The American family is on life support, star’s romance exposes the divide
Two famous, influential, and beloved people who happen to lean left attract fearful haters and conspiracy theories. Its’ what;s wrong with America. Why can’t we just let people be who they are without demonizing them? Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Our nation is falling apart. We have to do something for the American family, which, like many families, is broken and dysfunctional. Here is what one family therapist thinks …
The past eight or more years, politics in America have changed. They were already bad, don’t get me wrong. There have always been at least two sides going at each other in vehement disagreement over issues like slavery, equal rights, diversity, and acceptance. Republicans and Democrats have been tit-for-tatting one another (at American’s expense) since the beginning. But in the 1990’s the tone changed, and the Internet allowed for anyone in the country to express opinions and present news throughout a 24-hour news cycle. It became more difficult to access what news sources were presenting facts.
How it started.
In 1992 Pat Buchanan, a former White House communications director under Ronald Reagan and a media blowhard who had been running for President and lost the nomination to George H.W. Bush, declared a “culture war” on the future of America at the Republican National Convention.(1) He pinpointed abortion on demand, state-run schools, radical feminism (espoused by Hillary Clinton), homosexual rights, women in combat, prayer in public schools, climate change and environmental issues as offending trends that liberals espoused. Sound familiar? These same issue divide us today, and added to that is gun rights and immigration.
Pat Buchanan’s infamous culture wars speech in 1992. Photo Screen Captured from YouTube Video.
Bill Clinton won the election against Bush that year, but the issues have never gone away, or even been close to resolved. We still fight and disagree about the same old things, year after year. Newt Gingrich, a caustic Republican from Georgia, came on the scene as speaker of the house in 1995, after 50 years of Democratic leadership, and to say there were scores to settle after all that time is an understatement
Newt Gingrich and the way it was in 1994. Not much has changed.
In a functional family, the leader wouldn’t come out shooting at errant family members, but Congress has never been functional. Gingrich chose to rub Democrat’s nose in the poop when the Republicans finally attained power, and continually denigrated and demonized the left and everything they stand for. Roger Stone, an infamous and powerful lobbyist who gained a foothold in molding American politics beginning in the Nixon administration, and then more significantly by trading access to the Reagan administration, has played a sinister role in the state of politics today. Stone changed everything when he crossed lines that had never been crossed in politics while scheming in political backrooms. Openly lying about Democratic lawmakers and policies, he understood that people would believe falsehoods if it came from certain sources. He used lies to widen the divide between the two parties, and was the first to openly embrace extreme policies, such as the idea that America would be better off as an autocracy. His influence is widely viewed as the reason America’s divisions widened, and became more anger-provoking.