It Was The Early 1980's and . . . .

[Pogo]

As it is today, leftism controlled MSM back then. Rush became big, because many Americans were sick of the constant leftism promoted by the media. Because he was so effective in exposing the left's stupidity, he was vilified by the Left MSM.

You being a dupe, accepted what the .01% wealthy left MSM told you.

Zero of those people I listed were "leftists", Dumbass.

Who said they were, dumb fuck?

You did.

And I quote, "it was leftism all day long". Whelp --- no it wasn't and you're full of shit.

Whatever. I was speaking of the MSM. Those you mention were small players compared to Rush. They were local hosts.

The national media has been liberal for decades. You know that right? If you dispute that, then we can just stop this now.

So you're complaining that they didn't attract enough audience because they weren't polarizing enough?

Still doesn't work. Charles Coughlin's radio shows were so widespread you didn't even need your own radio.

And no, they weren't "local hosts". They were national. The fact that you're ignorant of them doesn't make them retroactively shrink.

Here's Mike Wallace interviewing one of those subjects, Fulton Lewis, in February 1958.

Lewis had an audience of sixteen million on 500 "liburrul media" radio stations.

 

[toobfreak]

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

You may find these documents helpful in arriving at an answer to your questions:

• Omniscience bias: how the internet makes us think we already know everything
  
• The Price of Incivility
  
• America The Rude
  
• Civility in America 2013
  Nastiness, Name-calling & Negativity The Allegheny College Survey of Civility and Compromise in American Politics

Whatever happened to that world?

​

Existential Cultural and Technological Drivers
In short, the Internet, cellphones and other communication technologies catalyzed the current primacy of popular rather than professional decision making [1], thereby fomenting and encouraging anti-social individualism and majoritarian tyranny [2] among a polity that, by and large, isn't even aware that is what's happening. It's not that anyone denies the importance of direct public input, it's that in the quest to "win," the other side of the equation -- intermediation by professionals, experts, and institutions -- has been neglected and demonized. [3] Too many reformers and intellectuals, and for that matter the broad public, have overlooked the indispensable role that parties and political machines and professionals play in organizing politics and “assembling power in the formal government,” as James Q. Wilson so elegantly put it.

The other thing that happened is computing/computers. In the realm of politics, computers and sophisticated computer software allowed political strategist to discover that it's possible to win elections without intermediation, that is, candidates can win on a partisan basis. Like it or not, political strategists/consultants are paid to win elections, not to win elections by building coalitions, and, quite frankly, they're good their jobs. The consequence that is that American politics have come to neglect non-participatory models of decisionmaking such as the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board, which not only do their jobs effectively but enjoy comparatively high standing in public esteem. They have reduced the space and scope of expert information-gathering and decisionmaking bodies such as congressional committees and subcommittees and transformed them into little other than pseudo-prosecutors [4] and partisan finger-pointers. [5]

Political Drivers
The modern political process and system is replete with missed opportunities to strengthen intermediation, collaboration. The nominating system affords too little opportunity for input and influence by party professionals and career politicians. Campaign-finance regulations disadvantage political parties relative to individual candidates and outside actors. Reforms that pushed congressional decisionmaking both up to the very top and down to the very bottom have hollowed out the Congressional committee system. Tools that political brokers and leaders rely on to build coalitions and lubricate transactions -- earmarks, pork, control of money and nominations, and more -- have been eroded or even abolished. [6] Private spaces for dealmaking and brokering have shrunk, and the use of secrecy has been systematically delegitimized and abused.

Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but C-SPAN is not, yet we have asked an entire branch of government to conduct operations in a fishbowl, and the narcissists who make up that branch have readily agreed. The arrangement is congenial for the reformers and the narcissists, but it is too often dysfunctional. Meanwhile, Congress has dumbed itself down by shedding staff and expert advisers. The fishbowl is not merely a bad operating environment, it is one impoverished of expertise and capacity. [7]

It is important to see that intermediation by parties and professionals is not necessarily undemocratic or exclusive. To the contrary, when intermediaries do their jobs well, they consult a wide range of constituencies and build broad coalitions in search of candidates and policies that can unite the party, win a general election, and sustain power in office. Often, they will seek to mobilize latent constituencies, appealing beyond the relatively narrow confines of interest groups and activists who turn out in primaries and lobby most aggressively. Party and professional input is especially important in candidate selection, because it is often more inclusive, as well as more deliberative, than is a primary electorate. Although vetting by party elders and sitting elected officials may at times limit voters’ options, it can also expand and improve those options by recruiting and supporting talent. And it provides an important measure of quality control, which is not something to be embarrassed about. Voters, like all consumers, make better choices when they have better options.

