How did it get like this?

Happiness by Doug X

I was listening to the Majority Report and they were talking about the Right wing’s attack on ‘neutral arbiters’ such as science in general, scientists in particular and journalism.

And it was discussed when there isn’t any objective right or wrong, then everything is about power.

And I think that is a good description of the Right Wing currently which unfortunately is basically Trump and the Trumpettes at this point.

But how did we get here?

There are certainly people who have pushed us towards this outcome. The Koch’s obviously, who funded the CATO institute in 1977 and largely implemented Justice Powell’s vision for the Conservative movement. There is Leonard Leo who created the Federalist society. And certainly Newt Gingrich brought a ‘no prisoners’ approach to the Senate.

So certainly there are corrupt oligarchs before so and politicians willing to carry water for them so why does this time feel more fraught than others.

It may be that we are prisoners of the moment. We didn’t live through a time when people were beaten (not just fired) for attempting to form a union or go on strike. We didn’t live through a time before worker’s compensation and child labor laws. And here in the U.S. World War II is a story about American Intervention, not the steady diet of nightly…