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The last time the American public was so disenchanted with the state of national politics, there was a war going on and near civil war at home. Indeed, so surly is the current public mood about the country being on the wrong track that you’d almost think there is a war going on now! But, of course, since there’s no draft, no tax increase, and no pictures of battle, or of bodies coming back to Dover Air Force Base, I’m sure I must be mistaken about that. So what gives? Why are people so dissatisfied, telling pollsters in record numbers that the country has gone astray? There’s a simple answer, but the regressive right is desperate that you not hear it or think about it. You see, there’s been an ideological revolution going on in America. It began in the 1980s with Reagan kleptocracy (in that sense, it’s been a bit of an evolutionary revolution – however oxymoronic (or just plain moronic) that idea may be), but has really hit stride in the seven tortuous years of the Little Bush regime. And the thing is, people don’t like it. Indeed, one could explain the public mood quite succinctly, as follows: The right sought power in America. They got it. They implemented their agenda. Unfettered. It sucked. People hate it. That’s really just about it. And what kills me is how these guys are both such lousy winners and lousy losers. Maybe they’re just lousy, period. All I know is that they had it all – Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. They had a national trauma which gave legitimacy to a stolen presidency and immediately jacked it up from its 50 percent approval rating and rapidly descending trajectory into stratospheric levels of support. They had the world loving America for the first time in a long time, and they had international support for attacking the country’s purported enemies. Now it’s all gone. And, while you’ll hear rumblings about Dan Rather this, and Tom Daschle that, the simple truth is that the policies of the regressive agenda failed precisely because of the political success of the regressive movement. That’s right. (Very right, actually.) These folks are very good at campaigning and complaining, and especially so in an environment in which no one pushes back. They can demonize like nobody’s business (except Wall Street’s business, of course). They can fearmonger better than any dimestore preacher or fire-and-brimstone pope. They can bully just like Tailgunner Joe McCarthy taught them so well how to do. All of which means that if the press is too fearful to call them on it, and the ‘opposition party’ is hardly worthy of either word in that label, they can win elections. But when they transition from the disloyal opposition to actually governing, they run into a small problem, which is that people don’t happen to like their policies. I know, it’s amazing isn’t it? I mean, what’s not to like about deceit, death and incompetence? They were (minimally) asleep at the wheel during America’s most severe domestic military attack in history, and are surprised that we might find that troubling. They identify an enemy and claim that this person and his movement attacked the country, then they fail to come close to defeating this enemy in six years of war. Who’s ready to sign-up for that? They bring us another war, based on lies, which turns into a quagmire based on lies, and which has nothing remotely to do with American security other than to radically diminish it. Then they belittle us as disloyal for opposing the moral, fiscal and humanitarian disasters they’ve made. They polarize the country economically in the name of their radical (supposed) free market ideas, which turn out to have a lot more to do with privileging certain elites than with privileging nobody, as per the theory. Then, as we are being gouged paying for gas, food and mortgages, they are astonished that we don’t give them credit for the wonderful state of the economy. Hey, the Dow’s up! What’s wrong with you people?
www.regressiveantidote.net David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. His website is www.regressiveantidote.net.
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