The Clash Of Ideas!

How in the world did the United States get like this. How did a nation that healed itself after a Civil War, organized and participated successfully in two World Wars and generally over many hard-fought decades come to include all its citizens in the public square get like this. Well, the beginning of the story began in 1987 when the Federal Trade Commission, then operated under the Republican Reagan administration rescinded a rule that had governed communications in these United States of America since 1949.

The Fairness Doctrine was adopted in 1949, when it was clear that both radio and television communication were to become dominant in the coming society. In a world in which in addition to a chicken in every pot, there would be a new visitor in nearly every household, to hold sway with is older brother.  Radio was the means of communication in the United States for over two decades then came TV. This was potent stuff, and the immense power of propaganda was well understood by a nation fresh from war. So, to keep someone from using the airwaves, owned by the people and only leased to the companies which used them (not unlike modern roads) the Fairness Doctrine was created. 

The Doctrine said that if a broadcaster presented one side of an issue it was obligated to supply time for opposing views. The point was not to allow any single voice to overwhelm the airwaves and send only one unguarded message out to the masses. It worked pretty well, though obviously some bristled at it. Then with the Reagan administration, the progenitor of so many of our woes, came a new idea. The Fairness Doctrine which specifically provided for a range of voices, was somehow restricting free speech. Like Trickle-Down Economics this theory was swallowed and the doctrine rescinded. 

And then came talk radio. Folks had been talking on radio since its invention, nothing new there. But now one voice could get on the air and blather on unrestrained by anything so quaint as facts or the possibility of valid opposing viewpoints. The balladeers of bombast needed an enemy and in the 1990's they found Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary. Bill came from nowhere to win the presidency and with a keen understanding of politics gave the U.S. something of a heyday. He had the morals of an alley cat, but we had a balanced budget for the first and only time in my long lifetime. 

But that didn't matter to a lout named Rush Limbaugh who came onto the airwaves at about the time Justice Clarence Thomas was being grilled by Congress in 1989. (Yes! The same fucking guy!) And using a deft understanding of what made harried middle-class white men angry he built an empire of hate and resentment and division. Supported by ads for gold (which undermined confidence in the money supply), and divorce lawyers targeting men (which fed an outlandish specter of the white male being oppressed by society), Rush chiseled away at the roots of civic order. He and his imitators harped on about how guns didn't kill people, guns killed people. And we all could see for ourselves when guns walked into schools across the land and murdered children. (Oh, wait! Those were people using guns as tools to murder.)

America got this way because we were talked into it. 

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