We are witnessing a national tantrum---a "hissy fit", if you will.

[lonely bird]

45. Change that occurred...

After the rise of populism in the late 1800’s we saw wealth scared. With the Great Depression we really saw wealth scared. FDR saved capitalism despite the capitalists. What didn’t happen was change on the level of race. It still hasn’t changed. We know hatred is taught. We know it is learned. What we have seen for the last 60 years are the fruits of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Leo Strauss, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. These “people” sought to maintain a system that rewards destruction and hatred. Trump was symptomatic and simply brought the fear and psychosis out into the open.

Looking back 400 years we see that the country, stolen from natives, was birthed in hatred. Hatred of natives, hatred of brown and black people, hatred of women, hatred of belief structures that were different. On and on. The so-called golden age of capitalism was not a golden age for the majority of people. Women were excluded, people of color were excluded. The attempts by LBJ to right some of the wrongs have been fought by conservatives for decades.

We must recognize that politics decides who gets what, when, where, how and why. As long as conservatism exists there will always be more losers than there should be. Today is far different than the ‘30’s, ‘40’s, ‘50’s or ‘60’s. I do not see a light at the end of a tunnel. We have open racists elected to Congress. We have white people claiming people of color are at fault for their own deaths.

God/Goddess save us from mediocre white people. That is said as an old white guy who cannot stand to see the forces that mediocre white people have unleashed. I live in Ohio and we now have another Republican shithead running to fill spineless Rob Portman’s senate seat. Another fucking business man, Bernie Moreno, whose website bleats against “SOCIALISM” and Bernie and AOC and who what’s to follow up Trump’s success. Ohio has turned stupid.

Sorry for the long rant. On a related note I recommend three books: Nomadland, BagMan (about Spiro Agnew’s fall and related to the last 4 years) and Hateland which chronicles the rise of extremists and what drives them.