Chris, That conservative Presidents were freely elected by the American people in 7 of 10 elections over the past 36 years suggests that Krimel's version of history and the presidents who served might be slightly unbalanced.
Regards, Platt . > Chris, > > I get the idea that your vision of a "right winger" is a bit different than > what it is over here. Left and right have meaning only with reference to a > center and what the Great Satan Raygun did in this country was radically > shift the center to the right. Prior to Raygun people like today's FOX news > and AM talkshow creeps were considered fringe crazies. Raygun legitimized > them. As you know any historical analysis is incomplete but I can think of > several things that allowed this to occur. > > In his autobiography Bill Clinton identifies one of them as the civil rights > movement. While it finally made Americans face the consequences of our > fundamental belief that ALL men are created equal; it produced a huge > Dynamic shift. And that shift had negative consequences as well as positive > ones. Since democrats were seen in the South as pushing the changes; all the > blue states in the South became red states. In my state the Republican party > was so weak that even into the 70s they didn't even have primary elections. > Now they run the place. > > Perhaps a bigger factor was the Cold War which is where a lot of Platt's > rhetoric comes from. In second grade I remember being told what evil people > the Chinese communists were because they tortured people who didn't toe the > party line by sticking chopsticks in their ears. Also what evil people the > Russians were because they censored scientific research that did not conform > to the party dogma. What I took from this is that torture and censorship are > evil and that people who do it are evil. When I look around today what I see > is the communists are gone but we are censoring free thought and torturing > people. > > This was a time when there was a real and present threat of nuclear war > every single day. Paranoia over the red menace resulted in concrete changes > in the US political system. Fear of the rise of a communist or socialist > political party resulted in changes to ballot access laws. This insures, to > this day, that political parties other than the two in power have almost no > chance of getting started, much less taking getting elected. > > Yet another factor was assassination. The Kennedys and King provided sources > of inspiration and moral leadership and the vacuum they left behind was > never really filled. Johnson was one of the most politically effective > presidents in US history but he was not likable or charismatic enough to > actually move the hearts as well as the minds of the people. > > >From the assassinations of the 60s and the radical changes of civil rights > to the defeat of our military in Vietnam to the political trauma of > Watergate the US currently suffers from a kind of collective PTS. We just > want it all to stop and be static for a while. > > Raygun was a kind of dream come true. He was what Baulldriad might call a > simulation of a president. Not a real president but a hyperreal president. > An actor playing the part of a president so that the simulation no longer > had reference to the real at all. It has become its own justification. His > thinking was so simplistic, he took us all back to a kind of fantasy > "Pleasantville" were everything was black and white and Mrs. Cleaver always > wore pearls at diner time. > > There was not shortage of oil, no complexity to the economy, no race > problems, no pollution; just a bunch of bureaucrats making life tough for > good honest folk trying to make a living. > > So when Raygun was once asked, "How can an actor become president?" His > answer was, "How can a president not be an actor?" The simulation has become > the reality. That transformation is complete. An AWOL drunken cokehead can > recreate himself as a war hero more valiant that decorated veterans and > former POWs. It is no longer truth that matters. No longer reality that > counts. It is the appearance of reality and the simulation of truth that > count. > > But maybe reality has more substance in your world. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