In hindsight, much of the populist criticism of “smoke-filled rooms” looks misguided, or at least exaggerated. Far from shutting the public out, party hacks in their heyday provided forms of political outreach that are sorely missed today -- acting as “a veritable school of politics for working-class and minority voters. Party workers and leaders [had] incentives to get out the vote, be present in neighborhoods, contact voters, and be responsive to voters’ contacts. The result was, comparatively speaking, a highly participatory form of local politics."

Political professionals, like voters, are imperfect. But they need not do their job perfectly so long as they do it accountably. To succeed, they need to present voters with candidates who can win on election day and govern once in office, and so they have powerful incentives to anticipate public sentiment and understand the needs of government -- thereby contributing layers of insight and knowledge that voters themselves cannot provide.

Who, then, should be in charge: the voters, or the professionals? The answer, of course, is both. In a hybrid system, they are forced to consult each other, providing distinct but complimentary screens. One might have hoped that this point would be obvious. Alas, the vast bulk of reform energy today is focused on cutting professionals out of the picture

Social studies textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools are mostly a disgrace that fail to give an honest account of American history. [8]
-- Dianne Ravitch​

Notes:

1. When people watch a magic performance, their eyes inform them, for example, the prestidigitator performed a feat that defies the laws of nature, and audience members will attest to that being what happened. The reality is that s/he did not defy any laws of nature. The audience knows as much, and they don't bother to investigate to find out how the feat was in fact performed. Now insofar as a magic show is entertainment, it's no matter that they don't. The problem is that populism is a mindset whereof its adherents treat the world in which we live as though it's a magic show. That is, populists either (1) believe the BS, or (2) they don't believe the BS, and also make no effort to discern what makes things appear as they are, preferring instead to concoct and ascribe to "conspiracy theories" about how and why they appear as they are.
   
   In short, populists have appetites only for simple answers. Well, the world in which we live is no longer simple. It never was, but never before did we have so many tools that allow us to understand the ways and means in which it is not. Now we have many more than before, and too few people avail themselves of them.
2. Click the link and ask yourself how many people in your life, including yourself, were able to earn a passing grade in high school American history class without reading and understanding the document found at the link. I can't speak for "everyone," but I can say that where I went to school, where my kids went to school, and where my teenage peers went, no one could.
3. Anecdote: I wonder if I'd need more than five fingers to count the quantity of people here whose reading activities lead them to seek, much less read, rigorously original research and analysis into "whatever." In contrast, I long ago ran out of fingers and toes to count the incidences of individuals here presenting "axe grinding" distillations of selected bits of decontextualized facts.
4. I suppose that's not surprising given the quantitative dominance of attorneys in Congress.
5. To wit, it didn't take eight Benghazi hearings to discern what material mistakes happened in Libya, but all eight of them were very useful in making Hillary Clinton look bad. People make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are costly to others. That mistakes happen and sometimes hurt others does not make the persons foibles anything other than unfortunate foibles that resulted from having had to take risks. Most leaders do the best they can with the info and tools they have at the time. Sometimes things don't work out; other times they do. Leader do not deserve to be "hung" because "it" didn't work out as hoped for. They deserve to be "hung" for not bringing to bear the reasonably apt resources at their disposal.
   
   Take Trump. I lambaste that man all the time. I don't deride him because he's a novice or because he gets things wrong. I do so because he gets things wrong that he need not get wrong and that he need not is plain as day. For instance, there is no need to say "X is/was when the fact is that X is/was not." I criticized Trump for his frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago and his other resorts. I didn't do so because he was "getting away" for the weekend. I did so because we American taxpayers have provided the president with a very nice weekend getaway resort he has exclusive use of and use that costs the country pennies on the dollar in comparison to what it costs us for him to go to Mar-a-Lago. Of late, Trump's been going to Camp David, and I haven't had a thing to say about his doing so. Trump's behavior needs to be that of a president who happens to be a billionaire, not that of a billionaire who happens to be president. His trips to his resorts were far more the latter than the former.
6. Political "pork" and the like are, like the foodstuff, are okay in moderation. There's nothing wrong with a little give-and-take and a little bump-and-grind.
7. The linked article points the finger at the GOP. I could not care less who caused it. For my purposes in this essay, who made it happen is irrelevant; what matters is that it has happened.
8. For some examples see:
   • America: Facts vs. Fiction | Watch Full Episodes & More! - AHC
   • Understanding Virginia's History Textbook Lie
     
   • The Truth About Thanksgiving: Brainwashing of the American History Textbook
     
   • Problems of Bias in History Textbooks

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

Oh, without question, the blame lies with voters. Candidates are going to do what they must to garner voters' approbation. The more BS voters forebear, the more BS candidates deliver. One can "blame" a candidate for trying to "bamboozle 'em with BS," but only the most naive among us would think candidates, at least some of them, would eschew such attempts. That they are indeed bamboozled is the voters' fault and no one else's.

