Of course. I didn’t say they eliminated bullshit.
I agree with this, except that it was the James Monroe administration.
Ugh! I can’t believe I made such a rookie error. Well, it was late at night and I haven’t been sleeping well. Thanks for the correction.
Hey, most of us don’t even know that Marilyn Monroe was ever President!
Well, unless you were interested in dating his daughters.
Stranger
That’s really what I think the OP’s getting at; these days it seems to be extraordinarily adversarial- the GOP seems to be fundamentally opposed to compromise, bipartisanship, or anything that even hints at cooperation with the Democrats.
With the possible exception of the lead-up to the Civil War, I can’t think of a period where we’ve been this partisan in Congress. We’ve always had a pretty good divide between the parties, and lots of political arm-twisting and various shenanigans going on, but nothing like what we’re seeing today, where the GOP are vehemently oppositional to ANYTHING the Democrats might be in favor of. I mean, Hakeem Jeffries could suggest that the toilet paper in the House mens room be switched out in favor of something more comfortable, and the Republicans would demand 20% more splinters because Jeffries wants softer TP.
During the postwar period up through the 60’s, there was economic abundance, and everybody was in agreement about exactly how much racism and commie-bashing the country needed. That’s what civility hinged on.
The reason the country is so broken now is that the right wing has realized that most of America is sincerely decided that we don’t want to be governed by racism or sexism anymore, that we’re not willing to trade it away for tax cuts or whatever.
Of course it was coming for a very long time, since the 60’s (at least), but Obama’s re-election is when right-wingers realized that it’s not a fluke, that everyone else is no-fooling, dead serious about it.
I don’t know if Dems will ever get power again, but I do know that this country will never be fully united again, because we no longer agree that it’s ok to have underclasses that are used and abused by the powerful.
I’m not sure. The “yellow journalism” period was dominated by a few media moguls with partisan agendas.
I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s more of a fight for the strategic direction of the nation. Without something like the War on Terror, Cold War, or even Progressive era of the early 20th century, the country doesn’t really have an external threat or goal that the nation as a whole is looking toward.
So we’re looking inward. And this fight is about what we’re trying to change internally- is it to turn back the clock and remove 100+ years of legislation and changes in attitudes about race, gender, sex, worker protections, environmental stewardship, and so forth? Or is it to push forward into more of that kind of thing?
It’s always been there, but the primary difference is that one side isn’t really dealing in good faith anymore; they’re defiantly oppositional for the sake of being oppositional. It’s not just opposing policies they disagree with, and trying to change them through debate and compromise, it’s just opposing them because the other side proposed them, and for no other reason. And there’s no compromise anymore.
Democratic systems don’t work well when the two sides aren’t able to hammer out compromises or work deals. That’s what we’re seeing here- a fight for the strategic direction of the nation, and an insane resistance to compromise on one side coupled with a portrayal of their opposition as morally bankrupt, evil, etc… instead of as loyal Americans they just don’t agree with.
The right wing is morally bankrupt, and always has been. Nor are they loyal.
It’s just that the Right is the ideology of the powerful so it’s always been considered obligatory to lie in their favor and pretend otherwise. It doesn’t matter how openly awful they are or how much damage they do; it’s always been considered more important than anything up to and including survival to lie in their favor and pretend they are good people.
With the result that they’ve gotten more and more power and have taken over the nation with barely any pushback. In no small part because our population has been trained for generations to deny the reality in front of their face and proclaim the Right to be well-meaning reasonable people, no matter how loudly the Right screams their bad intentions.
I graduated from HS in 1954 and McCarthyism created a huge divide. My HS yearbook includes a photo of one of the teachers glaring at a copy of Time that had a picture of McCarthy on its cover. The caption said, “To slit his throat.” I suspect it was the Madison/Monroe era, ending with the disputed election of 1824 that was decided in the House. I also suspect that the Garfield/Arthur/Cleveland/Harrison/Cleveland era was pretty calm politically.
You mean that twenty-year period that saw two presidents assassinated?
FDR was a Republican when he was a student at Harvard. But I don’t think he ever ran for office as one. Even back in 1910, he ran for New York state assembly as a Democrat. Am I missing something?
Politics themselves have never been civil. Look at the utter hatred show by Jefferson to Adams and vice versa.
The big change came in the late 19th century, partly because society changed and partly because the press did.
Society changed because the emerging middle class wanted desperately to distinguish themselves from what they considered the vulgar lower classes. They were prudish/genteel and loathed loudness in anything. They also started having a disproportionate percentage of the money, so everybody who sold things - including newspapers - wanted to cater to them. This attitude increased and grew strength from the reaction to the flood of immigrants, who they hated even more than the existing working class. Those “vile foreigners” needed to be taught how proper Americans thought and spoke; from schoolbooks upwards, the society was bent toward that purpose.
After a century of newspapers being mostly partisan outlets and political parties under control of machines willing to fight dirty (“politics ain’t beanbag,” said Mr. Dooley) newspapers started to present themselves as neutral sources of news, presented in a way that wouldn’t offend your oldest grandmother. The New York Times - the old gray lady - was the leader in this but it caught on and became the norm for news, even later on radio and television, and most other popular media as well. All spoken discourse was filtered and sanitized before being presented to the public and written material was to be rational and persuasive without attacking.
The reality underlying this was very different. People hated people just as much as they ever had. The rich started to dominate every industry, including the news. (A majority of newspapers did not endorse a single Democratic presidential candidate until Lyndon Johnson.) Anything that offended people was bad for business, therefore nothing offensive was allowed loose in public.
The post-war years lifted the lid on this invisible hand of oppression. Being offensive became de rigueur. Much good came from this freedom. But whenever “anything goes” is the ruling ethos, a too large segment of the population will abuse that freedom. That’s where we’ve been headed since the 60s. Of course, some people will blame the 60s for everything but that gives you a tell to avoid them at all costs.
Heck Jefferson and Hamilton nearly had fist fights just creating this country. Day 1
Very nasty. Go read about it. Sounds very similiar to today. With duels.
On the contrary, Congress seems very civil today in comparison. I can’t recall any time Congressmen have physically had an altercation within the Capitol in the modern era.
Thank goodness.
Oh, that’ll happen soon, no doubt.
You aren’t thinking of Hamilton’s duel with Aaron Burr, by any chance?
If not, I would love to read all about Jefferson and Hamilton nearly having fist fights on Day 1. Please send me cites.
Republicans lost it when Clinton announced Don’t ask Don’t tell. Shortly after that we had Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. It’s been downhill ever since.
The end may have been in the Reagan years. We only see how bad the republicans are when the democrats hold power.