These are hardly the "worst" political times we have lived through...

[Peacetrain]

But they surely are some of the most annoying with the now 24/7 media outlets, talk radio and a "rush" to keep something new in front of the screens to keep people tuned in.

As much as it seems like the right wingnuts are running wilder than they ever have before.. one only has to look at the McCarthy periods to know that is just not so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

Rush Limbaugh is not the first media idiot to stir the juices.. Let us not forget the old Fr. Coughlin
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004568

The tea nutters who seem to be turning the south backwards, pale to what had to be fought off in the '60's..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Connor

Even the militias as scary as they are now.. we lived through the worst just 15 years ago with Timothy McVeigh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh

So we have journeyed through much worse.. and lived to tell the tale. We will get through this also. Someone just needs to pass the ear plugs.. they are not the worst, these republicans and wingnuts.. but they surely are some of the loudest and whiniest.

[SwampG8r]

1. i am getting old

and if anyone thinks these are the worst political times in america they need a history lesson

[napi21]

2. They AREN'T the worst, but because of the media in every venue

they sure seem like it! I know the 60's much moore violent, and the McCarthy era was horrible too, but we didn't have multiple cable news channels, and whhat seems like thousands of RW radio shows then. I have to listen to liberal radio on the net because there are NO...NONE...NOT EVEN ONE liberal/proressive radio show on the radio here in Ga. I'm sure it's the same in almost all of the south!

I also don't remember ANY sident having so many verbal attacks agaist him...even Clinton. I'm 66 yo and I've been on DU fr a long time, and as much as we hated Shrub, I don't recall anyone saying they wanted him dead or making horrific remarks about his wife and kids.

aoes, I really think it IS worse now than ever before.

[political_Dem]

3. No, we aren't in the worst political times.

However, if we continue to have political figures who wimp out at the last second while rolling over and playing dead, we're heading there. This is not a time for cowards or empty promises.

We need to have courageous, strong and resolute people who will get something done for the country instead of being intimidated by the mouthbreathers of the right.

We also need someone to try and defuse the influence of the right wing media machine. Unfortunately, I don't think we have a reporter in the same caliber as Edward Murrow.

Murrow singlehandedly took on McCarthy on camera during the 1950's Red Scare. Not one media figure today is that principled or brave.

I always have hope for the future, though. Maybe there will be someone who will fight the causes of the people instead of serving the almighty corporation.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Murrow was not singlehandedly taking on McCarthy

He was speaking for and with many, many people in show business. Murrow spoke out to a camera in a room but others spoke out directly to the HUAC goons and others still refused to testify at all. So many people were taking brave and personally costly stands against McCarthy that is is really wrong to imply that Murrow stood alone. Murrow, obviously, kept his job. Many others lost careers, homes, and lives for taking the stands they did.
Read the statement by Lionel Stander to HUAC sometime. Stander did not work for many years after, most people know him as the drive on Heart to Heart because he finally got a job in the 70s. Read up on Will Geer, Lillian Hellman, and an long list of artists and others who stood up and spoke up against Senator McCarthy.
Murrow was a hero, but he was a reporter hero, far from the front lines where the real battle was waged.

[political_Dem]

9. I have read up on others who have challened HUAC during the Red Scare.

I especially know what happened to people when they were accused by others as being communist. An example is Elia Kazan, who folded and pointed people out. And when he received his honors by the Academy for his work many years later, a lot of folks in show business felt he did not deserve to be honored. Clifford Odets also fingered people in front of the hearings.

I also know that the screenwriters, who were pointed out by those who professed they were "red", had to continue working under assumed names in order to put food on the table. Dalton Trumbo is an example, being one of the Hollywood Ten.

Many others were along these lines who had to withstand what happened after being challenged by their neighbors, co-workers and countless others who would rather be "dead, but not red".

So, yes, I agree with you. Murrow wasn't the only one. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and many others formed committees against HUAC. Not to mention countless others who did fight back against McCarthy's paranoia.

I should have made myself clear that Murrow's challenge to McCarthy began to put the pieces in place to bring an end to the Red Scare. I didn't mean to imply that Murrow was the only one. But, I should have emphasized that his example was one of many that stood out to me as a principled stand against an insidious action the government took against its citizens.

[lunatica]

4. We do have one problem that makes it worse now

Climate change and it looks like there's very little political will in the US to do anything substantive about it. And it isn't going to get better or go away on it's own.

As far as political times though, I agree that we've lived through far worse.

[Dr Morbius]

5. It isn't as bad as it has sometimes been.

But it may be more dangerous. I worry about the volatile combination of hateful rhetoric, great stupidity, and automatic weapons, all of which I see on the right. I fear the political situation will worsen, and that it will get violent. Nasty? Sure, it's been nastier, but the technological advances we've made make it so much more dangerous today.

[Jennicut]

7. It seems reminiscent of the 90's when the militia groups and nutsos hated Bill Clinton except

for one thing: the media was not complicit in promoting them. Never did they promote the nutters as a legitimate opposing political group and feed their appetite for attention. After the Oklahoma City bombing it died down some as right wing militia groups were associated with homegrown terrorism.
It will take a violent act for the media to really get it.
I see it from this perspective because I was born in 1975. I did not grow up in turbulent times, just with Reagan and George HW Bush, which was pretty bad as well.

[Golden Raisin]

8. Truman was President

when I was born so I've been around awhile. There were certainly bad times in the past, equal to or perhaps worse than now. However, I have never seen the country so harshly divided as it is now (and I include the Vietnam War Era when there was great division among the citizenry). Today's 24/7 propaganda media (having been raised on Murrow, Cronkite, etal., I cannot call it "news" media) has enflamed and worsened things immensely. The constant (and deliberate) repetition of "news" and video to sustain the 24/7 barrage has serious psychological repercussions particularly for those in the electorate who are uninformed and/or those easily swayed. That syndrome really came into full flower immediately after 9/11. How many times have we all seen the footage, repeated endlessly, of the planes crashing into the towers? That set a very disturbing pattern. But Bush/Cheney and their corporate media supporters needed to raise war fever to support and sustain the war on Iraq. One particular thing seriously disturbs me today. That is the existence and use by our government (and the armed forces), with our tax money, of what amounts to a private army of brownshirts for hire (Blackwater/Xe). This is potentially extremely scary stuff.