Thanks for the extensive comment, and validation of my points.

–Kyle

People as a population are stupid herd animals, people as a population have always been stupid herd animals. The government sucks, the government has always sucked. Things are bad, things have always been bad.

Some of the details may change, but often not by much. Very little that you mentioned is really so new or different. Even the issue of gay marriage is merely a tired old replay on interracial marriage. About the biggest difference there is that public opinion percentages are shifting to accept gay marriage twice as fast as they shifted to accept interracial marriage. The gay marriage battles may linger on, but the war is over. Exactly as happened before, the younger generation overwhelmingly accepts extending equal marriage rights. In the final analysis, nothing can stand against the fact that the younger generation literally buries more and more of the opposition each day.

I'm a cynic and an optimist. People suck. Government sucks. And while people always manage to fuck everything up as much as possible along the way, at the end of the day there's slightly less overall suckage than there was yesterday.

Yesterday we we fighting over interracial marriage. Yesterday the Italian and Irish immigrants faced more hate and alienation than Mexicans&Hispanics today. Yesterday it was even easier to buy/bribe politicians, without any hint of it on any financial records or reaching the news. Yesterday typical children picked on the smart kids as much if not more than they do today – especially without the new “geek can be rich&cool” factor. Yesterday's news suffered from equal or greater trivia, myopia, and propaganda. Foreign “inhuman regimes” were all too often even more inhuman and more dangerous than today.

Politics is always filled with constant crises and crucial decisions, both domestic and international. Need I even mention the interminable Cold War? WWII? Korea? Vietnam? And those are just the history book highlights. My-problems always seem worse than your-problems, and today's-problems always seem far bigger than the crises of yesterday. The following is probably a fictional quote, but it makes a humorous and very valid point:

Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; and the end of the world is evidently approaching. – Assyrian clay tablet 2800 B.C.

You associate blame on many of these issues with Republicans, and I agree with you. The Republicans have hung countless anchors around their own necks. The Republicans have tied themselves to intense religiosity, and while evangelicals have become increasingly vocal, the fact is that church attendance has been crashing. The population percentages for atheism and “non-religious” and Christian-in-name-only “non-denominational Christians” have been increasing. Republican strategy embraced racists and racism, alienating the “minorities” percentage of the population which is rapidly rising and exceeding 50% around 2050. Women make up more than 50% of the population, and the all-too-often medieval (or outright neolithic) attitude towards women is increasingly alienating that majority of the population. Republicans have tied tied themselves to the gay marriage issue, an issue doomed to follow the exact same path and the exact same disrepute as interracial marriage, an issue where the public tide is turning against them by two percent per year. The Republicans have tied Global Warming denialism around their necks, an issue that the general public is rapidly recognizing as an evident global fact. They have built their party around old white men and their religo-social culture war and discrimination. On every demographic they are sinking as a percentage of the population. Over the decades they have won a lot elections by catering to anti-black racists, and that naturally lead into the anti-immigrant (and anti-hispanic) flare up, but it's no longer possible to win elections just by rallying up a big White Male base. The population demographics and their Base social issues are all anchors around their necks dragging them down over the next several years. Some of the more insightful in Republican leadership have begun realizing that the old strategy of ignoring minority votes and maximizing their Base turnout is no longer enough to reach a 50% win. They have made some efforts to reach out to black and hispanic voters, but those voters aren't stupid. The lilly-white Republican party is home to virtually all of the racists, they all head that way even if only to escape from the “minority-infested” Democratic party. Any Republican outreach to minorities rings hollow.

As for Fox News and the Rush Limaughs, I think in a strange way they may actually wind up helping things. The Republican base has this notion that they are “Real Americans” and that their radical-right positions represent average mainstream American. They actually came up with the deluded notion that the reason they lost the last presidential election is because he wasn't conservative enough. Their Base thinks they need to get back to their Core right-wing principles. They are fighting to drag the party even farther to the right, farther away from moderate swing voters. They have been committing verbal and political fratricide against moderate Republicans. They drove Senator Arlin Specter out of the party, and they've been screaming that they don't even WANT moderates like Colin Powell in the party. They actually believe Palin would win the majority of votes in a national presidential election. Fox News and right wing talk radio manufacture and fuel the rightwing hallucination that they represent “real” America and center America. Fox and Rush are leading the Republican base into a delusion, leading the charge like lemmings right off the far-right cliff. The Base are waging a deluded and self-righteous war against moderate Republicans and against “educated elite” Republicans. They are tearing the party apart from the inside, and driving away independents. The far right Republican base are running themselves right off a cliff, straight into irrelevance, the best part is that they will drag their issues down with them. They are alienating independents and dragging their issues into disrepute. Racism, misogyny, their anti-gay fight, Global Warming denialism, evolution denialism, God in the classroom, the entire Culture War and all of the anti-science and anti-education and anti-intelligence stuff… they are sending an increasingly loud and obnoxious signal for everyone else to run the other way. The not-paying-attention independents are increasingly getting the message that there's something rotten over there.

The Fox News / talk radio Conservative echo chamber seems to be leading them so far out of touch with reality that they may self destruct, and in the process may solve or diminish much of the trouble they've caused.

I haven't seen any yet, including now, but if it's a reoccurring theme I'll make sure to block them ;-)

–Kyle

However, you may be interested to know that, ironically the advert displayed at the bottom of your this page is by (horror of horrors!) scientology.org !!!

Maybe you'd like to do something about this (if you can!!!)

And my point was not that entertainment is crude, but that the line between news and entertainment is being blurred at the same time as intelligent forms of entertainment are being dumbed down.

I have no idea what you're referencing with “The Harvest”, but I definitely don't talk “in terms of nostalgia” – I'm merely referencing points past vs. current, none of which are fallacy.

Finally, this is far from fantasy. It's a level-headed look at the present, in a “connect the dots” fashion. As much as I'd like it to be fantasy…

It's not.

–Kyle