Can we **ever** get it back?

[Stinky The Clown]

I know our country has never been perfect. In many ways, even 'the best of times' have been 'the worst of times'. The good years of Bill Clinton's era were also the petri dish in which the slime of hatred from the right grew to an witch's brew that has infected every aspect of life, even while some of Clinton's own centrist positions set the stage for a sharp right turn under his successor. The supposed innocence of the Eisenhower years were also years of deep seated fright as young people had nightmares of a nucular holocaust, duck and cover was the byword of the day, and our racial divide was deep and despicable. For the sadness that was The Great Depression, the steely resolve that was WWII, the Roosevelt years also saw an America of hope, cooperation, and accomplishment. There was good and bad in the Truman, Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and even the Bush I eras. But on balance, there was almost always more good than bad.

Even for all the ills of all the previous American eras, none was as bad as it is now. None. I truly believe that these are, in deed and in fact, and for all of the history of our nation, the worst of times.

Assuming a return to sanity that would start with the control of at least one house of Congress in the upcoming midterms, and optimistically assuming control of (at least) either the Presidency or both houses of Congress in '08, can we even hope to see a return to what once was?

Or has our country been so broken by the Bush reign that, at least for those of us above the half century mark, we'll never get it back? Can I expect that, at some point, my three young adult children will see a life at least as good as what mine once was?

Can we **ever** get it back?

[babylonsister]

1. Sure. I have absolutely nothing to back up my conviction

other than optimism and hope that the good guys will win in the end.

[xchrom]

2. we can start by getting our politicians being proud of being

liberal/progressives.

you really have to nail the current stituation down to the reagan era -- not the bush era.

or even the clinton era.

the democratic party must be proud of being the representatives of politics from teh left -- get in control of the language and promote leftist politics of being the one thing it is -- good for the kitchen table economics and life of average americans.


if we win in 06 -- it will be about governing -- and that will be about the election in 08.

[Warpy]

3. We've seen this kind of corruption before

and managed to institute laws against it. However, those laws are only as good as the will of any government to enforce them, a will the present gang of thieves utterly lack.

What we haven't seen before is the utter disregard for this country's place in the world, for our allies and for our treaties.

Upstart nations with tinpot dictators who are hell bent on world domination have a nasty habit of uniting the better part of the world against them.

That is the main reason I fear for this country. We will not be on the winning side of any war that results, we no longer have the industrial base to support one. We will not survive as a nation if this Rapture addled pack of idiots manage to start world war in the name of Armageddon.

We can fix the corruption rather rapidly. We've done that before.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Warpy ...... for me it is even more fundamental .......

.... it is the institutionalized hatred of person against person that has been condoned in this country. Indeed, more than condoned, it is encouraged.

In my blue state, I have gotten yelled at by other drivers for the bumper stickers on my car ... tstickers that were no more hateful "Veteran for Kerry" and "Kerry/Edwards '04".

Calling our president a 'scumbag' was the low water mark for me ... back in the Clinton years.

There is an undercurrent of hatred that I lay fully and completely at the feet of the repubs. They **need** enemies. So they create them in any manner possible. So, in addition to racila monorities, they have widened their net of hatred to include middle easterners and even other white people - those who do not share their own ideology.

The religiously insane are both part of this and victims of it.

We can pass all the laws needed to fix some actions.

But can the national psyche ever be fixed?

[FormerDittoHead]

4. We just have to focus on fundamentals...

...after we regain power in 2008...

1) Take back the media: bring back the fairness doctrine and break up the media conglomerates. That will take care of right wing talk radio, FOX, etc and bring back media which is less national and more local / regionalized.

As long as right wing talk radio and Fox remain, we will lose future elections while the goalposts continue to get shifted to the right. Maybe not for now but eventually. As long as they can plant the seeds of neo-conservative fascism and corporate feudalism, it will keep coming back...

2) Campaign financing. Ban FCC/broadcast political commercials. Campaign law has had a rich set of rules for decades - I don't accept these specious slippery slope "freedom of speech" arguments suggesting it's a simple matter. Without the cost of broadcasting, politicians could win elections without having to raise millions - they would be answerable to WE THE PEOPLE.

[donsu]

6. No

nt

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Why not?

nt

[donsu]

10. consider what they can still do - (nobody is in prison yet)

they have changed or destroyed just about every facet of our govt. and they are not finished. (nobody is in prison yet.)

our white house is full of them.

global warming will change everything before our white house is empty again. a hurricane this summer could rearrange Wash. D.C. I was born there and gone through normal hurricanes, shit happens.

as long as they occupy the white house the country is screwed.

you think they will let dems win in Nov.?

[soothsayer]

8. Did we ever have it, or were we just deluding ourselves?

[Stinky The Clown]

9. I don't think there's any doubt there was some delusion

Surely the Fifties were not like they seemed on Happy Days or Father Knows Best.

But the real issue is how much worse it is now, delusions notwithstanding.