Thanks, primarily, to Republicans. And I’m not the only one who sees this.
Oh, well. I, like others, are simply becoming resigned to the fact. I think P. J. O’Rourke gets it just about right. I used to be naive enough to think that talk radio would serve to educate people because I believed, and still do believe that our predicament, vis-à-vis Big Government, is a problem of the general ignorance of the people. But, as average people become better informed, the arguments change (they don’t really, but that’s the perception). The politicians and pundits are clever enough to keep in front of the debate. Now, you have “conservatives” (whatever the hell that means, anymore) on television and radio resorting to the same sort of dishonest half-truth, context-dropping, deception and manipulation as the lefties mastered decades ago. The only thing they haven’t taken up yet, at least that I’ve noticed, is envy politics. Seeing as it’s such a stunningly successful “political strategy” I don’t see how they’ll be able to risk not using it for very long.
I guess this is why Reagan’s death really hit a soft spot for me. In truth, he was not effective in curbing the growth of government either in California or at the federal level. Yet, he always seemingly held that as an ideal. He was a symbol of that ideal, for me anyway, and it feels a little as though now that he’s dead, and I look around — and I read what I read and hear what I hear — that the dream is dead too.
Well, look on the bright side. It’s entirely likely that within the space of only a few more years, no American will need travel to Europe any longer in order to experience the breathtaking mediocrity and dead-endedness that a culture can “build” itself up to in a thousand years or so. And, to think we’ll have done it in just over 200 years. That’s American ingenuity for ya’.