|
August 30, 2006 –
It was exactly three decades ago, when Jimmy Carter was in office.
Skyrocketing oil prices, 'stagflation',
interest rates up near 20%, the Iran hostage crisis. By the
time Ronald Regan took office, 'liberal' had officially become a
dirty word, and anyone associated with it, thanks to Carter's
ineptitude in the Oval Office, would be maligned for decades to
come.
Regan, and his henchman George H. W.
Bush, used the sort of immoral global theatrics we are all now
familiar with the current administration using to solidify this
whole scenario, of course. If you recall - as for some reason
most people don't - Ronald Regan's inauguration day, you can plainly
see the Bush footprint. As Ronald Regan is being sworn in,
Iran releases the hostages. This was arranged via an illegal
deal that would later be known as Iran-Contra, trading arms for
hostages.
But as we are all familiar with now,
this is simply how the Bush wing of the Republican Party operates.
They break the law and do whatever necessary for the sake of
propaganda, and scoring the hostages being released during the
inauguration said to America, "See, the Republicans are strong and
feared in the world; unlike Carter and those liberals."
Note: somebody might want to ask
how the Regan/Bushies got so familiar with the hostage takers as to
be able to cut secret deals like this, and why they didn't do it
sooner - i.e. was the lingering 'crisis' a PR stunt.
That aside, Jimmy Carter's horrible
presidency and awesome global theatrics combined to get Ronald Regan
elected twice and George H. W. Bush elected once, and, more
pointedly, to completely drive liberals and liberal ideas out
of the American conversation. By the time Clinton was elected,
the national conversation almost universally stated that Republicans
were right when it came to foreign policy and the economy, and
liberals were complete imbeciles with regard to both.
As Rush Limbaugh took to the air in 1992
and the effect of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by Regan set
in, this was solidified with outright propagandist tactics.
Bill Clinton, elected only due to the
insertion of Ross Perot into the 1992 mix, began by making just a
few concessions to conservatism; very pragmatic, popular ones, like
embracing Welfare reform. But as Rush Limbaugh and friends
helped usher in the 1994 Republican Revolution, Clinton
surrendered more and more to simply asserting that conservatives are
right when it comes to the economy and other issues. He
embraced GATT, he embraced NAFTA, he embraced deregulation.
By the time Clinton followed along by
signing the 1996 Telecommunications Act - the law that has led to
our current media disaster by relaxing media ownership rules, thus
allowing the right wing to buy up all of AM radio, take over the
rest of the media, etc. - no one in America, save for a few liberals
who no one would consider listening to, questioned deregulation,
GATT, NAFTA, supply-side voodoo economics, or other tenants of
conservative policy. By 2000, whether Joe American was a Gore
supporter or a Bushie, no one was questioning these policies - save
for Ralph Nader and his 3 percent of followers.
Four years later, when Howard Dean came
out and called for things like "re-regulation," the nation was still
not willing to listen to such ideas and gladly accepted the label of
"fringe lunatic" for Dean.
However, all of that has now changed.
The general idea among Democrats has
been that liberalism has to be swept to the corner, that if a Nancy
Pelosi speaks, she must try to appear more moderate, and that the
party and potential candidates need to flee the liberal label and ideas.
But, on top of the disastrous realities
of the Bush years - oddly paralleling those of the Carter years,
with oil prices and Mid-East problems that show no coming solutions
- a number of realities have combined to make the nation stop and
say, "Hey, maybe we need to start listening to liberals."
Yes, the nation wants to hear what
liberals have to say.
The foul mood created by the
Bush/Limbaugh Republican era of debt, death and destruction set the
tone. But the realities of Global Warming, jobs being lost
overseas as liberals warned GATT and NAFTA would lead to, Katrina showing
that neglecting infrastructure does have a price, electricity prices
being higher by more than 14% where deregulation has occurred have
made America stop and say, "Wait a second: these are all things
that the liberals were right about."
Add to this a new distrust for the media
- not as a tool of liberals, as was universally accepted for
decades, but as a propaganda tool of the Bush/Limbaugh right - and
the idea that carried for decades, that Republicans are right when it
comes to the economy, foreign policy, and most other things, and
that liberal ideas only lead to disasters, no longer exists in
America.
Candidates like Joe Lieberman, Grey
Davis, and Bill Clinton were thought to be the perfect mix.
They embraced Republican economics and foreign policy while being a
little more "compassionate" and environmentally conscious.
Now, as one by one America has seen such candidates driven out of
office, there is a new reality. While the Democratic Party
still feels it must appear to America close to the center or right,
the nation in no uncertain terms is asking for them to unlock the
closet where the party has kept it prescient liberals for the past
30 years; the liberals who wanted to move toward alternative energy
three decades ago, who had a real solution for energy prices, Global
Warming, the Mid-East mess; who warned that deregulation was a bad
idea; who warned that GATT and NAFTA would destroy the American job
market; who warned about the Wal-Marting of America, about McJobs,
about neglecting infrastructure.
In short, America now sees that, though
not right on all issues, liberals have been absolutely right on
some, and that the silencing and ignoring of the left - yes, the
much maligned actual liberal lefty left - has cost the nation
dearly.
To put it bluntly, America is saying to
the GOP, conservatives, and "moderate" DLC Democrat types, "Shut up,
we've listened to you and you've failed us. Bring out the
liberals and let's hear what they have to say."
To keep it clear - the nation is not
simply shifting from GOP-supporting to Democrat-supporting.
Nor is the nation necessarily shifting
to the left. America is not saying it wants to legalize dope,
have nude beaches, and institute an 80% tax rate so everyone can get
nice welfare payments.
What the nation is demanding is a fair
American conversation that includes all sides.
America retains its firm desire to stay
in what it considers to be "the middle." America is, by
nature, a moderate nation. However, what is considered extreme
and moderate/sensible has drastically changed over just a couple of
years ago, with conservative stigmatized and liberal destigmatized.
What this means for 2006 remains to be
seen due to the fact that Democrats have not realized the depth of
America's psychic change and are still stuck in cling-to-the-right
mode. Nowhere is the message heard, "We told you decades ago,"
"If you had listened to us decades ago none of this would be
happening." The Democrats are unwilling still to associate
themselves with the liberals who have proven so foresighted.
But as has been seen in places like
Connecticut, Americans are taking it into their own hands.
They realize this is life and death, the very survival of not just
our nation but our planet.
When Lieberman lost, the non-M/I media
called it a referendum about Iraq. Notice that Iraq isn't
mentioned once in the above article. It's not about Iraq -
it's much deeper and all encompassing than that. The issue
with Iraq is not what a bad idea it was but that it is distracting us
from the truly important issues - the ones liberals have been
warning us about, like Global Warming, infrastructure, off-shoring,
outsourcing, downsizing, deregulating, etc., etc. The nation
is not only scared of the disasters they now see unfolding, but
about other ones liberals may be onto that we're still not hearing
about because the media and both parties still refuse to let them be
heard.
As the non-Moderate Independent media
pretends to wonder if the nation will really go Dem in November, the
reality is that a sea change has occurred in the American mindset
that is vastly deeper than anyone is even suggesting.
Conservatism is a bad word, liberalism is prescient and important.
And America is mad as hell and ready to eject from office anyone who
will not let the liberals speak on behalf of our nation and our
planet.
| 
