Perhaps ignorance is the problem? And apathy? And intellectual laziness?
Republicans and the “Lofgren Corollary"
"A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980)."
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At what point does this become treason?
Decline in public trust is decline in trusting democracy. Always shrouded in a fog of mistrust and fraud, is the Dark Side of politics.
This has been the strategy of the anti-government radicals for many years. They fight to win. The believers in democratic civilization have to fight just as hard.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that the causal factors are complex and that there is no single cause or set of causes. Many factors have come together at this point in time to provoke critical change in US politics, government and society.
ReplyDeleteAs a generalization, I would say that the state of a society is the reflection of the level of collective consciousness. This is looking increasingly like a case of, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad."