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Readjusting

The winners... vile overgrown frat boys (Image from Washington Post)

There was a column in the New York Times today that suggested the strong support for Bush in this last election means that America has undeniably shifted over the last ten years to become a socially center-right country. The religious fringe has become mainstream, and the center-left, basically secular-humanist, basically tolerant ideology of the Democratic party is no longer as mainstream as it used to be. Not mainstream enough to win an election, obviously.

I guess we who grew up on the coasts need to adjust to that and recognize that we're a minority now. The separation of church and state in America is now over, in practice if not in law. The power of reason and skepticism is no longer the main, or even an effective, driver of public policy. It seems to have become too much to ask of a lot of Americans to even try to consider objective facts and make reasoned decisions based on evidence. The right wing talk show, talk radio, news machine, together with the politically-conscious religious indoctrination of the churches, has become so effective in the middle of the country that it has nearly become absolute. I'm not sure where that leaves us, but it's pretty scary.

My first memories of the country I grew up in were Nixon having just been thrown out of office, and the country suffering from the oil embargo and scrambling to develop alternative energy as fast as we could. We never got there. I remember Carter, who tried to reach out to the people using reason and logic and argument (or at least that's the way it seemed when I was a kid and watching him on TV).

I don't know what happened... When they send me to the states now and I watch the unbelievably poor news and look around at the politics and the jackoff SUV-driving ex-frat boys that have taken over the place... Jesus, I just don't recognize my country any more.

But I�m sliding into defeatism here and I don�t want to do that, at least not completely. Bush and his people have pushed the Republican party so far to the right that the moderates may begin to become very uncomfortable. There may finally be the schism between the religious social conservatives and the big business fiscal conservatives that many have been predicting. It may all still blow up in their faces (and let's just hope they don't take the rest of us down with them).

Nixon annihilated McGovern in the 1972 election, but a little more than year later, Nixon was on his way out in disgrace. Smugness leads to hubris, and we all know what hubris leads to.

All right, that's all I've got tonight... I'm signing off and heading for the liquor cabinet.

Posted by case at November 4, 2004 10:37 PM