Equally responsible for the corse and ugly nature of current political “debate”? Not so or, at least, not so much. Lee Atwater had a lot to do with punching before listening, with never listening and convincing those who allied that the irrational argument worked better than the rational one. Roger Ailes was Atwater’s best student and Carl Rove followed in their footsteps. Remember the kind of dissembling that took place during W’s reign? He did not have to make sense even when reasonable people asked him, usually politely, to explain what he meant or from where he got the information upon which his statements and actions were based.
Another player whose voice is still being heard, this truly remarkable because of what he has said and what he has done and the way in which the words and actions are inconsistent with one another. Inconsistency does not matter and made up “truth” is the best truth if it fits the ideology and there are enough who cannot think for themselves that hold to ideology, come hell or high water, so tightly as to prevent any rays of actual truth from penetrating.
It is these folk who are truly disrupters of democracy, who are traitors to the system of government that defines what is the United States of America.
Parity? Equality in bringing about what could be the end of what was supposed to be the American way of life? Not so. Indeed, their game has become the only “viable” game in town and those who want power have become all too willing to play along.
And that is the tragedy before us. The remedy is a new and honest discourse, those corrupting it pointed out and publicly shamed no matter what the ideology, no matter what the cause, no matter who they are or with whom they are friends.
From AJC:
“The things that came out of Gingrich’s mouth … we had never heard that before from either side, ” said Steve Anthony, a former Georgia State University lecturer who once headed the state Democratic Party. “Gingrich went so far over the top that the shock factor rendered the opposition frozen for a few years.
Newtspeak has become part of the contrasting — some would say hyperbolic — language commonly heard in today’s political discourse.”
