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Home Front: Culture Wars
Why Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast?
2019-12-08
[American Thinker] Our Founders created a nation in which the rule of law would prevail and be applied equally to citizens from all walks of life and also would act as a restraint on the power of our leaders. The tradition also includes the assumed duty of all Americans, including our political leaders, to live within the established and agreed upon laws of society.

The Democratic Party's increasingly progressive, left-leaning, radical political agenda contests this fundamental and longstanding American tradition of the law applying equally to all our citizens. Whether I am walking on the streets of my city or viewing the news, I am witnessing on a daily basis increasingly uncivil, lawless, and visibly politically corrupt conduct being tolerated by our country.

Democratic Party policies today support the idea that adhering to the rule of law is no longer obligatory for several designated and politically favored groups selected by them. Progressive politics is attempting to move Americans to accept and adopt a multi-tier justice system based on the unequal application of the law, whereby treatment by the system is increasingly dependent on subjective political considerations.

On a local level in many cities and communities, Democrats in power are by their actions undermining the rule of law. For example, expected compliance with the law in several of our leading cities run by Democratic Party leaders, including most notably New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, is now often based on a person's economic and immigration status, race, sex, sexual orientation, and increasingly an indication of a person's political and religious affiliations. The reason for these exemptions being granted is based on the dual ideologies of identity politics and social justice.

The creation of an implied multi-tier justice system expressly violates our fundamental value of the law applying equally to citizens from all walks of life and most importantly results in the increasingly intolerable and dangerous conditions existing on the streets of these cities and an overall perception of communities in decline. It has led to environments where ordinary people feel increasingly unsafe due to a lack of enforcement of quality-of-life crimes such as rampart homelessness and loitering, open drug use, and the willing accommodation of numerous illegal aliens performing criminal acts.

Their policies absolve individuals belonging to their politically favored groups of their responsibilities to adhere to our agreed upon laws and act in civil ways. They contend that challenging social and economic conditions are responsible for criminal and antisocial behavior rather than the individual person acting in a negative way. Progressive leaders in these locations are resisting enforcing the law, especially against quality-of-life violations, because they label these actions as the criminalization of poverty and accuse the police of the ongoing use of racist tactics.
Posted by:Besoeker

#19  #8 Because the insulted party wanted 190 million $ as compensation.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2019-12-08 15:15  

#18  When we trusted the custodes a bit too much...
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2019-12-08 14:03  

#17   It also doesn't help that fighting back will get you stabbed in the back by "principled conservatives" screeching "That is not who are!"

That seems to be a the most intractable problem. Getting people to adapt to the current level of realpolitik required.
Posted by: Dron66046   2019-12-08 11:48  

#16  "This is not who we are!"

= The Party is Right, Comrade
= The Chairman is in Power, and the Situation is Excellent
= All Hail the Glorious Soviet Identity-Politics Woke Revolution
Posted by: Lex   2019-12-08 11:42  

#15  These are all the kind of quality comments I come here to read, but I lean toward #3 as hitting the nail on the head. On a positive note, I think the Communists are confusing dominating "elite" opinion with dominating public opinion. (And the opinion polls are worthless -- who would tell a pollster what they actually think?) Who actually cared what Nadler's law perfessors had to say?
Posted by: Matt   2019-12-08 11:38  

#14  The left has taken control (sometimes slowly and subtly) of almost every "pressure point" of society --media, culture, human resources departments, bureaucracy, etc. and the right allowed them to do so because it was too "pragmatic" to care about such things.

Instead, the right spent all its time brushing on debating skills, not realizing that while such things have their place, they are not sufficient for the task before us.

The left understands the nature of power; the modern right does not.

It also doesn't help that fighting back will get you stabbed in the back by "principled conservatives" screeching "That is not who are!"
Posted by: charger   2019-12-08 11:30  

#13  Given I have small children, we see many families opting toward private/religious schools that will actually educate their children. There's a huge amount of worry about the gender craziness, teaching islam, climate insanity, etc. They don't want their kids becoming fanatics. So there is pushback against this stuff on the local level. Many of these parents are from younger generations as well, so they understand that we can't continue down the path of insanity.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2019-12-08 11:09  

#12  The US has faced similar problems before and something bigger always came along to focus us and bring us together. I don't think a modern World War would do that as it would be instantly disastrous or drawn out for twenty years so as to avoid the worst nastiness.

Maybe a grand push towards space again, a new frontier. Maybe. Probably not.
Posted by: ruprecht   2019-12-08 10:39  

#11  We will have to wait another 20 years for this mad generation to pass, and hope that the next generation of Americans will restore our democratic institutions to sanity.

Actually, the young generation: AOC, Antifa, Muslim congress persons; is even crazier.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2019-12-08 09:39  

#10  ...file under Thou shall not bear false witness. Throw out the fundamentals, pay the price.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2019-12-08 09:17  

#9  The defamation laws in this country are in serious need of a major overhaul.
Posted by: Lex   2019-12-08 09:13  

#8  Has "Insty" weighed in on why Musk is allowed to make unsubstantiated claims of pedophilia and get away with it? I don't go to his site so I don't know.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2019-12-08 09:10  

#7  #5 What AlanC said. There has always been in every society a tendency toward misrule - the March of Folly, the corruption of the mighty, the ambition of Caesar and the stupidity and brutality of the mob etc.

