The marginalization of "The Left" through the years. Not hearing us now at all.

[mountain grammy]

210. This is an excellent post and thread..

Took me over an hour to read it all, and I read every post.
For the most part, I agree with madfloridian and it should make all of us mad. Not only at the never ending trashing of liberals for the last 40+ years, but that we crawled into our shells and let it happen. I know, I for one, cowered at the constant barrage of criticism and hate directed at liberals. When Clinton was elected and the media painting him as a liberal, I finally saw the light. Fox news and conservative talk radio was changing the media.. the corporates learned that truth and challenging officials' statements now was considered "liberal bias" and they didn't have to follow those rules anymore. When I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper about the lack of honest news reporting, I was confronted everywhere I went.
Many people I thought were intelligent, accused me of not respecting our sainted military and I was just an old anti war hippie who spit on soldiers coming home from Vietnam...Say what? My husband is a Vietnam vet, I said, my parents both served in WWII and my dad was a career Marine. Well, I was told, you are the problem, wanting a weak country run by a bunch of peaceniks while we are overrun by Communists. At first, I was so shocked by the reaction, I couldn't speak. When I did try to argue, I got talking points thrown in my face "Oh, that Clinton, he's just soooo sleazy." At the time, I had just bought my own business, and realized conservative town officials really didn't like us liberals. For the sake of my livelihood, it was 15 years before I wrote another letter. I was "marginalized," and I'm mad at myself for retreating, but I had plenty of company.
We've got a lot of ground to make up, and with the climate crisis upon us, we probably don't have enough time.