Congressional and other government investigations also fell short, as it became clear to Washington insiders that the best to way to earn the title "wise man" -- and to keep a spot on the political gravy train -- was to whitewash crimes that reflected badly on the Establishment.
Then, there came George W. Bush's Iraq War, justified by false claims about WMD that went largely unchallenged by both the U.S. intelligence community and the major U.S. news media. Bush even carried out war crimes, such as torture of "war on terror" detainees, and got away with rationalizing his actions with the most transparent sophistry.
Bush's anti-regulatory policies also enabled Wall Street's plundering of the U.S. economy, through reckless gambling that required a taxpayer bailout even as millions of taxpayers lost their jobs and their homes. Again, there was the centrist expectation that none of the high-flying culprits should be judged guilty of anything even as average Americans suffered.
It was not so much that the Center no longer held as that the Center no longer had any credibility with large segments of the population. Mainstream institutions were viewed as self-serving, if not thoroughly corrupt.
This national crisis of confidence has left many Americans unsure what to believe and vulnerable to various forms of demagoguery.
A first step in addressing this problem would be for the players on all sides to finally start acting like responsible adults. The tragedy in Tucson is a painful warning about what the consequences will look like if the present dynamic doesn't change.
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