Nation's mean streak started in 2000 when Bush used rightwing extremists to get elected.

[madfloridian]

It's been getting meaner. Now 20 young children were shot at close range with powerful guns in the hands of a man who should never have had them at all. That brought out a lot of emotion in everyone. For decades I taught students barely older than that, and I kept seeing their faces as we had our lock-downs or crises happen. My daughter called tonight knowing I would be having some kind of reaction. I appreciated that so much.

That is a very short time frame for a nation to change so drastically. I live in a conservative area of Florida, and I could see how suddenly George Bush started using right wing extremists to get himself elected.

I wrote some words a few years ago about how difficult it was to understand and adapt to this new nation with people yelling at others. I learned that even those who came to our home would explode with anger over any kind of criticism of Bush or the Iraq War. One neighbor screamed at me that the bible said we were not to criticize our country's leaders, that God was leading them.

I asked her what she thought about the fact that we were invading Iraq though they had not attacked us. She screamed in anger, and we finally had to ask her to leave our home.

I still have a nice email from a then manager of WFLA in Tampa. I had asked him why they did not write the truth as they knew it. I knew a reporter there then, and I knew they had access to the truth about the war. He was very nice when he wrote. He said quite frankly that if they printed any criticism of Bush, they were attacked viciously for days. He said it bothered him, but there was nothing he could do.

A few thoughts of mine from several years ago....they show deep frustration.

There has been a movement by our party to continue the education policies of George Bush which amount to turning our schools over to private companies...while giving them our taxpayer money to make them richer. Teachers have spoken out, but they are not being heard, not even being listened to by this administration.

I used to feel safe and secure that Americans would fight back when certain things like Social Security and Medicare were threatened. I always felt comfortable that things would not get too bad here, that our leaders would step in and stop things from going too far in any directions.

I never thought our nation would get to the point that teachers were made to feel ashamed, that seniors would be called "the greediest generation" by a man appointed by our Democratic president. Or worse, that not a single Democratic leader would speak up for them and point out how they had paid into the system during their lifetimes. I never thought that two men who had such contempt for seniors would be put in charge of a commission to "fix" Social Security.

I always felt that our senior safety nets were untouchable. Now I realize they are not. I always felt our country would have the public school system that helped make it great...but we won't. It never occurred to me that the unions who helped build the middle class in this country would be treated badly by a Democratic administration.

..."It just shows how what was once the right, a normal fairly moderate right....has kept moving to the extremes. And our party, instead of standing with its so-called liberals...has denounced them and moved right as well. They have twisted meanings and words until there is no longer any understanding of them.

I think the congressional losses by our party in 2010 should have been a wake-up call for our Democrats to act like Democrats again.

The part about education hasn't changed. We are still installing Bush's policies. I write about the new reforms as do many other bloggers, and we are mostly ignored or even told to back off the criticism.

I am seeing signs of people having less fear of speaking out. Today the voices have been loud and clear when those precious children were murdered close up in cold blood.

I think Obama is ready to fight on this, it sounded that way. I hope other Democrats will join. If they push hard, the extremists on the right will have to come around....or simply look petty and foolish.

[formercia]

1. By their Deeds, Ye shall know them.


A Jewish Perspective on G.W. Bush
 by Robert Lederman



http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/jewish_pespective.htm

--snip--
<8> Today this history is suppressed by the corporate media which depends on advertising from the very same companies that put Hitler in power, but prominent Americans were not always shy about being fascists. In the 1930's America's industrial elite was so openly pro-Hitler that in 1937 William E. Dodd, US Ambassador to Germany was quoted in the NY Times as saying: "A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.... " <8> Immediately following WWII, the US government brought thousands of Nazis to America, provided them with false identities and established them in the newly formed CIA, in universities, in the media, in medical and psychological research institutions and in the US military. 
<9> Former Presidents Bush, Reagan and Nixon used many of these former Nazis as advisors, fundraisers and campaign aides and they were an essential element in building the extreme right wing of the Republican party. 
<10> After WWII Allen Dulles, a Bush associate who was instrumental in financing the Third Reich, became the first CIA director. His brother, John Foster Dulles - the largest stockholder in Standard Oil/IG Farben after Rockefeller - became US Sec. of State. Reagan's CIA director, William Casey - who worked with the Dulles brothers in bringing Nazis to the US. - created The Manhattan Institute - the think tank that invented GW Bush's political agenda and advises him on a daily basis. 
<11> It was the first Bush administration which gave Sadamn Hussein the chemical and biological weapons we've spent the past decade trying to locate in Iraq. It was the anti-Semitic, anti-Christian Arab oil partners of the Bush family that our soldiers risked their lives to protect in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. The corrupt dynasties which oppressively rule these Arab nations were among Hitler's closest allies in WWII. 

--snip--

[Enthusiast]

4. They have the nation by the ass.

They have successfully muddied the water about the nature of Fascist ideology. This is no surprise since they control nearly the entire media. In the media they say, "Up is down." And they have millions of solid lockstep believers. The nation is full of Quislings. But they don't even recognize themselves as Quislings.

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."

— Frank Zappa

[No Elephants]

2. Lee Atwater helped turn Republicans into extremists. It is a symbiotic relationship.

Atwater went with that uber patriotism that doesn't require much more of people than waving a flag or wearing a flag pin and flapping their mouths, the "Southern strategy," the alliance with the religious right over abortion and school prayer, etc.

At their inception, these things worked for Republicans. Thirty plus years later, they are about to bring the party to extinction.

Another thing for which we can thank Ronald Reagan.

And now, the African American head of the Democratic Party boasts of being a 1980s Republican, like his hero, Reagan, whom Atwater served as a political advisor. Atwater, who used the "Southern strategy" to the extreme detriment of African Americans and Democrats and, because racism is the original sin of this nation that has eaten away at its soul for centuries, the extreme detriment of the nation.


Good grief.

In the immortal and seasonal words of Dickens' Scrooge, "I'll retire to Bedlam."

But, hey, Atwater got Republicans elected and getting your own party elected at any cost is what politics has become.

Sorry, no more tribal politics for me. I'd like to keep my spirit and my soul. Who knows? I may need them one day.

[Enthusiast]

3. The GOP did not steal the 2,000 election with good intentions in mind.

The nation went completely down the tubes the moment that election was called by the radical right wing supreme court. After that it was, "Anything goes!". And it did. Anything! Trillions of dollars stolen.

Imagine, the greatest act of theft in the history of the world, the greatest act of treason in the history of the world and it was never even investigated. And the cover-up continues.

We should have had a clue after Iran-Contra. The media continues to speak of Reagan and George H W Bush in terms of reverence. It is absurd. This nation is fucked.