It has been suggested that Americans are a puerile population and our tendency to react rather than respond would certainly support that suggestion.

A responsive stance assumes that people in a position to respond actually are listening, have the resources to do something about a problem, and feel at the core of their bones, that their mission is to respond. The Bushies and far right people in general have clearly demonstrated over and over where their priorities lie: with themselves. They see themselves much like European aristocrats saw themselves a few centuries ago, and have more or less the same narrow concerns. Their lack of empathy and caring about others – which they view as natural – has led this country to the brink of ruin, at least if you’re not among their elite circles who actually own this country. From the view at the top, the Bush years have been pretty successful:

1) huge tax cuts, massive deficit spending and other breaks to structure the legal, political, financial and corporate environments to their favor, things that will take many years to reverse, if significant reversal is possible at all

2) a somewhat successful energy war, which, while it didn’t go far enough in right wing eyes, at least should install pliable regimes in the Middle East to provide access to the oil, which is intended to continue petro-dollar dominance of the vested interests for awhile longer. That this caused epic, untold suffering, and has tied down and depleted our military and world standing, is not that important to them

Of course this intrinsic, self-serving stance makes it seem like these people only react. And while our country is demonstrably poorer overall because of their rule, it simply doesn’t affect them – their wealth is fungible and can be moved anywhere. They could care less if the country goes off the rails. The more the middle class disappears or is rendered impotent, the better for their program. The more damage they can do, the harder their program will be to undo.

The key is understanding where they perceive their interests lie, which they most definitely promote and are responsive to. If you can put yourself in the mind of European aristocracy, you’ve got a good handle on where these people are coming from.

I think you are correct in connecting these dots from McCarthy to the Atwater/Rovian brand of politics. It’s not a stretch to tie the proliferation of right-wing talk radio to these guys, either. Rush Limbaugh’s ample posterior was placed in that broadcast chair 20 years ago by people with ties to the CIA of the 1950’s and ’60’s, who had garnered controlling interest in Capital Cities as it bought out the struggling ABC network.

Weren’t there millions who gave feedback to this current FCC on the issue of national media reform? I think the blogs will lead the way in keeping this issue in the forefront for Obama and the next Congress.

This is the key. There’s nothing behind the aggression except a desire for self-supremacy. Over the last 50-plus years, the GOP morphed into a mask with empty eyes. Kind of like the killers in the Halloween and Scream flicks.

But I must highlight a claim you’ve made which I don’t think matches up with the historical record…

“The myth of liberal elitism began with McCarthy.”

Gabler mentions Hofstadter’s deservedly famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. But as regards the sentence I’ve just quoted, the more relevant reference is Hofstadter’s book “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”. Here Hofstadter documents and details the very long history of American populist traditions which have set the ‘common man’ against the educated and liberal (in different periods, other synonyms have been used but carrying essentially the same meanings) elites of the big cities and particularly of the North East.

This Pulitizer-winning historical work, as Hofstadter says in his introduction “…was conceived in response to the political and intellectual conditions of the 1950’s…Primarily it was McCarthyism which arosed the fear that the critical mind was at ruinous discount in this country. Of course, intellectuals were not the only targets of McCarthy’s constant detonations – he was after bigger game – but intellectuals were in the line of fire.” The following sentences go on to describe a populist rhetoric (and the targets of such) which have a one to one correspondence with Limbaugh or David Horowitz or so many others.

But Hofstadter draws out (in brilliant prose, by the way) how all of this had earlier antecedents running back to the earliest periods in American history.

Whatever it takes to win sums up, in my mind, all that Republicans are about these days. That and what I call the Reagan effect – the young man on the eve of Reagan’s second term who quite proudly said, “I’ve got mine and I don’t care about anybody else,” – have so defiled American politics and the whole American landscape to lead me to despair of ever living again in a quieter and gentler (at least on the surface) America.

(By the way, Barbara, my submit is back ‘on’, obviously, so thank you.)