"Cutting right through your theme, Mr. Friedman, this election comes down to anger vs. reason; to creativity vs. stagnation. The Republican party became the snake that ate itself by first swallowing its tail until there was nothing left.
I wholeheartedly agree that there is overlap between Web and Wall and that can be the greatest, if narrowest, challenge for us to bridge our differences. But it will require a flexibility that is not a Republican staple, not a trait that it, for generations, demanded of its base as it acquired political power (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and II).
The Wall mentality was constructed, first by Nixon, to keep out the Web people, those who sought the better way, not the *only* way. Our national educational system is an absurd joke. Reagan began the systematic dismantling of education by de-funding HEW, this after Nixon doggedly pushed back against uneven, unequal education in the country's urban areas where the resources (quality educators, quality infrastructure) was, and in many places, still is, heavily weighted toward whites.
The early Web pioneers, if you will, the "liberal left", were disparaged and marginalized by Nixon and Agnew in the late 1960's and early 1970's. This primitive baton of us vs. them was passed on to successive Republican presidencies who taught their base to fear mobility and striving; to be comfortable with their little. All else was socialism.
America isn't stupid yet, but we're trending the way of the angry wall." |
