I blame the 1948 Electoral College, for its failure to put Strom Thurmond in the White House. Maybe we wouldn't have had all these problems for all these years.
Seriously though, after reading a bunch of books about stuff I didn't live through, I think a lot of the problems go back to the white middle class's reaction to the civil rights movement. The realignment of the political parties, exurbanization and disinvestment in the cities, the gutting of the New Deal, even the central problem you cite: the erosion of consensus and coarsening of our discourse. All of it. In the long run, being on the right side of history has cost a lot of good people very dearly.
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Date: 2006-01-26 08:23 am (UTC)Seriously though, after reading a bunch of books about stuff I didn't live through, I think a lot of the problems go back to the white middle class's reaction to the civil rights movement. The realignment of the political parties, exurbanization and disinvestment in the cities, the gutting of the New Deal, even the central problem you cite: the erosion of consensus and coarsening of our discourse. All of it. In the long run, being on the right side of history has cost a lot of good people very dearly.