A touching recollection of a life in political obsession that I, though a bit older, largely shared. I have likewise voted straight Democratic since the first vote I ever cast (1970, in the midterms, with Nixon out at feverish rallies proclaiming that antiwar demonstrators all belonged “behind bars.”) And you’re quite right: things have gotten steadily worse since 1980, when Reagan set out to dismantle Roosevelt’s legacy and ensure that the rich would always get richer, the poor get poorer, and that the public interest was nothing more than the sum total of private interests. So thorough was this right-wing ideology instilled that even Clinton had to cater to the super-rich in order to get anything done.
Then came GW Bush, (the Right-wing supreme court having stolen the election for him) followed by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the denial of science, the draconian loss of civil liberties, the torture of Iraqi war prisoners…followed by a partial restoration of sanity and dignity under Obama—until the utter catastrophe of 2016…the rise to power of a despicable fascist who now is threatening to seize power yet again. It feels like our once proud nation is spinning ever more rapidly down the toilet to unimaginable perdition .