The Bulwark: The GOP’s Ongoing Insurgency

Charlie Sykes is 67 years old.

He has never experienced a real election until the last three.

“The chimp that tries to rip your face off” was the norm in American democracy for most of the 19th century before the Great Hushing in the Progressive era. We’re also back to that level of immiseration and polarization now and the internet is killing off the 20th century legacy media.

In the 20th century, politics shifted away from stump speeches and toward mass circulation national news magazines, radio and television which catered to the rising professional class in large metro areas. This thing which had not existed before became the national stage.

Here’s a partisan Civil War era cartoon:

Here’s another from the Spanish-American War:

From Peter Turchin’s book Ages of Discord

The bland and boring politics and media that old people remember was just a passing phase that reflected trends in mass media consolidation, professionalization and turnout.

Today, Jake Tapper’s Sunday show isn’t the national stage anymore. PMCs can’t control the national conversation and the narrative anymore. There are too many entrepreneurs like Alex Jones who have built their own platforms. Even with all the censorship, there is no going back to the good ol days of the mass media.

Note: I’m reading the book.

7 Comments

  1. Republicans are no different than democrats as conservatives are no different than liberals. Both are anti-White and pander, grovel and apologize for POC.

  2. The two political cartoons above are a wistful reminder of when Americans enjoyed free speech and took it for granted.

  3. Your article has real insight, I especially like the graphics, in particular the graph from ages of discord.

    In the graph, post-war prosperity is of special interest, it confirms the inevitable decline of the stolen prosperity since WWII. The great bulk of US ppl think the wealth of the past 70 years just appeared magically, not realizing most of it was stolen from Germany in the war of terror, WWII. Great prosperity was produced in 1950 to 1970 and since 1970 the US has been borrowing on that prosperity and its associated hegemony. That will now come to an end, with current debt crushing the US economy.

  4. there may be some sort of “insurgency” going on, but it sure isn’t the Grand Old Pedophiles;

    the republiscams are the same miscegnation party now that they were in 1860….with Zion added.

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