21st Century American Political History
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Prelude: The Conservative Majority, 1966 -- 2000: George Wallace, Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon successfully expanded the grumbling right wing Goldwaterite attacks on "the liberal media," to forge a lasting electoral majority for the GOP and the occasional un-liberal Democrat like Bill Clinton. The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts by Lyndon Johnson were the high water mark for FDR liberalism, and from then on overt racism dominated American politics for three decades.

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Bush v. Gore : By the year 2000 changing demographics and the aging of the angriest white males had eaten into the "Conservative Majority," and the election of 2000 was the first of four razor thin electoral college "victories" out of the six elections held so far this century. The drama lasted from Election Night until the Supreme Court decided the election. Gore graciously accepted the decision. We were a polite Democracy at that point in time. Or at least the wimpy assed Dems were polite.

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September 11 and War Forever: Bush's approval ratings zoomed to 90%. Nobody could say anything in public against him or the wars he started without getting serious pushback. Hack comedian Bill Maher said on network television that it was illogical to accuse the guys who crashed their planes into the Twin Towers, "cowards." Incontrovertible logic, but during 9/11 Hysteria, logic is repealed and Maher remains banished to Premium Cable.

The glorious wars to avenge the murder of almost 3,000 Americans drug on without any sign of ending. The hysteria ran out of steam and by election night 2004 we had another cliff hanger. That go-around, Governmental and Big Media pronouncements wore themselvs out after about two years.

Bush won the election amid fierce controversy over the election process in Ohio. Kerry threw in the sponge, just as Gore did.

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Shrub's Second Term and the Rebirth of Liberal Politics: The War Forever against the inchoate enemy of "terrorism" of course could never end in victory -- so it kept grinding on. The dysfunctionality of our government, the intended result of a generation of neo-liberalism, exploded into the national consciousness as Hurrican Katrina and the Churchillian War President lost his shine.

To seal the coffin of 20th Century Political Conservatism, Shrub's last years in office gave us the Crash of 2008, and the Great Recession. The Dems won the elections of 2006 and 2008. My conservative internet friends were in a collective panic as they looked at the Liberal Tag Team of Pelosi and Obama -- with nary a white guy between them.

We all thought that liberalism would come out swinging, especially Republicans.

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Hope and Nothing But Spare Change: Barack Obama proved that a Democrat would carry on the War Forever with more competence than poor little rich boy Dubya. He proved to be a skilled enough politician to preside, seemlessly, over the total realignment of American politics. Picking up on the Slick Willie stratagem of raising money from the Really Big Dawgs on Wall Street, he solidified the migration of Big Money from the collapsing national Republican Party to the New Democratic Party.

The only "liberal" idea to survive the long reign of "conservative" politics was civil rights. For all the ironies and unintended consequences of the Democratic Party's transformation of racial policy in the USA, you cannot deny that the Dems have succeeded in making the "leadership" of the country, its institutions and its major business operations "look more like the people they direct."

I am still proud to have played my own minuscule part in getting away from racism as public policy. This project is by no means complete, and people like Obama would never even consider doing anything for people of color who simply do not have the "intelligence" to score big on the SAT. But I cannot gainsay the victory won by LBJ and the protest movement of the 60s.

For decades, the GOP won elections by playing to white racists. During his term in office, Right Wing Media Fraudsters like Limbaugh kept trying to revive their bygone majority by accusing him of not being "American" and other preposterous dog whistle slams.

Too late. The Hopester won re-election in 2012 and Big Money was happy as a clam with the new alignment.

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2015 and 2016 The War Forever keeps expanding with no sign of ever ending. The damage done by the Bush crash reverberates though the land and there is a growing sense that the main stream politicians promise change but nothing ever does change.

The Angry White Males who had been the Base of the GOP finally grasped that the Republicans had been jerking them around for decades. An Outsider with more television experience than any politician tossed his hat in the ring and proceeded to stomp the shit out of Jeb Bush and every other brand name in the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, those of us who call ourselves "liberal" or "progressive" were wandering around in the Obama Desert, without much reason to hope for anything but corporate whoredom in either political party. This depression was deepened by the specter of Her.