People need as much information as possible to make good decisions, especially when it comes to government.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree.
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Epilogue: Securing the Republic "
​

Like Jefferson, Ronald Reagan also understood that firsthand knowledge is the most accurate, putting the matter far more succinctly, "Trust but verify. What distinguishes Reagan, Jefferson and myriad others, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, is the will and deed of their unrelenting commitment to gathering information, not opinions.


"The people," as used by Jefferson and his contemporaries, is not today construed as the Founders meant that term. "The people" of whom Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, and the rest spoke were people like them: well educated and learned, intellectually curious, traveled, innovative and inventive, proactive men of the world. Unsurprisingly, those qualities are the ones that then as now beget private and public success and good governance.

Now, unlike then, people bereft of those qualities have loud voices in the execution of governance. Quite simply, governance "of, by and for the people" did not to the Founders mean that all the people should play a central role in each of those capacities. The ones who should are the ones who, by their consistent manifestation of the aforementioned qualities, have, as the Founders intended, earned the privilege of playing a role in the "of and by" the people. That should be so today, and yet it is not.

It's worth noting too that today, unlike in the Age of Enlightenment, we could dwell in an America were the overwhelming majority of Americans have indeed earned the privilege to serve in "of and by" execution of governance, but the fact remains that we do not. The Information Superhighway has all the waypoints one needs to do just that, yet most folks seem inclined mostly to visit pretty much every Internet destination except the ones that can legitimately advance their ascendance into the realm of mind in which the Founders and other great minds dwell.


Note:

• If one thinks for a minute the Founding Fathers had any notions of allowing themselves to be governed by the will of people markedly dissimilar to them, think again. Hell, just ask yourself, were you a Founder, would you subsume your interests in and desire for a stable and growing nation to the whims of a largely illiterate populace? I damn sure wouldn't. See the following:
  • The Founding Fathers Were (Mostly) Entrepreneurs
    
  • Were the founding fathers 'ordinary people'?
    
  • The Founding Fathers: Who Were They Really?
    
  • The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers
    
  • A Classy Constitution: Classical Influences on the United States Constitution from Ancient Greek and Roman History and Political Thought
    
  • Is Jefferson a Founding Father of Democratic Education?
    
  • How many Founding Fathers finished college? -- It is here worth noting that what some founders lacked in formal education they made up for by being prodigious readers.
    • A Place of Reading: Personal Libraries Washington
      
    • George Washington's Library
      
      Composition of what George Washington read
      
      
      
      
      
      I bid you ask yourself how many people whom you know direct fully 1/3rd of their reading to scholarly papers on politics, law and ecnomics. Unless one is an academic or researcher of public policy, I suspect the answer is none or nearly none.

Impressive!

 

[usmbguest5318]

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

You may find these documents helpful in arriving at an answer to your questions:

• Omniscience bias: how the internet makes us think we already know everything
  
• The Price of Incivility
  
• America The Rude
  
• Civility in America 2013
  Nastiness, Name-calling & Negativity The Allegheny College Survey of Civility and Compromise in American Politics

Whatever happened to that world?

​

Existential Cultural and Technological Drivers
In short, the Internet, cellphones and other communication technologies catalyzed the current primacy of popular rather than professional decision making [1], thereby fomenting and encouraging anti-social individualism and majoritarian tyranny [2] among a polity that, by and large, isn't even aware that is what's happening. It's not that anyone denies the importance of direct public input, it's that in the quest to "win," the other side of the equation -- intermediation by professionals, experts, and institutions -- has been neglected and demonized. [3] Too many reformers and intellectuals, and for that matter the broad public, have overlooked the indispensable role that parties and political machines and professionals play in organizing politics and “assembling power in the formal government,” as James Q. Wilson so elegantly put it.

The other thing that happened is computing/computers. In the realm of politics, computers and sophisticated computer software allowed political strategist to discover that it's possible to win elections without intermediation, that is, candidates can win on a partisan basis. Like it or not, political strategists/consultants are paid to win elections, not to win elections by building coalitions, and, quite frankly, they're good their jobs. The consequence that is that American politics have come to neglect non-participatory models of decisionmaking such as the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board, which not only do their jobs effectively but enjoy comparatively high standing in public esteem. They have reduced the space and scope of expert information-gathering and decisionmaking bodies such as congressional committees and subcommittees and transformed them into little other than pseudo-prosecutors [4] and partisan finger-pointers. [5]

Political Drivers
The modern political process and system is replete with missed opportunities to strengthen intermediation, collaboration. The nominating system affords too little opportunity for input and influence by party professionals and career politicians. Campaign-finance regulations disadvantage political parties relative to individual candidates and outside actors. Reforms that pushed congressional decisionmaking both up to the very top and down to the very bottom have hollowed out the Congressional committee system. Tools that political brokers and leaders rely on to build coalitions and lubricate transactions -- earmarks, pork, control of money and nominations, and more -- have been eroded or even abolished. [6] Private spaces for dealmaking and brokering have shrunk, and the use of secrecy has been systematically delegitimized and abused.

Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but C-SPAN is not, yet we have asked an entire branch of government to conduct operations in a fishbowl, and the narcissists who make up that branch have readily agreed. The arrangement is congenial for the reformers and the narcissists, but it is too often dysfunctional. Meanwhile, Congress has dumbed itself down by shedding staff and expert advisers. The fishbowl is not merely a bad operating environment, it is one impoverished of expertise and capacity. [7]

It is important to see that intermediation by parties and professionals is not necessarily undemocratic or exclusive. To the contrary, when intermediaries do their jobs well, they consult a wide range of constituencies and build broad coalitions in search of candidates and policies that can unite the party, win a general election, and sustain power in office. Often, they will seek to mobilize latent constituencies, appealing beyond the relatively narrow confines of interest groups and activists who turn out in primaries and lobby most aggressively. Party and professional input is especially important in candidate selection, because it is often more inclusive, as well as more deliberative, than is a primary electorate. Although vetting by party elders and sitting elected officials may at times limit voters’ options, it can also expand and improve those options by recruiting and supporting talent. And it provides an important measure of quality control, which is not something to be embarrassed about. Voters, like all consumers, make better choices when they have better options.

In hindsight, much of the populist criticism of “smoke-filled rooms” looks misguided, or at least exaggerated. Far from shutting the public out, party hacks in their heyday provided forms of political outreach that are sorely missed today -- acting as “a veritable school of politics for working-class and minority voters. Party workers and leaders [had] incentives to get out the vote, be present in neighborhoods, contact voters, and be responsive to voters’ contacts. The result was, comparatively speaking, a highly participatory form of local politics."

Political professionals, like voters, are imperfect. But they need not do their job perfectly so long as they do it accountably. To succeed, they need to present voters with candidates who can win on election day and govern once in office, and so they have powerful incentives to anticipate public sentiment and understand the needs of government -- thereby contributing layers of insight and knowledge that voters themselves cannot provide.

Who, then, should be in charge: the voters, or the professionals? The answer, of course, is both. In a hybrid system, they are forced to consult each other, providing distinct but complimentary screens. One might have hoped that this point would be obvious. Alas, the vast bulk of reform energy today is focused on cutting professionals out of the picture

Social studies textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools are mostly a disgrace that fail to give an honest account of American history. [8]
-- Dianne Ravitch​

Notes:

1. When people watch a magic performance, their eyes inform them, for example, the prestidigitator performed a feat that defies the laws of nature, and audience members will attest to that being what happened. The reality is that s/he did not defy any laws of nature. The audience knows as much, and they don't bother to investigate to find out how the feat was in fact performed. Now insofar as a magic show is entertainment, it's no matter that they don't. The problem is that populism is a mindset whereof its adherents treat the world in which we live as though it's a magic show. That is, populists either (1) believe the BS, or (2) they don't believe the BS, and also make no effort to discern what makes things appear as they are, preferring instead to concoct and ascribe to "conspiracy theories" about how and why they appear as they are.
   
   In short, populists have appetites only for simple answers. Well, the world in which we live is no longer simple. It never was, but never before did we have so many tools that allow us to understand the ways and means in which it is not. Now we have many more than before, and too few people avail themselves of them.
2. Click the link and ask yourself how many people in your life, including yourself, were able to earn a passing grade in high school American history class without reading and understanding the document found at the link. I can't speak for "everyone," but I can say that where I went to school, where my kids went to school, and where my teenage peers went, no one could.
3. Anecdote: I wonder if I'd need more than five fingers to count the quantity of people here whose reading activities lead them to seek, much less read, rigorously original research and analysis into "whatever." In contrast, I long ago ran out of fingers and toes to count the incidences of individuals here presenting "axe grinding" distillations of selected bits of decontextualized facts.
4. I suppose that's not surprising given the quantitative dominance of attorneys in Congress.
5. To wit, it didn't take eight Benghazi hearings to discern what material mistakes happened in Libya, but all eight of them were very useful in making Hillary Clinton look bad. People make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are costly to others. That mistakes happen and sometimes hurt others does not make the persons foibles anything other than unfortunate foibles that resulted from having had to take risks. Most leaders do the best they can with the info and tools they have at the time. Sometimes things don't work out; other times they do. Leader do not deserve to be "hung" because "it" didn't work out as hoped for. They deserve to be "hung" for not bringing to bear the reasonably apt resources at their disposal.
   
