It’s become an all-too-familiar query: How did we get here? “Here” being a country rife with heated, hyper-partisan, political division.
The U.S. is a country that has struggled with the original sin of slavery. The U.S. is a country that has tried to balance ideals and hypocritical imperfections. The U.S. is a country riven by a Civil War and presidential assassinations. The U.S. is a country that now encourages the cherry-picking of the Constitution to allow citizen assault weapons and is enamored of bumper sticker ideology about “freedom,” “liberty” and raw, racial nationalism.
But no, we don’t have to go back to 1619 for the roots of fractious reality as we now know it. We could just go back to the time of Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh and Madison Square Garden Nazi rallies. Or the Red Scares of the McCarthy era. Or the reign of Dixiecrats, and George Wallace playing the “states’ rights” card. Or SCOTUS tumult. Or Richard Nixon’s less-than-silent “majority.”
“These … right-wing extremists … have been getting away with dirty tactics in American politics
for too long a time.” That wasn’t Nancy Pelosi, but Democratic Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern 50 years ago.
“The state of the union is not good.” That wasn’t Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but President Gerald Ford back in the same day.
So, yes, we’ve seen it coming. And then it all accelerated when Sen. John McCain chose Sarah Palin, to be a heartbeat away from his possible presidency. He green-lighted an alarmingly unqualified right-wingnut who was also an embarrassing insult to women. The presidential-ticket bar wasn’t just low, it was subterranean.
That same year, of course, saw the election of America’s first president of color, Barack Obama. Only it didn’t signal “post racial America.” It rallied a pent-up, racist backlash. In short, all those white Americans who didn’t like their lives and used to find solace and scapegoats in looking down on certain others, were now faced with a president who was one of those “others.” Odious game on: From Tea Partiers to Proud Boys to a cult-figure president who sounded like he was buying a biker-bar round at last call to a Capitol insurrection. Then add ubiquitous, often misinformed media—from social to Fox. And Trump now leads GOP presidential polls—by a lot.
That’s where we are.