Then Bernie Sanders threw his hat into the ring. I do not think I am alone in having been modestly cheered by his entry into the race without the slightest hope that he would get any further than Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader. But the time was right for someone to invoke the New Deal and call for a total rejection of the absurdity of "austerity."

Polling as of late 2015 and early 2016 showed a significant number of voters rated Trump and Sanders as their First and Second choices. Educated upper middle class liberals snort at that because the ideological gap between Donnie and Bernie is so wide. Instead of clicking your tongue at the ignorance of your fellow citizens, I suggest that we should consider learning something from people who do not have their brains addled by computer screens -- but I digress.

The historical significance is that both parties had lost control of their respective bases. Draw your own conclusion as to how Wall Street regarded this development.

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The Trump Interregnum: It is kind of like he was never President. He is in the news constantly, tweeting his silly shit and he remains The Obsession. While he was technically in possession of the nuclear codes, no major governmental policy changed. Internet nerds can cobble together a list of executive orders and the like to get their knickers in a bunch about Donnie Fucknuts and my only retort will be, OK, but I repeat than no major governmental policy changed.

He is Goldstein. It was weird when Goldstein was President, but this is the weirdest century in history. The best example of this can be found in the area of the approved vaccines. While he was President, Joe Biden and Kamela Harris were among a bevy of Dem Mouthpieces who vehemently stated how they would never take any vaccine developed by the Trump Administration. Once in office, of course, they now are trying to destroy the life of anybody who follows their now inoperative advice and refuses to get stuck by Trump's Operation Warp Speed.

Trump did lead the way for another round of ridiculous tax cuts. He was also involved in immediately forgotten crises involving a possible start of World War III. My favorite came when Iran shot down an American drone and "President" Trump "ordered" an air strike on Iran in retaliation. Supposedly, when our planes were within an hour of their targets, the "Prez" asked the Brass Hats if the bombs about to drop would kill anybody. Well, shut my mouth. Yes, he learned, bombs can kill. So Donnie Mafia Fringe Cat Trump lost his stomach and called the planes back.

This all went down the memory hole immediately. Your guess is as good as mine as to what part if any of that preposterous story is true. But it clearly shows how Bullshit Rules these days.

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Impeachments I and II: For the entire Trump presidency, the Dems and their new partners in the Corporate Media waged a relentless campaign against him, accusing him of being a tool of Russia and a shameless usurper of the Constitution. Following on the heels of the silly/demented attacks on Obama's birth certificate, I cannot imagine how anybody can expect the people of the United States to have any respect at all for our utterly corrupted government. Obviously either one side, the other side, or both sides are an ongoing criminal conspiracy.

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The Election of 2020: Just as in 2000, 2004 and 2016, the election was too close to call on election night. For a whole week, there was a media/social media war about the "facts" of the election. On November 11, the Associated Press called the election for Biden and the entire main stream media adopted a lockstep editorial policy of condemning Trump and the Republicans for "refusing to accept the will of the people" in any story about recounts or challenges to the conduct of the election. The headlines started to include the word, "lies."

As weird as that major shift in editorial standards may seem, that was dwarfed by the outright propaganda that keeps rolling out of the MSM about the "insurrection" of January 6. 2020.

This final collapse of even the pretense of journalistic objectivity is the logical culmination of the Flavored Facts broadcasting of Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch. When Big Business changed sides in 2008, they brought this style of Store Bought News with them.

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Economic War With Russia: Whereas the alleged fight to protect the population from viral infection made a kind of sense for the first 15 or so months of the campaign, this lunacy about Ukraine is beyond debate.

As we see the memes sweep across cyberspace, putting the focus not on Russia but on Putin, does anybody have a good word to say about the state of our society and our government on the last day of February, 2022?

It is already the worst year of my life an it has only gone through two months.