You made me read a David Brooks column. I saw the headline this morning, and thought..."Nah, I don't want to start the day with my head exploding." I read your piece, then his, and while I think you've made a good point, my head exploded when I read this: "Maybe Trump was the restraining force." SERIOUSLY DAVID? Can you poke your head out of your comfortable white dude zone and pay attention to the increase in hate crimes that are a direct result of the guy you call a "restraining force"? And then he goes on to repeat the talking points of the people he's saying are going to far: "Over the last decade or so, as illiberalism, cancel culture and all the rest have arisen within the universities and elite institutions on the left..." JFC. I can't wait till Brooks retires.
The first year I could vote was 1964, as the required voting age was then 21. I registered as an independent to be able to vote either Republican or Democratic, there were then Nelson Rockefellers and George Romneys in the national political arena. But in 1964 the GOP showed its true colors—Goldwater versus LBJ—and that was my first not Republican vote, followed by every election since.
LBJ’s Great Society and civil rights legislation—imagine, coming from a Texan!—resulted in the Republican party’s formal adoption of racism as a philosophical bedrock. Over a half century has now passed, with the GOP marching at varying speeds into full-fledged fascism. It’s now the American Fascist Party (“AFP”). GOP is an oxymoron.
People describe the political spectrum as a line from left to right. It’s not. It’s a circle, with the center at the top and full-fledged totalitarianism at the bottom. The left moves from the social democracies of Canada and Europe in the upper left quadrant down through the lower left quadrant of Latin American countries, arriving at the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The U.S. generally wavered around the top center point — though mostly in the upper right quadrant. Following Nixon’s Southern Strategy, the slide down the right half of the circle accelerated, and the AFP’s well-executed long-term strategy of focusing on the statehouses has paid off handsomely. The AFP has commandeered state legislatures, has skewed the SCOTUS and gutted the Civil Rights Act, thereby freeing the sprint down the final stretch to resurrecting Jim Crow laws to eliminate voting rights. Now demographics will keep state houses—and the Senate—under AFP control for a long time, maybe even enough to make Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" prove to have been an accurate forecast.
Under Trump the Orangutan the U.S. slid into the lower right quadrant. If he’d been even a little bit human he’d have been reelected, but he’s a sociopath. Ignorant and incompetent, he seemed to enjoy watching the COVID-19 pandemic screw over 90% of the populace of the U.S. Trump looked forward to completing the lower right quadrant and shaking hands with Putin, waiting anxiously for him at the totalitarian bottom. Soviet communism, of course, met Nazism at the bottom close to a century ago.
Never mind all that – I wanna know what the hell is David on? Those Friday night vignettes w/Woodruff & Capehart are frightening to watch – Brooks looks like he's going to explode!
Good piece. Still I wish you'd say "pink people" instead of "white people". Jus sayin
You made me read a David Brooks column. I saw the headline this morning, and thought..."Nah, I don't want to start the day with my head exploding." I read your piece, then his, and while I think you've made a good point, my head exploded when I read this: "Maybe Trump was the restraining force." SERIOUSLY DAVID? Can you poke your head out of your comfortable white dude zone and pay attention to the increase in hate crimes that are a direct result of the guy you call a "restraining force"? And then he goes on to repeat the talking points of the people he's saying are going to far: "Over the last decade or so, as illiberalism, cancel culture and all the rest have arisen within the universities and elite institutions on the left..." JFC. I can't wait till Brooks retires.
The first year I could vote was 1964, as the required voting age was then 21. I registered as an independent to be able to vote either Republican or Democratic, there were then Nelson Rockefellers and George Romneys in the national political arena. But in 1964 the GOP showed its true colors—Goldwater versus LBJ—and that was my first not Republican vote, followed by every election since.
LBJ’s Great Society and civil rights legislation—imagine, coming from a Texan!—resulted in the Republican party’s formal adoption of racism as a philosophical bedrock. Over a half century has now passed, with the GOP marching at varying speeds into full-fledged fascism. It’s now the American Fascist Party (“AFP”). GOP is an oxymoron.
People describe the political spectrum as a line from left to right. It’s not. It’s a circle, with the center at the top and full-fledged totalitarianism at the bottom. The left moves from the social democracies of Canada and Europe in the upper left quadrant down through the lower left quadrant of Latin American countries, arriving at the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The U.S. generally wavered around the top center point — though mostly in the upper right quadrant. Following Nixon’s Southern Strategy, the slide down the right half of the circle accelerated, and the AFP’s well-executed long-term strategy of focusing on the statehouses has paid off handsomely. The AFP has commandeered state legislatures, has skewed the SCOTUS and gutted the Civil Rights Act, thereby freeing the sprint down the final stretch to resurrecting Jim Crow laws to eliminate voting rights. Now demographics will keep state houses—and the Senate—under AFP control for a long time, maybe even enough to make Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" prove to have been an accurate forecast.
Under Trump the Orangutan the U.S. slid into the lower right quadrant. If he’d been even a little bit human he’d have been reelected, but he’s a sociopath. Ignorant and incompetent, he seemed to enjoy watching the COVID-19 pandemic screw over 90% of the populace of the U.S. Trump looked forward to completing the lower right quadrant and shaking hands with Putin, waiting anxiously for him at the totalitarian bottom. Soviet communism, of course, met Nazism at the bottom close to a century ago.
Never mind all that – I wanna know what the hell is David on? Those Friday night vignettes w/Woodruff & Capehart are frightening to watch – Brooks looks like he's going to explode!