There is no normal for us to get back to.

[Lonestarblue]

5. We have been going downhill as a country since 1969.

Nixon’s inauguration began the current era of using racism to win elections. Nixon was a so-so president (to me at least). He was praised for ending the Vietnam War, but he didn’t have much choice with the protest movement gaining steam. His major accomplishment was establishing the EPA, which Republicans since have been trying to eliminate.

By the time we get to Reagan, we really start to see policies that hurt poor people. Reagan’s “shining city upon a hill” was not a description of America but a description of the utopia he had helped to create for privileged white millionaires. The working class and the poor got stiffed. Each succeeding Republican administration has built on the idea that government is too big and that all the privileges of citizenship belong to heterosexual white people, primarily white men and primarily the wealthy.

We’ve now reached a stage where almost everyone thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, but we also have enormous disagreement on what our direction should be. I don’t see a real possibility for significant change until, borrowing some of Grover Norquist’s words, the Trump Republican Party has been reduced to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub. We need better media that reports on the damage Republicans do rather than what they say they do.