A question for older DUers and those who study history: Were repubicans always this nuts?

[BeyondGeography]

9. I think America was always this nuts

You have these awful original sins at the heart of it, stolen land and stolen labor, both accompanied by genocidal acts and policies sanctioned by the white majority. These have never been dealt with honestly, perhaps because the psychic price of such a reckoning would be too high. In fact, we double down on the cruelty all the time, pretending the poorest and most economically-challenged among us are what ails the economy (after weighing many of them with loans only gangsters used to make) and waging a non-stop war against any form of investment in their present and future. This is how the guilty and the complicit can feel virtuous.

Getting closer to your question, these foundational problems with big truths about ourselves opened us up to, in fact committed us to a culture of lying and avoidance behavior. Getting away with the big lie is a defining American trait and look how confused too many Americans are, how far they are from confronting the difficult truths of our times. How to invent a new form of low/no-growth community-oriented and sustainable capitalism in a world of dwindling resources? Can we even talk about it as a nation? A resounding no, because, like our problematic origins, it's too difficult and, most important, it would threaten vested interests.

We were always set up for this kind of craziness; four years after the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, we are actually contemplating electing a debt-enabled buyout pirate who won't reveal his tax returns as President. Why? Because he's not the guy who is trying to coax the country along into post-adolescence while getting the richest people in the country to be more decent Americans.

Not a direct answer, just a way of saying the problems are deep and the GOP or whatever ill-intentioned, money-enabled group of owners will always have an audience willing to go over the cliff for them.