How would a reasonable person evaluate what has happened in America since l969, and most especially, since 1980? What “proof” would provide a fair, fact-based answer? One method would be to look for PATTERNS of words and actions. Another is to look for the INTENT of words and policies. Another is to compare historical eras. This has been done on many levels for the two major post-World War II American eras. The acknowledged statistical peak of America was reached between l947 to roughly 1973. In that era, anybody, with a high school education could, and DID succeed in providing for his/her family. I know – I lived then. I saw it on our block. Statistically, since 1980, it has steadily become difficult for “the average person” to match 1947-73 standards. Why? What happened?
There have been two Republican parties. One, from 1854 to 1960, with some significant exceptions, helped build modern America. The second, from 1960 forward has steadily become more radically far “right” and more destructive. It has often claimed to stand for “liberty” or “freedom,” but when fully analyzed, an objective person begins to see this doesn’t mean “liberty” and “freedom” for everybody.
Supplied below are the observations of a number of people who were there, who watched what the INTENT of far right and Republican policies was. Some of them helped the destruction occur.
Again, go back to the founding American principles” “all men are created equal,” and the purpose of the government of “We the people” is to “promote the general Welfare.” Any government policy that doesn’t do these two basic things is both unconstitutional, but also unAmerican. Since 1980, this has all too often been the case.
John Dean’s “Broken Government How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches” [2007} says: “Today, any objective observer must conclude that it is the Democrats who…have the needs of the public at the top of their agenda. Republicans…have become the party of special interests. [XIV] “Republicans..have demonstrated during the past several decades a remarkable incapacity to govern..should be held accountable for the damage they have done to democracy.” [XVI] “Republicans are unmatched in modern politics for their willingness to play dirty, to go negative and nasty, and to play hardball, a ruthlessness ….” [18}
“Few people are aware how Republican presidents have spent the last four decades remaking the judiciary in their own image, and in so doing have politicized – and diminished – the nonpolitical branch.” [23] “…how conservatives have changed the law by writing law journal articles, then taking their invented ideas to court, where conservative judges have embraced them…” [110]
“…I do know that if another Republican president should follow Bush II, and another generation of conservative jurists is appointed, the federal judiciary will become a bastion of radical conservatism with no interest in restraining presidential powers and no interest in personal rights and liberties, but great interest in servicing the law to meet the needs of social, religious, and business conservatives.” [119-120] WHAT HAPPENED IN 2017-2021?????????????
“Bork, whom Reagan’s own staff had described as a “ring-wing zealot, was chosen to please the right-wing base, although he was publicly packaged as a moderate conservative..” [137] WE’VE SEEN THIS AGAIN!!!!!!!, many times.
“Republicans have simply dismantled or ignored countless well-established processes found in the rules, customs, norms, traditions, laws, and constitutional mandates…Refusing to govern by traditional standards, they create their own self-serving schemes that often they do not even attempt to justify, while at other times they rely on legal opinions that should result in disbarment of the attorneys that write them.” [175-176}
The highly respected Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein investigative duo, with a 40-year track record of bipartisan reporting, wrote “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks…..How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism” [2012].
