I want to highlight this article by Papa Delta Bravo, both because it is excellent, and because it brings up some issues that have been bothering me a lot lately:
In this age of the series of tubes, Inman’s asshole rage is sadly what passes for debate. Where there are no people except for those on your side, and those you don’t like or understand are reduced to an undesirable, collective other who embody all the things you say you stand against.
I seem to recall there was a time when people could discuss politics, even if they disagreed, without ending up resorting to childish nonsense like this. When I think about it, I first noticed it during the Bush Administration. In fact, I think the desire to have substantive discussions is what, in large part, gave birth to blogging.
“When I think about it, I first noticed it during the Bush Administration.”
Since we are only talking about how we remember things, I won’t make any firm assertions, but I think I first noticed it during the first Clinton Administration, but it’s been growing since then. What I mean is, I can remember things in at least a semi-adult context since around 1960, and I don’t remember so many people regularly getting foaming-at-the-mouth with hatred for their political opponents — meaning anyone who disagreed with them. Oh, there were some — I remember a couple characters here in Bucks County who would get foaming at the mouth over Rep. Peter Kostmeyer (D), but they also were generally looked at askance.
While I was around at the time, I was a young kid, so I don’t remember too much firsthand about the McCarthy era, but that may have been another time, because everyone was running scared of the communists they were told were under every bed. For example, I sort of remember the importance that was placed on the insertion of “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance, which had already been daily rote for me and my classmates, without it, for several years. I remember an elementary school kid absent-mindedly leaving it out being taken less lightly than it would seem it should have been.
Our present times are not the first strange ones.
I noticed it first in the Reagan Administration. There seemed to be less hostility during the first Bush Administration, but then the left got rt unhinged when they saw he was vulnerable. The right got very nasty with Clinton too though.
I actually would have thought a lot of the vitriol dated to Nixon, but the fundamental realignment in the parties (and the Souths transformation from D to R) happened after Jimmy Carter. That said, while I wasn’t alive then, the contest between Kennedy and Nixon was pretty nasty too.
Oh, I have no idea who this asshat comic strip writer is and haven’t heard of his comic before. But PDB is correct.
” the fundamental realignment in the parties (and the Souths transformation from D to R) happened after Jimmy Carter.”
Now that you mention it, it seems the use of ridicule at a sort of advanced, focused, organized level may have started during the Carter Administration. Not that comedians and entertainers hadn’t always made fun of presidents and political personalities, but an example I remember from c. 1978 – 1979 was an anti-Carter “coloring book” with each page a line drawing graphic ridiculing Carter with one of the many memes circulating about him. I recall it being very slick and professionally produced. Prior to that I don’t remember so much professionally produced propaganda, other than the expected things in presidential campaigns.