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Howard Skillington's avatar

Sea Change

I graduated from high school in 1968 – the most polarized time in this nation’s history, until today. I studied politics in college and have always had strongly-held political views, but when my daughter was a child I did not try to inculcate her with my own political philosophy. Instead, I pointed out that human beings are not intelligent enough to ever get things “right” for any length of time. On any given subject our species will inevitably swing between one stupid extreme and its opposite. If, as a society, we seem to have something figured out, it’s just at the optimal point in the pendulum swing at the present moment, having left one excess and on the way to its obverse.

Given this immutable law of human nature, it’s hardly to be expected that either of our political parties can be right for very long before going off the rails in one stupid direction or another. History confirms this fact, regardless of where you think “right” lies. The Republicans gave us Union martyr Lincoln, and Teapot Dome grifter Harding; the Democrats, National Bank nemesis Jackson, and bank whore Obama.

If you have always felt that you had your political compass fixed, but are increasingly feeling lost at sea, that’s because we are in the midst of a fundamental reorientation of our political landscape – a sea change.

If someone had predicted eight years ago, or even four, that Dick Cheney would ever back a Democratic presidential candidate and, in the same year, RFK Jr. would side with the Republican, they would have been laughed off the stage.

Aren’t Republicans supposed to be the authoritarians? Then why are the Democrats putting the foundation for totalitarian control of our lives in place? Aren’t Democrats supposed to defend our civil liberties? Then why are their leaders intent upon revoking our inalienable right to Free Speech?

Sea Change? Change is often unwelcome and seldom easy. Blame Bill Clinton, who tap-danced circles around the Republicans and stole the center (actually, well right of center) from them. With the heart of their ideological territory lost, the Party of Lincoln were pushed ever further to the right, until they risked falling off the edge of the earth. Equally significant, Clinton abandoned the working classes for the deeper pockets of a growing “professional class,” creating a new donor base that has since embraced the deepest pockets of all: Silicon Valley. (It’s the donors, stupid.)

To this day party dinosaurs like Mitch McConnell are by-God not going to be out-conservatived. What has changed is a younger generation of Republicans like J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, who are increasingly independent of the fossils, and embarked upon reinventing the party. Vance is not alone in actually caring about working people, and trying to readdress their increasingly dire needs. Not incidentally, that’s where the votes are going to be.

Will they prevail, as the Old Guard dies off? Too soon to tell, but an intriguing possibility, and plausible cause for hope for the future.

Perhaps more significant than migrating politicians is the wave of formerly liberal commentators. Our own James Howard Kunstler professes to being a life-long registered Democrat. Others, including Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi, and Bret Weinstein are all now resolute critics of the Democratic Party. Clayton Morris and Tucker Carlson both left Fox News to attack the Official Narrative from their own perspective. And, of course, two powerful voices of opposition, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr., former contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, are now both

Democrat persona non grata.

When lost at sea you can never know where the ship is going to come ashore, or if it will founder on the rocks, but the landscape will certainly soon be different – and just possibly much improved.

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Mary Sholl's avatar

Let’s not be counting those chickens before they’re hatched , folks. Keep the pedal to the metal.

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