   Take Trump. I lambaste that man all the time. I don't deride him because he's a novice or because he gets things wrong. I do so because he gets things wrong that he need not get wrong and that he need not is plain as day. For instance, there is no need to say "X is/was when the fact is that X is/was not." I criticized Trump for his frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago and his other resorts. I didn't do so because he was "getting away" for the weekend. I did so because we American taxpayers have provided the president with a very nice weekend getaway resort he has exclusive use of and use that costs the country pennies on the dollar in comparison to what it costs us for him to go to Mar-a-Lago. Of late, Trump's been going to Camp David, and I haven't had a thing to say about his doing so. Trump's behavior needs to be that of a president who happens to be a billionaire, not that of a billionaire who happens to be president. His trips to his resorts were far more the latter than the former.
6. Political "pork" and the like are, like the foodstuff, are okay in moderation. There's nothing wrong with a little give-and-take and a little bump-and-grind.
7. The linked article points the finger at the GOP. I could not care less who caused it. For my purposes in this essay, who made it happen is irrelevant; what matters is that it has happened.
8. For some examples see:
   • America: Facts vs. Fiction | Watch Full Episodes & More! - AHC
   • Understanding Virginia's History Textbook Lie
     
   • The Truth About Thanksgiving: Brainwashing of the American History Textbook
     
   • Problems of Bias in History Textbooks

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

Oh, without question, the blame lies with voters. Candidates are going to do what they must to garner voters' approbation. The more BS voters forebear, the more BS candidates deliver. One can "blame" a candidate for trying to "bamboozle 'em with BS," but only the most naive among us would think candidates, at least some of them, would eschew such attempts. That they are indeed bamboozled is the voters' fault and no one else's.

People need as much information as possible to make good decisions, especially when it comes to government.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe their minds must be improved to a certain degree.
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Epilogue: Securing the Republic "
​

Like Jefferson, Ronald Reagan also understood that firsthand knowledge is the most accurate, putting the matter far more succinctly, "Trust but verify. What distinguishes Reagan, Jefferson and myriad others, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, is the will and deed of their unrelenting commitment to gathering information, not opinions.


"The people," as used by Jefferson and his contemporaries, is not today construed as the Founders meant that term. "The people" of whom Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, and the rest spoke were people like them: well educated and learned, intellectually curious, traveled, innovative and inventive, proactive men of the world. Unsurprisingly, those qualities are the ones that then as now beget private and public success and good governance.

Now, unlike then, people bereft of those qualities have loud voices in the execution of governance. Quite simply, governance "of, by and for the people" did not to the Founders mean that all the people should play a central role in each of those capacities. The ones who should are the ones who, by their consistent manifestation of the aforementioned qualities, have, as the Founders intended, earned the privilege of playing a role in the "of and by" the people. That should be so today, and yet it is not.

It's worth noting too that today, unlike in the Age of Enlightenment, we could dwell in an America were the overwhelming majority of Americans have indeed earned the privilege to serve in "of and by" execution of governance, but the fact remains that we do not. The Information Superhighway has all the waypoints one needs to do just that, yet most folks seem inclined mostly to visit pretty much every Internet destination except the ones that can legitimately advance their ascendance into the realm of mind in which the Founders and other great minds dwell.


Note:

• If one thinks for a minute the Founding Fathers had any notions of allowing themselves to be governed by the will of people markedly dissimilar to them, think again. Hell, just ask yourself, were you a Founder, would you subsume your interests in and desire for a stable and growing nation to the whims of a largely illiterate populace? I damn sure wouldn't. See the following:
  • The Founding Fathers Were (Mostly) Entrepreneurs
    
  • Were the founding fathers 'ordinary people'?
    
  • The Founding Fathers: Who Were They Really?
    
  • The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers
    
  • A Classy Constitution: Classical Influences on the United States Constitution from Ancient Greek and Roman History and Political Thought
    
  • Is Jefferson a Founding Father of Democratic Education?
    
  • How many Founding Fathers finished college? -- It is here worth noting that what some founders lacked in formal education they made up for by being prodigious readers.
    • A Place of Reading: Personal Libraries Washington
      
    • George Washington's Library
      
      Composition of what George Washington read
      
      
      
      
      
      I bid you ask yourself how many people whom you know direct fully 1/3rd of their reading to scholarly papers on politics, law and ecnomics. Unless one is an academic or researcher of public policy, I suspect the answer is none or nearly none.

Impressive!

Thank you.

 

[IsaacNewton]

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, booing, jeering, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides with good will to all?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

. . . . and all I could think is that if Johnny Carson could be alive today, what he would think and the shock he would have to see how our politics in this country, how the incivility has fallen 35 years later.

Fox News and talk radio happened. There will be some here, especially here, that deny this is the cause but it is.

Conservative media in the mid 1980s began extreme polarization on a daily basis where hosts of radio shows ALWAYS portrayed the opposition as evil which continues today in an abhorrent way. Fox News started this on TV in the mid 1990s. Right wing groups gravitated to the internet and started sites like Breitbart and Drudge who do exactly the same thing, they cast everything and everyone that holds an opposing opinion as evil. Not as just other Americans with a different viewpoint but as evil people. That is the genesis of this. Using radio, tv, and the web as propaganda to demonize every single thing any opposition to the Republicans does.

The left has begun fighting back the last 10 years which is normal. But it started with conservative talk radio and their template of 'the other is evil and must be shunned and destroyed'. Witness whenever there is a notion to bring back fairness to the airwaves by having all radio and tv shows have both sides of an argument on air the right wing media loses their shit. They aren't interested in fair and balanced they are interested in one sided and demonizing 'libruls' or 'democrats'.

All the way until today we have a fake president that is out in the open demonizing the press, one of the cornerstones of any democracy. There is a vitriol and hatred in a segment of the conservative movement that wasn't there before, it was implanted in their minds by right wing radio and Fox News for the last 20-30 years.

Need proof, after the Republicans won the Congress in 1994 who did they publicly thank. Rush Limbaugh.

 

[gipper]

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, booing, jeering, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides with good will to all?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

. . . . and all I could think is that if Johnny Carson could be alive today, what he would think and the shock he would have to see how our politics in this country, how the incivility has fallen 35 years later.

Fox News and talk radio happened. There will be some here, especially here, that deny this is the cause but it is.

Conservative media in the mid 1980s began extreme polarization on a daily basis where hosts of radio shows ALWAYS portrayed the opposition as evil which continues today in an abhorrent way. Fox News started this on TV in the mid 1990s. Right wing groups gravitated to the internet and started sites like Breitbart and Drudge who do exactly the same thing, they cast everything and everyone that holds an opposing opinion as evil. Not as just other Americans with a different viewpoint but as evil people. That is the genesis of this. Using radio, tv, and the web as propaganda to demonize every single thing any opposition to the Republicans does.

The left has begun fighting back the last 10 years which is normal. But it started with conservative talk radio and their template of 'the other is evil and must be shunned and destroyed'. Witness whenever there is a notion to bring back fairness to the airwaves by having all radio and tv shows have both sides of an argument on air the right wing media loses their shit. They aren't interested in fair and balanced they are interested in one sided and demonizing 'libruls' or 'democrats'.

All the way until today we have a fake president that is out in the open demonizing the press, one of the cornerstones of any democracy. There is a vitriol and hatred in a segment of the conservative movement that wasn't there before, it was implanted in their minds by right wing radio and Fox News for the last 20-30 years.

If only the press were honest , rather then being all about promoting leftism.

 

[BULLDOG]

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT.

As it should have been, since there was no such political party convention in 1982.....

But your overall point is well taken. The polarization we have now, was not there then. It existed but not on the massive socially-acceptable scale. The concept of Eliminationism hadn't yet taken root, where one's adversary must be not reasoned with but literally eliminated like a cancer.

I date that to Lush Rimjob who first bubbled up around 1990, just a few years after your examples. That was his whole schtick, and still is. It was a destructive one designed for personal profit, and the health of the nation's political discourse could go sit on a tack.

As for Johnny Carson, one of my favorite of his social commentary quotes:

"Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all races, colors, and creeds."​

What happened?

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk happened.

Bull shit!

Rush was the FIRST right winger in the media to attack the left. Up to that time, the left attacked the right 24/7, but there was no response.

If any of you remember what talk radio was like before Rush, you remember that it was leftism all day long.

Lefties really miss those days.

The discourse is now very polarized and offensive, because the Left does not like competition.

No it wasn't. Rush claimed it was to justify his vitriolic rhetoric, and that was probably the first lie that he convinced his dittoheads to believe.

 

[gipper]

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT.

As it should have been, since there was no such political party convention in 1982.....

But your overall point is well taken. The polarization we have now, was not there then. It existed but not on the massive socially-acceptable scale. The concept of Eliminationism hadn't yet taken root, where one's adversary must be not reasoned with but literally eliminated like a cancer.

