Consider the Clinton years. In December 1992, I distinctly remember seeing my first "Impeach Clinton" and "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bush" bumper stickers--and President-Elect Clinton had not even taken office yet.
"Are these people nuts?" I remember saying to myself. The answer, it seems clear now, was yes.
And I would submit that the ungluing of white America actually goes back farther than that. I trace it to the founding of the Moral Majority in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president. Many Americans believe that the Moral Majority, and the "Christian Right" that followed it, started out of a concern about abortion rights. Actually, Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority in reaction to a Carter-administration plan to remove the tax-exempt status for private schools that practiced segregation.
With Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush ruling the White House for 12 years, white Americans felt a sense of security through the 1980s and into the early '90s. I am convinced that many whites thought Republicans would dominate presidential politics for the foreseeable future. So when Clinton proved them wrong about that, they reacted with extraordinary vitriol.
And it went way beyond bumper stickers. At the first opportunity, Republicans launched the Whitewater investigation, which dealt with matters long before Clinton was president--and even before he was governor of Arkansas.
Could you imagine Democrats investigating George W. Bush over events that started 14 years before he was president? Could you imagine the country tolerating such an abuse of prosecutorial power? I certainly can't. Hell, Barack Obama is afraid to support an investigation of apparent crimes while Bush was president.
White America put up with Whitewater because Bill Clinton was a Democrat. And in retrospect, that might have been a glaring warning sign that white America was starting to lose its mind.
As we noted in a recent post, a warped interpretation of Christianity seems to be driving our democracy into a state of dysfunction. That's why I lay much of the blame for our current mess at the feet of religious "leaders" such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson--and many of their lesser-known brethren.
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