The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(11-29-2020, 09:36 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The problem is that in LBJ's and Nixon's time, the Democrats took the urban minorities, and lost control to the rural racists.  Thus, the conservative era.  More effort was put into making the elites richer, the working man poorer, the minorities oppressed, and the jobs abroad.  Those seem to be a modern non starter....

A trend was started in that direction. The 1968 election set the tone for much of what followed, but not all. Much more was yet to come. The white South began its switch to the Republican Party in the sixties. States like Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri reacted not only to the racial strife and civil rights, but to the hippie culture and the peace movement, and voted for Nixon. Dixie voted for Wallace, after having supported Goldwater in the 1964 landslide. But there was a detour. Congress was still strongly Democratic under Nixon, and drastically so in 1975-76 in reaction to Watergate. So the conservatives did not rule yet, and Nixon still was a progressive by today's standards. Then Carter took the solid South for the Democrats in 1976, and congress veered even further Left. But Carter was a moderate and did not get a lot of liberal programs through. Still, the decline of the working class and the rise of the elites had barely begun under Carter. Consumer and environmental laws and programs were still strong under Nixon and Carter. There was still hope.

But the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in July 1981 corresponded exactly with the passage of Reaganomics. That was the decisive turn. In the previous 3 years, the moral majority was on the rise, and the reaction to the counter-culture gained more political power. The tax revolt fueled by California Prop 13 was all the rage. Jonestown added to the national pall and revulsion to alternative lifestyles. Neo-liberalism was enthroned in 1981, not just assumed in the background. So, "More effort was put into making the elites richer, the working man poorer, the minorities oppressed, and the jobs abroad." Reagan was hired specifically to oppose the restraint which the sixties and 70s movements were putting upon the big money interests. The economics stats, charts and graphs we have all seen showed that 1981 was the decisive shift after which the rich got richer and the poorer got the shaft. Inequality grew and the national debt skyrocketed due to the tax cuts. And it is also the date when global warming spikes, a trend which is completely a function of Reaganomics.

Reagan's faux-macho charm hypnotized the nation. The right-wing cult grew around the great communicator's neo-liberal ideology, and since then its adherents feel entitled to rule and are easily mobilized as needed to stop "big government" and "socialism." In essence trickle-down neo-liberal ideology says, "I won't be forced at gunpoint to give my hard-earned tax money to socialist bureaucrats so they can coddle you know who (those other kinds of people) and make them "dependent" on "government". Just let the market operate and the job creaters will lift us up." Around that core of Reaganomics and Saint Ronnie was built the insurgent moral majority's fundamentalism-- especially mobilized around anti-feminism/anti-gay rights/"stop killing babies," militarist patriotism and attachment to American symbols, the gun culture, attachment to fossil fuels, and fear and loathing of immigrants. Thus, the right-wing movements followed in rapid succession: Reagan and Bush 41, Gingrich and the Contract With America, the culture wars over the Courts and the Clintons, Bush 43 neo-fascism, the Tea Party, and Trump Nation-- all staffed by all the same folks. And some of them now falsely claim to be "the forgotten folks," just because they keep voting Republican and then wonder why their industries and jobs are taken away, and they fall under the spell of demagogues like Trump who claim to be their voice.