I date that to Lush Rimjob who first bubbled up around 1990, just a few years after your examples. That was his whole schtick, and still is. It was a destructive one designed for personal profit, and the health of the nation's political discourse could go sit on a tack.

As for Johnny Carson, one of my favorite of his social commentary quotes:

"Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all races, colors, and creeds."​

What happened?

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk happened.

Bull shit!

Rush was the FIRST right winger in the media to attack the left. Up to that time, the left attacked the right 24/7, but there was no response.

If any of you remember what talk radio was like before Rush, you remember that it was leftism all day long.

Lefties really miss those days.

The discourse is now very polarized and offensive, because the Left does not like competition.

No it wasn't. Rush claimed it was to justify his vitriolic rhetoric, and that was probably the first lie that he convinced his dittoheads to believe.

The Left wants a monopoly on vitriolic rhetoric. They are so good at it, dupes can't see it.

 

[BULLDOG]

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

The change came about when this idiot gained power in the GOP

What a liar. This country has been going down the crapper for 40 years, and Scum like you are responsible. You parrot lies 24/7 spreading hate and you really have no idea if the bullshit you peddle is true or not. You are disgusting!

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

The change came about when this idiot gained power in the GOP

What a liar. This country has been going down the crapper for 40 years, and Scum like you are responsible. You parrot lies 24/7 spreading hate and you really have no idea if the bullshit you peddle is true or not. You are disgusting!

Come on Mikey. If you are old enough, you know it started with Tom Delay and Gingrich, and was reinforced by rush.

 

[miketx]

Perpetual lying....^^

 

[BULLDOG]

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT.

As it should have been, since there was no such political party convention in 1982.....

But your overall point is well taken. The polarization we have now, was not there then. It existed but not on the massive socially-acceptable scale. The concept of Eliminationism hadn't yet taken root, where one's adversary must be not reasoned with but literally eliminated like a cancer.

I date that to Lush Rimjob who first bubbled up around 1990, just a few years after your examples. That was his whole schtick, and still is. It was a destructive one designed for personal profit, and the health of the nation's political discourse could go sit on a tack.

As for Johnny Carson, one of my favorite of his social commentary quotes:

"Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all races, colors, and creeds."​

What happened?

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk happened.

Bull shit!

Rush was the FIRST right winger in the media to attack the left. Up to that time, the left attacked the right 24/7, but there was no response.

If any of you remember what talk radio was like before Rush, you remember that it was leftism all day long.

Lefties really miss those days.

The discourse is now very polarized and offensive, because the Left does not like competition.

No it wasn't. Rush claimed it was to justify his vitriolic rhetoric, and that was probably the first lie that he convinced his dittoheads to believe.

The Left wants a monopoly on vitriolic rhetoric. They are so good at it, dupes can't see it.

Breaking up the near monopoly the right wing has now would be nice.

 

[gipper]

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT.

As it should have been, since there was no such political party convention in 1982.....

But your overall point is well taken. The polarization we have now, was not there then. It existed but not on the massive socially-acceptable scale. The concept of Eliminationism hadn't yet taken root, where one's adversary must be not reasoned with but literally eliminated like a cancer.

I date that to Lush Rimjob who first bubbled up around 1990, just a few years after your examples. That was his whole schtick, and still is. It was a destructive one designed for personal profit, and the health of the nation's political discourse could go sit on a tack.

As for Johnny Carson, one of my favorite of his social commentary quotes:

"Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all races, colors, and creeds."​

What happened?

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk happened.

Bull shit!

Rush was the FIRST right winger in the media to attack the left. Up to that time, the left attacked the right 24/7, but there was no response.

If any of you remember what talk radio was like before Rush, you remember that it was leftism all day long.

Lefties really miss those days.

The discourse is now very polarized and offensive, because the Left does not like competition.

No it wasn't. Rush claimed it was to justify his vitriolic rhetoric, and that was probably the first lie that he convinced his dittoheads to believe.

The Left wants a monopoly on vitriolic rhetoric. They are so good at it, dupes can't see it.

Breaking up the near monopoly the right wing has now would be nice.

I always thought you might have dementia. Now I know you do.

 

[Pogo]

I was watching TV the past few days watching reruns of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. One show was from 1982 and the other was 1980. One of them was on Super Tuesday, so on both shows, Carson did a monologue about politics! What was interesting was that during all of it, there was nothing cruel, hateful, decisive or mean spirited. Everything said was in GOOD TASTE meant just to be funny, good spirited, and harmless. There was absolutely nothing that would offend any viewers or suggest he was taking one side over the other. OR ANY SIDE AT ALL.

