It's been a little bit of time since I did Part One. The whole debate debacle and the continued (tragically less noted) decline of Donald Trump has consumed everything.
But let me do my best.
How true is the quote Martin Luther King Jr used - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
After the Civil Rights marches and subsequent progressive legislation of the 60s, it looked like the quote was true, and we were finally moving towards justice.
But then came the one great truth of American politics - The Empire Always Strikes Back.
The Boomer generation, once the great progressive leaders, turned sharply in the 80s towards the Greed is Good model and Ronald Reagan. They kept the part of the 60s that "did their own thing" and "do what feels good" and jettisoned the rest.
Not all did this, but enough to ensure a backward tilt on progress for the next thirty years.
Clinton tried to address this in the 1990s. Still, he was limited in his options, frequently compromising with the dominant conservative trend—bringing in checks on welfare and increasing criminal penalties for crimes committed by the poor and disadvantaged while at the same time loosening restrictions on financial shenanigans.
Generation X (born 1965 to 1980) grew up at a time when the President of their childhood was Ronald Reagan. That has an effect. Just like my President of impression was John F Kennedy, this left a mark of continuing adulation, especially in a media and school environment meant to idolize the President.
Generation X and Millenials (born 1981 to 1996) grew up when the riches that came to the Boomer Generation seemed less able to happen to them. Who was to blame? The generations were divided, but they went to their separate corners as to who to blame. Some blamed the government and the swell of immigrants they perceived coming in. Others blamed corporate greed and the consolidation of wealth. This accelerated the division in our politics.
Bush Jr. did two things: he brought the culture wars front and center, and he used the Twin Towers attacks to gin up wars in the Middle East, particularly as an excuse to invade Iraq. It became impossible to question this in the 2000s. Eventually, Americans would sour on this, but I remember being afraid to speak up for the first time in my life.
The removal of financial sector regulations led to the Great Fiscal Crash of 2008. This temporary setback in Reagan's vision* gave way to Obama's election.
Barack Obama may not have delivered everything we hoped for, but he was a moral leader and an inspirational speaker. He led us out of the economic morass left us by the previous administration and made significant progress in improving healthcare access.
Within the first two years, it was clear that his success was not universally appreciated. After the elections of 2010, he never really had the majority in Congress, which he needed to fulfill his agenda. Hatred of him was a cottage industry, led by a real estate developer who had gone bankrupt several times and played a fake cartoon version of himself on a 'reality" show; Donald Trump invented the birtherism fantasy. It proved to be a rallying cry for America's racist underbelly.
Despite this, President Obama handily won a second term. How? The Republicans did not fully understand how much their base had changed. They were presenting policies that emphasized what was called country club Republicans - centered on keeping wealth to the top, deregulation, neoliberal foreign intervention, and working with the Democrats when needed. This genteel version of the Republican party was a thing of the past. Many supporters had moved far to the right of even Reagen. They wanted revenge. They wanted to take no prisoners.
Many moved to change directions beyond normal politics. Only one side offered that change in 2016. Democrats shut down Bernie Sanders, who appealed to the growing number of people who wanted to move the country in a more progressive direction. They went with politics as usual with Hilary Clinton. The other went with a crazed madman who said things they wanted to hear.
It's not that Hilary Clinton would not have made a good President. I believe she, at that time, was the most qualified person to be President. But it was the wrong time to run. Instead of the Democrats shifting to something new that would speak to those who had experienced economic turmoil, they went with the same 'ol same ol'. Nevertheless, even that withstanding, she won the majority of the votes and only lost because of the outdated and unfair Electoral College.
But wait!
There's more!
I don't want these posts to be too long, so I'll finish up in Part 3!
Stay tuned!
* this is not to say that Reagan's vision was good. It was horrible. It was to indicate that there were still many in the country who believed it and may want to return to it, for better or worse. An example of this is the continued belief (as shown in polling) that Republicans are better on the economy. There has been nothing in the last forty years to indicate that this is true, but the belief persists anyway.
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