They concluded with this judgment: “In every chapter of this book, we have documented the ways in which the Republican Party has become the insurgent outlier in American politics and as such contributes disproportionately to its dysfunction…..the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party itself….must change if U.S. democracy is to regain its health. The contemporary GOP, to the horror of many of its longtime stalwarts and leaders…has veered toward tolerance of extreme ideological beliefs and policies and the embrace of cynical and destructive means to advance the political ends over problem solving.” [185]
Mike Lofgren, a Republican Congressional senior analyst, wrote “The Party Is Over…..How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.” [2012] “>>>I watched with a mixture of fascination and foreboding as my party was hijacked by a new crop of opportunists and true believers hell-bent on dragging the country into their jerry-built New Jerusalem: an upside-down utopia in which corporations rule; the Constitution, like science, is faith-based; and war is the first, not the last, resort in foreign policy.” [2] “…the GOP has confected a shrewd marketing campaign: play up the culture wars and demagogue national security issues to distract voters from their real intentions…” [helping the plutocracy that runs the country} [13]
Stuart Stevens, a Republican lead strategist and media consultant for 25 years, wrote “It Was All A Lie How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump” [2020] “I have no one to blame but myself. I believed> That’s where it all started to go wrong. I was drawn to a party that espoused a core set of values: character counts…the national debt actually mattered, immigration made America great….these principles were assumed to be shared and defined what it meant to be a Republican…..What a fool I was. All of these immutable truths turned out to be mere marketing slogans. None of it meant anything….What I missed was one simple reality: It was all a lie.” [3]
“There is nothing strange or unexpected about Donald Trump. He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party. Trump isn’t an aberration of the Republican Party; he IS the Republican Party in a purified form.” [4]
“Race has defined the modern Republican Party.” [31] “”Family values” was never a set of morals or values that the Republican Party really desired to live by; instead, “family values” was useful in attacking and defining Democrats….It was an “otherness” tool..” [39] “For all their bluster about the federal government and states’ rights, the most conservative states..are far and away the most dependent on federal aid.” [60]
“Today the intellectual leaders of the Republican Party are the paranoids, kooks, know-nothings, and bigots who once could be heard only on late-night talk shows…” [94] “…the behavior of the right-wing media ecosystem represents a radicalization of roughly a third of the American media system.” [105] “The Republican Party is held aloft by a large, powerful, and ever-growing industry of deceit. The purpose of much of conservative media is to lie….” [124]
Charles Sykes, a long-time host of the #1 conservative talk show in Wisconsin, wrote “How the Right Lost Its Mind” [2017] “There came a moment when I realized that conservatives had created an alternative reality bubble and that I perhaps helped shape it. Somewhere along the line much of the echo chamber turned on the very principles that had once animated it, replacing the ideas of freedom, limited government, and constitutionalism with a crude populist nativism that fed into the Right’s media zeitgeist.” [XIV}
“The American Right,” Matthew Sheffield writes, “has become willfully disengaged from its fellow citizens thanks to a wonderful virtual-reality machine in which conservatives..can believe anything they wish, no matter how at odds it is with reality.”” [16} “In the echo chamber, the volume was set at “Outrage.”….the business model of the Right media.” [78]
Jonathon Chait wrote “The Big Con Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America” [2007] “…American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane…The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago – that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance, or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government – are now so pervasive they barely attract any notice.” [1] “After taking control of Congress, Republicans began letting lobbyists write legislation for them.” [58]
“…dishonesty has become integral to the Republican agenda…the GOP, and the conservative movement, have embraced an economic agenda far out of step with the majority of the voting public. Republicans simply can’t win office or get their ideas enacted into law, without fundamentally misleading the public. Lying has become a systemic necessity.” [119]
Chris Mooney wrote “The Republican Brain The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality” [2012] “in aggregate, political liberals and political conservatives are different – in ways that extend far beyond mere philosophy or views about public policy. They have different personalities, psychological needs, and moral intuitions or responses. They are different people.” [62]
“…within the conservative fold, there is one group that exhibits the traits just discussed – closed mindedness, low integrative complexity, very low Openness – to any extent that it is hard to say anything good about: so-called authoritarians. They’re not all conservatives, but they’re surprisingly prevalent in the United States…Authoritarians are..increasingly strong in today’s Republican Party – and especially in its most extreme and ideological arm.”The Tea Party is an overwhelmingly authoritarian group of folks,” ……[71-72]
“…science can..be..highly destabilizing and threatening to conservative values..with the potential to undermine traditional sources of authority that conservatives respect. Scientific evidence “has a possible effect over the market, foreign policy, religion, all kinds of things….So they can’t have that.”” [82]
Prominent ex-conservative Max Boot wrote “The Corrosion of Conservatism Why I Left the Right” [2018] “My ideology has come into conflict with reality – and reality is winning. I have undertaken a painful and difficult intellectual journey….I am now forced to think for myself, and that is not an easy thing to do…..I am no longer a Republican…I am a man without a party….The question that haunts me is: Did I somehow contribute to the rise of this dark force in American life with my advocacy for conservatism….I am now convinced the Republican Party must suffer repeated and devastating defeats. It must pay a heavy price for its embrace of white nationalism and knownothingism. Only if the GOP as currently constituted is burned to the ground will there be any chance to build a reasonable center-right party out of the ashes.” [XXI] Only if the current GOP is BURNED TO THE GROUND is there a chance….
