Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
“My Chancellor said we should not indulge in superficial anti-Americanism now, but I assure you:
Mine is not superficial at all!”
Thanks for that quote.
I wanted to know who said that so I looked it up and here’s the full quote with attribution:
– Volker Pispers, a German kabarett artist who is well known for his political satire.
Impressive! I’ve quoted this from memory for at least a decade. I used to listen to him when I went to sleep. :)