Are writers who I respect like Andrew Sullivan or Matt Taibbi being chicken little post election? Maybe, maybe not. Progress has an ability to clean itself up in hindsight. We don’t feel bad in omitting that FDR used the disenfranchisement of blacks to get the southern votes for the New Deal and WWII when we call him one of the greatest presidents. We might say never again and I do not mean to suggest that we repeat the past, but I do think it is safe to say that democracy grew and thrived after. Trump lost the popular vote but geographically won almost the entire nation. Perhaps the issue is we became too democratic or perhaps we opened ourselves to aristocracy.
Tyranny of the majority, one of the great founding fears may shed some light on our country. There are two majorities in existence: the democrat urban coalition with its popular vote win and Trumpland where the sun never sets. Both gripped in a deathmatch. The current war of American halves began in earnest in the 1990’s with the culture wars. Particularly P.C. culture which partly can be seen as a response to the race baiting tactics of the modern GOP. Politically correctness was different than the destruction of the censorship boards in the 60’s. It was an active assault into public and private life. The focus on thought as much as action. The older repealed morality legislation was equally as intrusive and we are better off without. The left sought to form a new monoculture in ways that the old monoculture of the mass never achieved. Brooklynization. Twentyfive years of scorched earth fighting between both sides, neither willing to show magnanimity in defeat or victory. During the Great Recession and uneven recovery, the culture war was pushed by elites to mask the hard truths of class.
To be continued and finished tomorrow.
-E.C. Fiori
The Radical Centrists 