Essentially racism as a political platform developed by Nixon's campaign as a reactionary movement to the Civil Rights movement.

Jerry Falwell didn't want his whites-only college to be integrated by mandate, and started the Moral Majority, a voting bloc that didn't care how crooked a candidate was (or worked against their interests) so long as they were anti-abortion-access. And this helped Reagan win by a landslide in 1980.

And as many history analyses will show you, Reagan was the beginning of the end of the United States by an uncountable number of different metrics.

To oversimplify, the parties “switched” platforms in the 60s when Republicans realized that they could appeal to uneducated, racist white people.

I mean, that seems like that would be nice to have, at least for a bit...

A lot of that comes from the development of corporate lobbyists and special interest groups in the 1970s. Even then they were highly regulated, and oversized campaign contributions still counted as bribes. That all changed after Reagan got into office, and Gucci Gulch got unfettered access to elected officials. After that, a lot of politicians were too tempted by the prospect of getting fantastically wealthy and forgot about the dream of changing the world for the better.

A lot of this isn't really new. To quote Rutherford B. Hayes, The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.

So the influence of wealth and corporate interest on political power is, in fact, an old problem. What frustrates me is how reforms could have been made during their rare collective moments of conscience, and they didn't. To be fair, civil liberties of non-whites and women were a higher priority.

Don't forget about the McCarthyism of the late 40s and the 50s. Ronald Reagan was involved with that particular movement since the beginning when he testified in front of Congress (specifically the House Un-American Activities Committee) saying that communists were taking over Hollywood.

that wasn't ike, though. those nutcases thought he was a commie.

The world cup reminds me of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

I don't want another world war, or Jim Crow...

The New Deal didn't fix things, but kicked the can down the line as well. Anything to prevent us from giving up on capitalism.

I think Techno-feudalism may push us over the line. < Bolshevik chorus swells >

Interesting. I wonder how it was resolved given their lower medical knowledge...