General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWho reads Bill Moyers on a regular basis?
He is a voice of reason. And a progressive. I pretty much take everything he says as gospel. haha (because he was a Baptist pastor - of all things! And LBJ's press secretary during part of his administration.
http://billmoyers.com/2015/12/03/the-gop-on-the-eve-of-destruction/
<snip>
For reasons hard to fathom, the Republicans seem to have made up their minds: they will divide, degrade and secede from the Union.
They will do so with bullying, lies and manipulation, a willingness to say anything, no matter how daft or wrong. They will do so by spending unheard of sums to buy elections with the happy assistance of big business and wealthy patrons for whom the joys of gross income inequality are a comfortable fact of life. By gerrymandering and denying the vote to as many of the poor, the elderly, struggling low-paid workers, and people of color as they can. And by appealing to the basest impulses of human nature: anger, fear and bigotry.
Turn on your TV or computer, pick up a paper or magazine and you can see and hear them baying at the moon. Donald Trump is just the most outrageous and bigmouthed of the frothing wolf pack of deniers and truth benders. As our friend and colleague Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch writes, Theres nothing, no matter how jingoistic or xenophobic, extreme or warlike that cant be expressed in public and with pride by a Republican presidential candidate.
Like the pronouncement of the Ministry of Truth in Orwells 1984, ignorance is strength, whether its casting paranoid fantasies about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering 9/11, or warning about terrorists in refugees ragged clothing and Mexican rapists slithering across the border.
Just four-and-a-half years ago, Washington mainstays Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein shocked the inside-the-Beltway establishment (especially the press, with its silent pact to speak no evil of wrongdoers lest they deny you an interview) when they published their book, Its Even Worse than It Looks. The two esteemed political scientists wrote, The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
===============
Any thoughts on where this is going and how it will end?
Va Lefty
(6,252 posts)NRaleighLiberal
(60,014 posts)cilla4progress
(24,733 posts)I'm hoping they will overreach and go down sucking oxygen.
Eww..too violent. Should say: skulk away to a deserted island far away from the rest of civilized society.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)I can't imagine him as the spokesman for Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. Must have been a transformational experience for Moyer. Out of the fire comes wisdom to those who have it inside of them.
cilla4progress
(24,733 posts)on those years?
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Not at my laptop so I'll have to look that up tomorrow.
LeatherSofa
(38 posts)It seems to be getting worse, if that's possible. Talk radio (rightwing) and Fox News has destroyed the moral compass of so many. I no longer recognize this part of America. Outrageous lies and exaggeration are their new normal. They will do anything to get their way without regard to right or wrong. There is no right or wrong with them, only hateful passion.
cilla4progress
(24,733 posts)Polarized...