What distinguished our blessed system for 200 years was not the absence of graft and grift, of slander and stupidity and misrule, but the control and containment of same by a culture and a set of self-correcting democratic institutions: a free and independent press, well-functioning courts, and major factions in each party which, though not always prevalent, at least produced heroic leaders such as Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

Those days are behind us. We are saddled with a generation of absurd, puffed-up, self-aggrandizing fools like Schiff, Fartacus, Fauxcahontas, KamalHo, Pierre Delecto, Carlos Danger and the rest of the repulsive clownshow; Schiff's Deep State clownish weaselblowers; the pseudo-sophisticated hard left academic clowns like "Dr." Blowsey Ford and Perfesser Karlan, and the endless parade of media and entertainment industry Mad Hatter talking heads and barking bots.

We will have to wait another 20 years for this mad generation to pass, and hope that the next generation of Americans will restore our democratic institutions to sanity.
Posted by: Lex   2019-12-08 08:45  

#6  Democratic Party policies today support the idea that adhering to the rule of law is no longer obligatory for several designated and politically favored groups selected by them.

This nails it. Nothing is more insidious than this assault on the rule of law - dressed up, predictably, by the Shitshow as a righteous defense of rule of law.

So a universally-respected, middle-of-the-road jurist nominated by the evil Orange One is slandered and libelled, in a carnival of perjury, witness tampering and extortion, as a Gang Rapist.

So teenage school kids on a trip to an anti-abortion rally on The Mall are subjected to another national Shitshow of slander, libel, false accusations that they assaulted a toothless whackjob and professional provocateur, with calls for the boys to be ruined for life or even murdered coming from across the left-lib Shitter-sphere.

So a little family of college town bakers gets smeared as vicious racists by idiot students of a major liberal arts college, whose leaders rally the kids and lead the defamation effort and then try to interfere in and ruin the family's business.

So college boys across the country now face the potential risk of being dragged in front of one of the thousands of Kampus Kangaroo Kourts set up on the instructions of Obama's Shitsgow known as the Equal Opportunity Commission where they face being ruined for life because of bogus rape allegations.

And now a three-year Congressional Shitshow in which the party whose candidate's operatives broke laws and enlisted foreign intel agents to intervene in an election against the evil Orange One now accuse him, in Through the Looking Glass fashion, of the same crimes they committed.

Etc etc

And these shitheads have the gall to proclaim they're defending the rule of law.

Surreal.
Posted by: Lex   2019-12-08 08:16  

#5  A lot of it has been said here but I would highlight #1.5.

There were always supposed to be honest brokers in the news industry that would spotlight the corruption among the powerful from the local level on up.

The muckrakers served a purpose and then the politicians could tip-toe around and keep this degradation in check at some level. See also Boss Tweed and Thomas Nast.

When the journalists sold out there was nothing to keep the sun shining on the scum.

Not the only reason but one of them.
Posted by: AlanC   2019-12-08 08:02  

#4  Where's my tree stump ? Where did it go ?! Someone... ! Which one O' you removed my stu... Chill, Dron. They can't remove a stump like that. You see any holes in the ground ? It must be here somewhere. There ! The stump ! [gets on stump]

Now I've forgotten what I wanted to say ! Oh, P2k's already done said it.
[gets off stump]
Posted by: Dron66046   2019-12-08 07:38  

#3  ...or when you try to eliminate the Judaeo-Christian religions from the foundation and structure of Western Civilization you get this.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2019-12-08 07:06  

#2  Because society cannot function once it drops the Golden Rule?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2019-12-08 02:50  

#1  Q: Why Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast?
A: Because of The Shitshow.

Q: Why and how did The Shitshow - the absurd virtue-signaling rhetoric, the gross incompetence, the destruction of due process and absence of good faith - why did this M.O. come to dominate our legislatures, our culture and our press?

A combination of:

1. Identity Politics: Since the collapse of Communism, western leftist and liberals went full-bore on All Identity Politics All The Time

2. Mau-Mauing the Cops (again): since 2014, since Trayvon the gentle Honor student and Michael Brown the Gentle Giant, we've heard nonstop lies about the extent of police brutality.

3. Twitter, the cesspool of the internet, the Collective Id. Remember: Twitter degrades all it touches; Twitter makes every conversation or discussion worse.

4. Facebook NewsFeed. See #3.

5. The complete clown-ification of The NYT, WaPo and talking heads cable.

6. Shitty public schools and progressively shitty public schoolteachers - made worse by, ironically, an extremely robust economy.

7. Careerist, rent-seeking politicians partnered with corrupt Deep State shadow government decision makers.
Posted by: Lex   2019-12-08 01:34  

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