During the 1982 show, he discussed the Democratic Convention the day before and asked the audience if anyone watched it? And the room was SILENT. As Carson talked about the various candidates, there was nothing PROMOTING them, just well-intended ribbing, with jokes that were obviously pure humor not actually reflecting on their actual lives, and everyone howled.

During the 1980 show, when Carson asked if anyone had watched the GOP convention, the entire room lit up in applause! As Johnny discussed various people, Walter Mondale, Ron Reagan, ect., all the jokes were obviously not taking any real shots, the jokes were based on obvious fiction for the sake of comedy only, and they were all RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE on BOTH sides, with good intentions and no one in the audience yelled out anything divisive, crass, crude, ignorant, hateful or vulgar. Everyone there was there for a good time.

The two parties were treated as a bunch of folks in a room, some with red balloons and the other with blue. The two parties were like a married couple, the GOP arguing for taking the left turn ahead to take the shortest route to the motel while the Dem arguing to take the right turn and see the scenic route. BOTH parties were after the SAME goal, just two different ways of getting there! They sat in the same room, talked, shared ideas and agreed on some things, disagreed on others.

My question is:

Whatever happened to that world? A world where Hollywood actually applauded Republicans and could be lukewarm about democrats?

A world where people could talk politics without being divisive, monopolar, booing, jeering, hateful, mean, cruel, viscous and crude? But actually respect both sides with good will to all?

A world where BOTH parties were seen as the same passengers on the same bus, just sitting in one isle or the other, going to the same destination rather than two groups a million miles apart, one going to Venus, the other Neptune where each saw the other as anti-American, dangerous to the country, and always trying to throw landmines under the other? And none of the candidates were embroiled in heinous scandal.

At what point, when and how did we ever lose a functioning country like that? And whose fault is it, the voters, or the candidates?

. . . . and all I could think is that if Johnny Carson could be alive today, what he would think and the shock he would have to see how our politics in this country, how the incivility has fallen 35 years later.

Fox News and talk radio happened. There will be some here, especially here, that deny this is the cause but it is.

Conservative media in the mid 1980s began extreme polarization on a daily basis where hosts of radio shows ALWAYS portrayed the opposition as evil which continues today in an abhorrent way. Fox News started this on TV in the mid 1990s. Right wing groups gravitated to the internet and started sites like Breitbart and Drudge who do exactly the same thing, they cast everything and everyone that holds an opposing opinion as evil. Not as just other Americans with a different viewpoint but as evil people. That is the genesis of this. Using radio, tv, and the web as propaganda to demonize every single thing any opposition to the Republicans does.

The left has begun fighting back the last 10 years which is normal. But it started with conservative talk radio and their template of 'the other is evil and must be shunned and destroyed'. Witness whenever there is a notion to bring back fairness to the airwaves by having all radio and tv shows have both sides of an argument on air the right wing media loses their shit. They aren't interested in fair and balanced they are interested in one sided and demonizing 'libruls' or 'democrats'.

All the way until today we have a fake president that is out in the open demonizing the press, one of the cornerstones of any democracy. There is a vitriol and hatred in a segment of the conservative movement that wasn't there before, it was implanted in their minds by right wing radio and Fox News for the last 20-30 years.

Need proof, after the Republicans won the Congress in 1994 who did they publicly thank. Rush Limbaugh.

Fox Noise did launch in I believe 1996, but Lush Rimjob had already been taking off for five years then with his one-sided bullshit, describing Chelsea Clinton as the "White House dog", telling a black caller to "take that bone out of your nose", etc. So I mark that as, if not the first completely unethical confrontational discourse, at least the explosion of it.

That "career" of his, if you can call it that, began immediately after the Fairness Doctrine was phased out, which, while it wouldn't have required "equal time" for an opposing view -- that's a different concept with a different application -- it meant hundreds of radio stations became less concerned about such ethics and saw opportunities for big bucks, because confrontation and angst are big sellers and they've always known that. So it became for them an avenue for ratings. Limblob himself candidly described what he does: "my job is to make you mad".

When there's money to be made via crass commercialism, the ethics of healthy democratic discourse can go sit on a tack. All that matters is how much it benefits Numero Uno.

 

[Pogo]

And back in that era to which the OP hearkens, before the Limblob Excrement in Broacasting splooge, one could get a thoughtful and intellectual -- and rhetorically ethical -- argument for the Conservative side from William F. Buckley's TV talk shows. In stark contrast to Limblob, Buckley readily invited guests from opposing sides to debate genuinely on issues rather than on character attacks.

Of course, intellectualism doesn't sell razor blades like ad hominem does, so Buckley had to do his show on PBS outside the realm of those commercial interests. Which is why public broadcasting exists.

But ---- "liburrul media" right?