Just a quick glance at the current political landscape and the figures who populate it gives you a sense of the change that's transpired. The center of gravity in American politics has moved considerably to the right. Once, not so long ago, the Republican Party was dominated by its centrists, and people like Ronald Reagan were viewed as kooks. It's worth remembering that in the 1970s Reagan's presidential aspirations were literally the butt of endless jokes by political comedians. But the guy went from joke to president to saint, and that says a lot about where we are today. At this point, there are almost no center-right figures in the Republican Party, at least at the national level.
The movement of the Democratic Party has followed a similar trajectory. You'd never know it, of course, by listening to the screaming inanities of regressive lunatics, whether elite or rank-and-file. Notwithstanding their foaming rants about Clinton or Obama or Reid or Pelosi being socialists, however, the truth is none of these figures are even vaguely liberal by traditional standards. Compare them to Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson or even Harry Truman and this is easy to see. Ditto any comparison of these folks to progressives in other Western democracies. Watch what they don't do " whether that is ending an obscene war or legislating universal single-payer healthcare, or standing up for gay rights " and one can instantly appreciate how little these figures are willing to fight for progressive politics, and how lacking in progressivity are the politics for which they are unwilling to fight.
In addition to the proliferation of adherents to truly scary right-wing politics, and the shifting of the political landscape to the right " which may be more properly considered as the mainstreaming of extremism " I think we've also experienced a decimation in the ranks of the politically courageous, people willing to sacrifice career, reputation or even their lives in order to stand fast against the worst impulses in American politics and the most vicious purveyors of those ideas and attitudes. It's not so much that these people were progressives and now they're not as it is that they were Americans with integrity, outliers filled with enough decency and courage to stand against the collection of scary monster outliers of the regressive right. Yes, there was Joseph McCarthy. But there was also Joseph Welch. Yes, there was Father Coughlin. But there was also Edward R. Murrow. Yes, there was Richard Nixon. But there was also George McGovern.
Those white knights of integrity seem all but disappeared today. I can remember my astonishment during the Bush versus Gore debacle of 2000 that there wasn't one single elder statesman of American politics " some Jerry Ford-like figure " who stood up and said "I'm sorry, but this is wrong . Who risked the alienation of his party and peers by making the case that it's far less important who wins the vote than it is that the vote be legitimately won. I remember during the Clinton fiasco " when a sitting president the United States was being impeached for lying about a blow job, when he was almost hounded out of office by members of Congress who literally were stalking boy interns or trolling airport men's rooms for sex, having serial affairs and dumping their wives for their paramours as their spouses lay in the hospital cancer ward on their recovery bed, or fathering children in second families no one knew about " I remember thinking who will call an end to this madness which has infected the American body politic? But nobody of stature did. Nor did they, of course, in the worst instance of all, as a handful of psychopaths invented a couple of absurd pretexts and marched the country off into a completely unnecessary war in Iraq, which has now claimed perhaps a million lives. How is it that nobody of standing had the courage to stand up and say to the American public, "Come to your senses, this is wrong, the administration is lying to you, think for yourself! ?
So much is wrong in American politics today " genuinely more so, I think, than in the past. So many are culpable. Congress is more worthless than ever, and that's really saying something. The Democratic Party has thrilled the biology community by creating a whole new class of invertebrates, utterly worthless in office, and wholly undeserving of the title of opposition party when not. The mass media has become the most despicable collection of whores to power imaginable. Whatever sense there once was " from the original notions of the Founders up through the era of Cronkite " of the media serving the public interest as critical watchdogs over government has long since transmogrified into just another profit center on corporate balance sheets.
But even more fundamentally, something has changed at the level of political culture. Something is broken at the level of human decency. The toxic combination of rampant American individualism, right-wing successes in framing public attitudes in all the sickest and most corrosive ways, a litany of false prophets preaching bogus religious salvation through even more deceitful notions of political morality, and the gravitational pull from the declining trajectory of an empire that has most assuredly now passed its sell-by date " all of this has conspired to produce a monstrous polity lurching about the global landscape without a heart or a conscience, and eating itself from within for the very same reasons.
Worse still, as time marches on, fewer and fewer will remain who remember that it wasn't forever thus.
That once there were lines that were not crossed in American politics.
That there were notions of decency that transcended partisanship and ideology.
That those who left flesh overseas fighting the country's wars and brought home Purple Hearts instead were not vitiated during political campaigns as allies of America's adversaries, and especially not by cowards who somehow managed to skip their generation's major national security engagement.
