Tag: carter

Gergen is Right About Oil in Gulf–Updated just for DD

Cross posted and DKOS.

Since this happened I’ve been commenting in various places that there seem to be no “there” there when it comes to this Administration. It has, as a crisis team, performed remarkably poorly. The Administrations response to this crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is stunning in its punyness as David Gergen points out in a CNN story.

Although this disaster is not an existential threat, it could be argued that if the U.S. government had fought World War II in the same way it has fought the oil spill, we might well be speaking German now.

I’m not a Gergen fan. He is, however and intelligent and engaged insider in Washington whose opinions reflect his milieu and counts for something.

Liberalism Died in 1980 and was buried in 1988 so Let’s Move On

This is just a ramble — some reflections on the arguments going on within the progressive movement. I think we need to move on and think things out carefully rather than moving from news item to news item. What we see is a whole, a system. This system is very robust and we shouldn’t pretend it is not.

The Liberal age was from 1933 to 1980. The Reagan Era signaled a radical shift in U.S. politics. Reagan and his operatives were able to leverage the latent chauvinism, racism anti-intellectualism and class-hatred of the white working-class into a new (old) vision of America and American Exceptionalism. To be called a “liberal” was nearly as bad as being called a homosexual. Liberals were seen as people who deliberately set out to destroy families and all traditional values and thus were existential threats. This was hard for most liberals to understand since they, in the best American tradition, just wanted to make sure we lived in a decent society were people were treated fairly and civilized behavior was encouraged. Interestingly liberals also favored traditional Christian virtues like charity, gentleness towards the sick, poor, disabled, as well as people in classes that were traditionally excluded from mainstream America like African-americans, Native peoples, women and so on. Liberals tended not to get this visceral hatred and what was behind it and what was the ultimate goal of the neo-Conservative movement (it was not a Conservative movement at all but a radical neo-fascist movement).