The first test of fire was the Civil War. It can be debated that we still haven't fully recovered from that.
The second was the Great Depression, but that was mitigated by the fact that the Depression was worldwide, and affected not only us.
I see the third test of fire in the rise of McCarthyism in the early 1950s. That gave rise to the careers of two especially bad actors, Richard Nixon and Roy Cohn. Both close to McCarthy and his evil ways, Nixon made it to the White House and Cohn became Donald Trump's attorney decades later. Like an old friend of mine used to say, "'nuff said." Nixon got into office with the help of the Dirty Tricks Team (self-described "ratfuckers" ), which launched the career of one Roger Ailes, the architect of Fox "News." There were periods where their influence remained dormant, but that ended in 1996 when Murdoch gave Ailes his golden opportunity.
McCarthy's run ended shortly after the famous question was asked publicly: "at long last, have you no decency?" When the answer was clearly shown to be "no," his star started to fade. Nixon was already Vice-President by then, but the stain (plus Kennedy's stellar performance in the TV debates) was just enough to sink his presidential ambitions. Unfortunately, Vietnam was enough to sink Humphrey's, and Nixon got it after all. However, a leopard can't change his spots after all, and Nixon being Nixon sank his presidency in 1974. A brief period of hope took over in 1975, as Carter and Ford presented the decent sides of both parties. The arrogance of the Shah and some serious faulty assessment of the situation in Iran by the CIA let Reagan get away with toppling Carter, and dark times returned, though with the usual Republican corruption of a milder tone than under Nixon, and Bush I wisely refusing to invade Iraq.
Bill Clinton brought back grounds for feeling good about being American again, and even the well-financed Gingrich revolution of the right couldn't change the fact that Clinton was just REALLY likeable, and really wanted to do some good, personal faults and all. But by the time the election of 2000 came, Fox "News" had arrived, and public sleaze was once again being made acceptable to the masses. What should have been a shoo-in for Al Gore became the first of three disgraces out of five US presidential elections. Cheney saw he could become president-in-the-shadows, and did so.
As little as some crooked manipulation in Florida and a few other states was enough to install a corrupt and increasingly evil regime. Kleptocracy up to then could be considered as petty theft compared to what Cheney engineered. This was a real looting of the US Treasury, and the start of irreparable damage. The fiasco of Iraq wasn't such a fiasco for Cheney and his pals. Clinton's surplus and good relations with minorities were both wiped out. With Kerry's nomination (as late as December, 2003, Rove figured he'd be running against Howard Dean), the Republicans had to do some real work. Iraq was already a mess, and the deficit was already ballooning. Enter Kenneth Blackwell. Kenneth Who? Just the Secretary of State for Ohio and with that, the state's senior election oversight official--oh, yeah, Blackwell was also chairman of the re-elect Cheney/Bush committee in Ohio. Pure coincidence, you understand. That, plus the fact that many of the electronic vote-counting machines were MADE by Ohio Republicans, one of which said publicly that he would "deliver Ohio for Bush," and the fix was in. Cheney and Rove knew already that the way things were going, no Republican would win the White House in 2008. So, they started thinking up Citizens United, and nominated two Republican Justices to the Supreme Court that would uphold such a law, if a challenge were to come before them. Less than five years later, they did exactly that, and the fate of 80% of Barack Obama's agenda was sealed.
Obama's popularity (and Joe Biden's) continued to confound Rove and Cheney (now out of power, anyway), and even Moscow Mitch McConnell could only block whatever initiatives came before him in the Senate. He still couldn't control foreign policy. Not even Speaker Bonehead inviting Netanyahu to trash Obama before Congress could damage that. For me, Bonehead's crowning moment was when he went before rolling TV cameras, with frowning Republican House members standing close to him, reading from what he thought was the Constitution of the United States, explaining his opposition to the ACA. Even my German wife, when she saw it, recognized that what he was reading was not from the Constitution, written mostly by Madison in 1787. It was from the Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson in 1776. Pride in ignorance started to be a bigger issue than it ever was, though in its infancy compared to what we have now. The class valedictorian is not supposed to be the class clown or the class dunce, and at the moment, he is both.
I find it highly significant that both Clinton and Obama left office highly popular, and that both Bushes left office singularly unpopular. Of course, leaving office less popular than Trump will be quite an accomplishment. It will take some REAL corruption to manipulate the election to the point where he remains in office.
Have we sunk to a point where that is possible? Yes, we have. But we are also at a point where we can turn out in numbers so massive, that despite ALL the Republican efforts to prevent people from voting, and to prevent those votes cast from being counted, that we can once again reverse the tide, and begin to do what Democratic administrations have been doing since 1993: damage control. Republicans don't want that, of course. People vote for Republicans when they feel scared and angry, and when people are doing well, they don't feel scared and angry. This is where Fox "News" comes in. If people are doing well (or, at least, better), Republicans need Fox to convince their voters that they are scared an angry. Otherwise, how are they to know? No one has yet come for their guns, but if Fox TELLS them that the "libbruls" are coming for their guns, well, DAMN, they are scared that the libbruls ARE coming for their guns, and the Taliban might show up on their doorstep. Never mind the fact the no libbrul ever came for any of their guns, and no Taliban will ever show up on their doorstep. The Libbruls want to convince you that we need to increase the deficit to combat the effects of a virus? Oh, no, the virus is a hoax (and besides, even if it isn't, too bad, because the Republicans already spent that money on themselves).
But keep thinking--damage control. Every time the Republican dig us into a deeper hole than they have before, we have managed to climb out. Will they ask Putin for help? Almost assuredly. This is not without precedent. When the Spanish fascists rose in revolt in 1936, their uprising would have fizzled without the brazenly open help of Hitler and Mussolini. Putin isn't in a position to offer the Republicans THAT kind of help. Even the fascist victory of 1939 wasn't eternal. In 1975, Franco's time was done, and by 1985 it was clear that fascism was NOT returning to Spain.
Now Spain doesn't have a Fox "news." Hungary and Poland are getting close to it, but it is a home-grown version. They may pay for Fox consultation, but both countries have rightist xenophobic tendencies, and will not tolerate foreign domination, not even from Brussels (they WILL ask for money, of course). But we are the masters in propaganda news from the right, and the American right will do and say whatever they can to scare people into voting Republican.
It's very simple: if they succeed, we're sunk. If they don't, we're not.
= new reply since forum marked as read
