavy lifting was going to be necessary to sell all this to the general public as a “reasonable compromise”.

And then, from out of nowhere, the BSCRFCC (Bat Shit Crazy Right from Central Casting) appeared. Suddenly individual mandates and a weak Public Option wasn’t the extreme Right of the debate. No, saving Grandma from Obamacare was now the extreme Right of the debate. Preventing a creep to Socialist Fascism (huh?) was now the extreme Right of the debate.

When the BSCRFCC first appeared, there were several reporters (including Rachael Maddow) that did a great job exposing their links to corporate PR firms. But almost all of these reporters assumed that the aim of this Astroturf effort was to kill reform just like they did in 1993. I disagree: all the members of the corporate compromise NEED reform.

* Insurance Companies need individual mandates to offset the rising costs of Baby Boomers who are old enough to need increasing health care, but too young for Medicare.

* Medical providers need to address the increasing numbers of uninsured to whom they are legally obligated to provide emergency care.

* Big Pharma needs to make their wares affordable to the increasing number of uninsured and underinsured who are forgoing their medications because of cost.

But what all the above DO NOT want is a widely available Public Option that would provide competition, pay Medicare-like reimbursement rates and negotiate for lower group prices.

The other phony part of this melodrama is the Republican refusal to support any kind of health care reform. I think that Republicans know that their open support for pro-corporate reform would be the kiss of death in terms of public acceptance of the bill. Watch: If the Progressive Caucus follows through on their threat to vote against reform that doesn’t include a viable Public Option, just enough Republican votes will appear to push it over the top.

One last thought: It appears that the BSCRFCC was a rousing success. Indeed it seems that much more time has been devoted in the Corporate Media addressing their “concerns” than have been spent explaining the actual details of Public Option proposals. And that means that the BSCRFCC will be with us for some time to come, obscuring the debate on issue after issue.

Joy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6561291

[ThomWV]

33. Is it coincidence that Lunacy and the prevalence of television have risen as if joined at the hip?

We have become conditioned to the tube and its incessant message - that message being more and more polarized by a smaller and smaller group who control them. And its not so much that its the rich stock holders of the half dozen companies that control our media are the ones in charge of what gets to us as news, its the head of those few giant corporations that set the public agenda, and more important, what will be taken for fact and what will be ignored to its death.

[Touchdown]

34. It predates Reagan, all the way back to the Goldwater defeat.

They knew they had to get their message out. So they formed "think tanks" like Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute to push a narrative that trickle down economics is good, and government intervention is bad. They started this in the 60s. The first indication was the appearance of conservative or leaning right political shows on PBS, ie. Firing Line, The McLaughlin Group, Wall Street Week, the numerous shows Ben Wattenberg hosted and more.

This culminated in Reagan's victory, which couldn't have happened in a vacuum.

[Cyrano]

40. I think you've defined it exactly. They built a propaganda machine of

immense size and power while we just ignored it. We believed that our humane, moral, forward-thinking beliefs and values would always win the day.

Damn, we really refused to learn from history. Huns have always trumped civilized beliefs and values. At least in the short term. But the "short term" is relative. Today's Republican huns may rule for the next 100 years, given their propaganda machine and their talent for stealing elections.

Then again, given global warming, the melting of the polar ice caps, -- and who knows what's to come next in the destruction of our environment, -- they might not even get to realize their 100 year rule.

If it turns out this way, the only consolation will be that they will suffer the same consequences as the rest of us.

But somehow, I find no comfort in the thought of the self-destruction of our species. And when/if that comes about, there won't be any fingers left to point at who screwed up planet Earth.

[Art_from_Ark]

49. I actually thought "The McGoofy Group" was pretty balanced

I was a regular viewer back in the '80s, and the panel were usually evenly split between two left-leaning and two right-leaning guests. My favorite regular was the guy from the Baltimore Sun, Jack Germond. Of course, "McGoofy", who tilted right, always had the last word.

[SoCalDem]

35. Money

As long as there is major money to be made while being a public "servant", heaven & earth will be moved to allow the grasping of that money.

People can be molded to think a certain way....(ask any professional ad man), so whichever group of politicians control the group-think will also control the purse-strings of our economy.

[surrealAmerican]

36. There was an interesting article in the New Yorker I just read ...

... that showed the progression of this right-wing "thinking" from the early '60 John Birchers to the current tea party movement.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

38. K&R

[Rex]

39. It happen when the SCOTUS threw a coup in 2000 and gave the

election to the wrong person. Every since that day, we have been going slowly down hill.

[robdogbucky]

41. I nominate the FDR coup attempt

Smedley Butler and the FDR coup

"...Roosevelt’s action during his first hundred days in office had set off alarm bells throughout the business and financial community, whose members looked to Europe for answers in the rise of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and the French Crois de Feu movement.

Charles Higham explored the plot in his groundbreaking work Trading with the Enemy, The Nazi – American Money Plot 1933-1949 <1983, Delacorte Press>:

Simultaneously with the rise of Hitler, the du Ponts in 1933 began financing native fascist groups in America, including the anti-Semitic and antiblack American Liberty League and the organization known as Clark’s Crusaders, which had 1,250,000 members in 1933. Pierre, Irénée, and Lammot du Pont and John Jacob Raskob funded the Liberty League, along with Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors. The League smeared Roosevelt as a communist, claimed the President was surrounded by Jews; and despite the fact that they were Jewish, the Du Ponts smeared Semitic organizations.

The connections between General Motors and the Nazi government began at the moment of Hitler’s rise to power. Goring declined to annex General Motors and indeed received with pleasure Williarn S. Knudsen, General Motors’ president, who returned on October 6, 1933, to New York telling reporters that Germany was “the miracle of the twentieth century.”

Read more:
http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/smedley-butler-and-the-fdr-coup/

Business Plot
http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/smedley-butler-and-the-fdr-coup/

Smedley Butler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

[Cyrano]

43. I'm not sure I totally agree with you. The KKK had been around for a while.

Then again, the John Birch Society (crazies) were very likely the 1950s result of the issues you have documented.

[ThoughtCriminal]

44. Positive feedback loops of GOP crazy

Getting a nomination for an open seat in the red zones has become an exercise in "I'm nuttier than my opponent".

[young_at_heart]

46. Sarah Palin's voice drives me crazy!

If I think about what she actually says I have to turn off the TV or have a drink!

[Skittles]

47. reagan made idiocy and greed fashionable

America has not recovered

[Kltpzyxm]

50. it started when

Dim Son was allowed to steal the election without repercussions.

It let the corporatocracy know that they could do what they want, and the sheeple would let them.

Straight downhill from there.

[Cyrano]

54. I couldn't agree more. But igorance must be brought into play here.

There are far too many "proper" Americans who are clueless as to how they're being screwed every day of their lives. It's insane.

We call most of these people Republicans. But their too many Dems who are also are clueless.

Either we wake up, or we're dead.

[tilsammans]

55. But it's so-oooo fashionable to be stupid nowadays

Ignorance is bliss, doncha know.

I'm glad I came up during a time when it was still cool to be smart.