The push to the right has been incremental and broad ranging over the past 30 years. Push Democrats to compromise on media ownership and get them to buy into "welfare fraud" as a big concern and start chipping away at our social safety nets. Get Democrats to talk "free trade" dogma instead of telling the truth about how such an approach would bankrupt our country by sending most of our manufacturing overseas and undercutting the strongest champion of the 99%-- organized labor. Get Democrats to loosen up on financial regulations designed to prevent massive fraud in order to tap into the big money needed to win more campaigns. Get Democrats to talk noble bipartisan compromise to cover up the undermining of Democratic values again and again.
I really thought the war crimes of the Bush gang and the massive fraud that crashed our economy would have given Democratic legislators the bravery to crush Republican supply-side (aka 1%) policies once and for all. "Our people have lost their savings and are being evicted from their homes-- Medicare for All now! Our infrastructure is crumbling-- bridges have collapsed, dams are breaking, utility systems are decades old-- repairing them all will give people jobs they need right now!"
I didn't realize how deeply the corruption had seeped into our mainstream. That the deregulating of media and high finance and war profiteering had gone so far that not enough Democratic legislators would band together as a block to crush modern Republicanism a.k.a. Pro-Multinational-Corporatism once and for all.
I thought that surely even the top one percent had grandchildren and would want an excuse to rebalance our economy and stop devastating climate change by being "forced" to go green with a massive jobs program and "forced" to go compassionate with national health insurance because so many evictions in the richest country on earth would be too much to bear. I thought Democrats would be allowed to push a return to demand-side economics because the Top One Percent knew they had gone too far in destroying our country with the Bush gang and might want their grandchildren to live in a beautiful, healthy country with great infrastructure and efficient energy use to save oil for generations to come.
Why would they persist in burning down the house? I guess each destructive force thinks that on its own it is not so bad. And all the greed was cloaked in great all-American propaganda-- free market, voluntary self-regulation, personal responsibility (for the 99% only), etc.
I could go on with my amazement-- I really did think that surely, this is it! in 2009 the Republican failures would be faced and crushed head-on. No more lying. Between the torturing and the financial fraud, they were toast. Finally America would come around. The pendulum had swung so far into crazyland with the Bush gang, the Democrats would now be able to bring our country closer to balance and get on with massive green projects to conserve oil use because we all know we need it to last for our children's children... we use oil for so much besides fueling our cars...
So I've really been in a kind of shock since seeing bipartisan compromise as the main approach, since seeing the genteel pretending that Democrats could work with the party whose main goal was games-- crushing the opponent even if it meant crushing 99% of the population.
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