That there were political crimes that simply required courageous responses, regardless of the sacrifices involved.
That political leaders could and should sacrifice their positions and perhaps even their careers in order to avoid the taint of association with morally repugnant policies.
That even troubadours had a responsibility to sing great anthems in protest against injustice, rather than cashing out and selling panties and bras for Victoria's Secret.
That there was once a thing known as true patriotism, elevating the public interest over everything else.
And, yes, even over personal profit.
The movement of the Democratic Party has followed a similar trajectory. You'd never know it, of course, by listening to the screaming inanities of regressive lunatics, whether elite or rank-and-file. Notwithstanding their foaming rants about Clinton or Obama or Reid or Pelosi being socialists, however, the truth is none of these figures are even vaguely liberal by traditional standards. Compare them to Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson or even Harry Truman and this is easy to see. Ditto any comparison of these folks to progressives in other Western democracies. Watch what they don't do " whether that is ending an obscene war or legislating universal single-payer healthcare, or standing up for gay rights " and one can instantly appreciate how little these figures are willing to fight for progressive politics, and how lacking in progressivity are the politics for which they are unwilling to fight.
In addition to the proliferation of adherents to truly scary right-wing politics, and the shifting of the political landscape to the right " which may be more properly considered as the mainstreaming of extremism " I think we've also experienced a decimation in the ranks of the politically courageous, people willing to sacrifice career, reputation or even their lives in order to stand fast against the worst impulses in American politics and the most vicious purveyors of those ideas and attitudes. It's not so much that these people were progressives and now they're not as it is that they were Americans with integrity, outliers filled with enough decency and courage to stand against the collection of scary monster outliers of the regressive right. Yes, there was Joseph McCarthy. But there was also Joseph Welch. Yes, there was Father Coughlin. But there was also Edward R. Murrow. Yes, there was Richard Nixon. But there was also George McGovern.
Those white knights of integrity seem all but disappeared today. I can remember my astonishment during the Bush versus Gore debacle of 2000 that there wasn't one single elder statesman of American politics " some Jerry Ford-like figure " who stood up and said "I'm sorry, but this is wrong . Who risked the alienation of his party and peers by making the case that it's far less important who wins the vote than it is that the vote be legitimately won. I remember during the Clinton fiasco " when a sitting president the United States was being impeached for lying about a blow job, when he was almost hounded out of office by members of Congress who literally were stalking boy interns or trolling airport men's rooms for sex, having serial affairs and dumping their wives for their paramours as their spouses lay in the hospital cancer ward on their recovery bed, or fathering children in second families no one knew about " I remember thinking who will call an end to this madness which has infected the American body politic? But nobody of stature did. Nor did they, of course, in the worst instance of all, as a handful of psychopaths invented a couple of absurd pretexts and marched the country off into a completely unnecessary war in Iraq, which has now claimed perhaps a million lives. How is it that nobody of standing had the courage to stand up and say to the American public, "Come to your senses, this is wrong, the administration is lying to you, think for yourself! ?
But even more fundamentally, something has changed at the level of political culture. Something is broken at the level of human decency. The toxic combination of rampant American individualism, right-wing successes in framing public attitudes in all the sickest and most corrosive ways, a litany of false prophets preaching bogus religious salvation through even more deceitful notions of political morality, and the gravitational pull from the declining trajectory of an empire that has most assuredly now passed its sell-by date " all of this has conspired to produce a monstrous polity lurching about the global landscape without a heart or a conscience, and eating itself from within for the very same reasons.
Worse still, as time marches on, fewer and fewer will remain who remember that it wasn't forever thus.
That once there were lines that were not crossed in American politics.
That there were notions of decency that transcended partisanship and ideology.
That those who left flesh overseas fighting the country's wars and brought home Purple Hearts instead were not vitiated during political campaigns as allies of America's adversaries, and especially not by cowards who somehow managed to skip their generation's major national security engagement.
That there were political crimes that simply required courageous responses, regardless of the sacrifices involved.
That political leaders could and should sacrifice their positions and perhaps even their careers in order to avoid the taint of association with morally repugnant policies.
That even troubadours had a responsibility to sing great anthems in protest against injustice, rather than cashing out and selling panties and bras for Victoria's Secret.
That there was once a thing known as true patriotism, elevating the public interest over everything else.
And, yes, even over personal profit.
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