What’s your point with that?
The American ruling class has been ruthless in pursuit of their own excess, since as far back as you want to look.
And yes, now that we’ve allowed corporations to become super juggernaut, richer than nations, they have been spending the past few decades consolidating and multiplying their resources and deftly turning Americans against Americans, consider Newt Gingrich and turning Washington politics into ideological warfare.
The extreme right wing has been on war footing at least since then, …
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
and so on and forth.
The story of how Newt Gingrich and his allies tainted American politics, launching an enduring era of brutal partisan warfare
When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, President Obama observed that Trump “is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party.” In Burning Down the House, historian Julian Zelizer pinpoints the moment when our country was set on a path toward an era of bitterly partisan and ruthless politics, an era that was ignited by Newt Gingrich and his allies. In 1989, Gingrich brought down Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright and catapulted himself into the national spotlight. Perhaps more than any other politician, Gingrich introduced the rhetoric and tactics that have shaped Congress and the Republican Party for the last three decades. Elected to Congress in 1978, Gingrich quickly became one of the most powerful figures in America not through innovative ideas or charisma, but through a calculated campaign of attacks against political opponents, casting himself as a savior in a fight of good versus evil. Taking office in the post-Watergate era, he weaponized the good government reforms newly introduced to fight corruption, wielding the rules in ways that shocked the legislators who had created them. His crusade against Democrats culminated in the plot to destroy the political career of Speaker Wright.
While some of Gingrich’s fellow Republicans were disturbed by the viciousness of his attacks, party leaders enjoyed his successes so much that they did little collectively to stand in his way. Democrats, for their part, were alarmed, but did not want to sink to his level and took no effective actions to stop him. It didn’t seem to matter that Gingrich’s moral conservatism was hypocritical or that his methods were brazen, his accusations of corruption permanently tarnished his opponents. This brand of warfare worked, not as a strategy for governance but as a path to power, and what Gingrich planted, his fellow Republicans reaped. He led them to their first majority in Congress in decades, and his legacy extends far beyond his tenure in office. From the Contract with America to the rise of the Tea Party and the Trump presidential campaign, his fingerprints can be seen throughout some of the most divisive episodes in contemporary American politics. Burning Down the House presents the alarming narrative of how Gingrich and his allies created a new normal in Washington.
By Julian E. Zelizer - July, 2020
But you know the thing is that the collective ‘we’ the children of the intellectual enlightenment stood by and did nothing to counter that movement, while our philosophers were off in the clouds. Oh but there’s too much to summarize and I doubt Michael has much interest in an actually discussion and or review of how we got here anyway.
Oh and check it out the trump craziness, the facts just keep on piling on.
A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader than previously reported, according to Washington Post reporting.
So I’m told this is about National Security, okay let’s look at that, . . .
9 times Trump and the people around him have put national security at risk
Sonam Sheth - Nov 14, 2019, 1:03 PM
Oh and there’s this interesting breaking news tidbit,