“…it’s obvious that the whole history of modern conservatism is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, ignorance, isolationism, and know-nothingism.” [165]
“Voters should simply vote against ALL Republicans as long as Trumpism remains such a dire threat to our republic. And they should keep on doing do however long it takes to purge the taint of Trumpism.” [201]
*******!!!!**** Alert readers will remember the closing quote in John Dean’s “Broken Government” [2007] – from a “long-time Republican:” people should not vote for ANY Republican. Nothing changed!!!
Award-winning Thomas Frank wrote “The Wrecking Crew How Conservatives Rule” [2008] “…Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society…..and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we’ve come to expect from Washington….put conservatism in charge of the state, and…The ruination they have wrought has been thorough..a professional job. Repairing it will require years…” [4-5]
“Conservatism, as we know it, is a movement that is about GREED…” [7]
“The inevitable consequence of plutocracy..is bought government. As Justice Louis Brandeis said..:
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands
of a few, but we can’t have both.” [271]
Long-time Republican operative David Brock wrote “Blinded By The Right The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative” [2002] as an apology and a confessional, of what belatedly he realized what he’d done for “the cause.”
“I had begun my career by suppressing my liberal social values to get ahead in the conservative movement: then I abandoned the conservative traditions of restraint and civility for Gingrichian ends-justify-the-means radicalism. As a closeted gat man, I did the work of the right-wing lawyers of the Federalist Society, the Christian Coalition, and the worst bigots from Arkansas-racist, homophobic Clinton haters. Through it all – the destructive partisanship, the careerism, the personal aggrandizement – in my mind I managed to rationalize each of my actions and hold on to the idea that I wasn’t like the Ruddys, the Scaifes, the Falwells, the Tyrrells, theFunds – I was better than they were. Whatever else I may have been, I wasn’t a liar. But I was no better than the Arkansas Project brigade after all. The strange lies were mine. All the attacks, the hateful rhetoric, the dark alliances and strange conspiracies, an eye for an eye, nuts and sluts, defending Pinochet, throwing grenades, carpet bombing the White House. Bob Bork. Bob Tyrrell. Bob Dornan. Bob Bartley. Bob Barr – it all led right here. I lost my soul.”
So – dear reader – this is only the BEGINNING – do you need more detail and documentation? There are many real “public interest” groups: The League of Women Voters, The Brennan Center, Public Citizen, Common Cause. Their mission is to “promote the general Welfare.”
I have said nothing about the Democrats. They are not blame-free. They’ve not resisted cruelty and incompetence when they could’ve. They’ve not defended what the American public wants them to defend – the social safety net, common decency, an inclusive America, economic equality, and much more. They, and much of the American public thought most of the job had been accomplished, l933-l965. It had – with significant work not completed.
Few counted on the “revenge of the empire” to be so amoral, so greedy, so cruel. Few, even moderate Republicans, expected the Republican Party to be taken over by the far right so quickly in the 1970s.
The events of 1980-2021 are a cruel, corrupt, greedy, authoritarian, theocratic attempt to not only undue the New Deal, but much of 1789-1980 American traditions, values, and norms. A major part of the attack is THE BIG LIE – repeated endlessly by the far right propaganda outlets. They’ve tried to rewrite American history; to rewrite science; to corrupt the Constitution by using parts of it to attack other parts. The Roberts Court has now almost neutered the “freedom from religion” embodied in the “establishment clause” by claiming the “freedom of religion” clause is superior – unprecedented in scope since 1791 – thus you can now be forced to support a church you DON’T attend with YOUR tax dollars.
So – guess what? All this, in the end, is about YOU! The Republican autocratic theocracy is a threat to YOUR liberties. We’re NOT talking about some obscure intellectual argument. The far political-economic-social-religious far right intends to rewrite the American rules. The people quoted above have given YOU enough info to understand this. Do YOU WANT TO?
A large, formerly middle class based democracy can’t be destroyed UNLESS its people get apathetic. UNLESS large amounts of its people accept being MISINFORMED & LIED TO. UNLESS voters elect radical candidates who destroy the country – and then, KEEP ELECTING THEM – and then wonder why the country doesn’t work like it used to.
The evidence should be clear. A reasonable person shouldn’t have much trouble connecting all the 1980-2021 dots; shouldn’t have much trouble understanding the overall 1980-2021 PATTERNS; should be able to clearly understand the INTENT of things being done – like, obviously [right?] – the immoral 2017 tax cut, the effort to stock the federal judiciary with almost 100% guaranteed votes, the elimination of increasing numbers of lower 90% jobs – right?
With Justice For All 