WAR LIKE NO OTHER

Almost 3 years ago, Pew Research put together an interesting little graphic that purports to show the increasing radicalism of Congress and dearth of centrists/moderates. If you look at the short article and even the comments to it, there are some interesting insights into the nature of the country's wars over the last 50 years.

Under Nixon, it was readily apparent to all Americans that the United States was at war and a very brutal war in a meaningless place for insufficient reasons to justify the lives and well-being of the men we drafted and sent off to fight that war. Congress consisted in large part of members of the Greatest Generation and they still tended to act like a representative democracy which sought to make reasoned arguments for and against policy, law, and war.

Under Reagan/Bush, the country was once again manifestly locked in a war. It was the endgame of the Reagan determined end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR on terms all parties could find bearable. There was less agreement on policy and law but the mindset on nationalism was basically unchanged since Nixon's time. The Cold War, the missile gap, the ABM and IRBM Treaties and SALT issue weighed heavily on the minds of the legislators. They were people like Sam Nunn.

Under Obama the country was obviously not at war and had no intention of being at war and 100% of the majority party was opposed to the war. We all basically opposed the war as it finally had sunk in that we were pouring American lives and treasure into a sewer from which nothing good could be saved and an area and country which will never recover until the 'strongmen' take power again after more blood has been spilled than anybody can imagine.

We also aren't at war with islam or terrorists and even that war on drugs tapered off as everybody started to look at how stupid that rigged game was playing out. In the end, the only war both parties admitted to was the war on poverty. The voting record shows it. Both parties have radically different notions of how to fight that war.

One of the things I make out of that graph is that the flight of reasonableness began when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi slammed the door on any legislation that was not purely politically driven to enhance only democrats. In short, there was absolutely no 'upside' for any republican to vote with the majority on increasingly radical and insane notions put to vote by the leaders of the House and Senate and the republicans in the House all knew it. It was the 'elected representatives of the people in the Senate' that figured they could still compromise and get away with some comprise because they don't get reelected every 2 years and their political philosophy has always been, devil take the hindmost. Almost all of the legislation enacted under Obama is destructive to the United States and the record shows it.

I am wracking my brain trying to think what issue, presented to me by Pelosi or Reid, that there possibly could be, which I would vote for. I'm not having much luck finding a single one. Those two and Obama, did to politics in this country, what the Gracchi did to Rome and what Cato did to Carthage.

Collapse of Empire - Thomas Cole