I'm not a big fan of Meet the Press' Chuck Todd-he's part of the Very Serious Beltway media. But he did ask Trump a good question when Trump was on: when was America last great?
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-chuck-todd-meet-the-press-interview-2015-8
Interestingly, Lawrence O'Donnell had been urging Todd to ask that question for the week leading up to the interview. O'Donnell is another one I'm not a fan of-because of the way he has treated Hillary Clinton during this campaign.
Todd pointed out that Trump always praises Reagan as being a great President and then he played a clip of Trump in 1987 with the same basic spiel he does now: The Japanese were 'killing us' , the Mexicans, the Chinese, etc. Same as today.
So this kind of Right populist nativist protectionist jaunt is something he's been saying for a long time.
But I think this shows that Trump is kind of the Right wing populist answer to the same thing the Democrats talk about-that Americans have seen their wages stagnate for almost 40 years.
They haven't kept up with productivity and Americans struggle just to get by. And this fact is lost no more in the GOP base than among liberals or the mainstream public.
They just tend to come to the wrong answers.
So when was America great? In the postwar era up until the mid to late 70s you could say. That's when we begun to see wages stagnate. But I'd say the feeling that American greatness was over started in the 60s.
Garry Wills writes so well about this whole late 60s, early 70s era.
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Conservative-Garry-Wills/dp/0385089775/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441214018&sr=1-1&keywords=confessions+of+a+conservative
http://www.amazon.com/Nixon-Agonistes-Crisis-Self-Made-Man/dp/0618134328/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441805801&sr=1-1&keywords=garry+wills+nixon+agonistes
And what is going on is we are still in this post postwar era where America is in flux and different groups-racially, culturally, economically-are polarized.
Prior to the later 60s with the riots, the Vietnam protests, etc. we were a country in large agreement-at least among white folks.
It's still this lost postwar ideal that I think all Americans miss. We will never go back to that as the social peace of the era was based on the injustice of things like segregation. But we as a country won't feel 'great again' until a new era of consensus is reached.
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-chuck-todd-meet-the-press-interview-2015-8
Interestingly, Lawrence O'Donnell had been urging Todd to ask that question for the week leading up to the interview. O'Donnell is another one I'm not a fan of-because of the way he has treated Hillary Clinton during this campaign.
Todd pointed out that Trump always praises Reagan as being a great President and then he played a clip of Trump in 1987 with the same basic spiel he does now: The Japanese were 'killing us' , the Mexicans, the Chinese, etc. Same as today.
So this kind of Right populist nativist protectionist jaunt is something he's been saying for a long time.
But I think this shows that Trump is kind of the Right wing populist answer to the same thing the Democrats talk about-that Americans have seen their wages stagnate for almost 40 years.
They haven't kept up with productivity and Americans struggle just to get by. And this fact is lost no more in the GOP base than among liberals or the mainstream public.
They just tend to come to the wrong answers.
So when was America great? In the postwar era up until the mid to late 70s you could say. That's when we begun to see wages stagnate. But I'd say the feeling that American greatness was over started in the 60s.
Garry Wills writes so well about this whole late 60s, early 70s era.
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Conservative-Garry-Wills/dp/0385089775/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441214018&sr=1-1&keywords=confessions+of+a+conservative
http://www.amazon.com/Nixon-Agonistes-Crisis-Self-Made-Man/dp/0618134328/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441805801&sr=1-1&keywords=garry+wills+nixon+agonistes
And what is going on is we are still in this post postwar era where America is in flux and different groups-racially, culturally, economically-are polarized.
Prior to the later 60s with the riots, the Vietnam protests, etc. we were a country in large agreement-at least among white folks.
It's still this lost postwar ideal that I think all Americans miss. We will never go back to that as the social peace of the era was based on the injustice of things like segregation. But we as a country won't feel 'great again' until a new era of consensus is reached.
No comments:
Post a Comment