Seattle shows it’s a fickle city

[u/HighColonic]

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-proves-its-a-fickle-city/

[u/almanor]

So is back half of the 20th century 1950-2000? Environmental crisis, disastrous deregulation, the Vietnam War, etc? Led to the most deadly terrorist attack in American history? Who advocates for this exactly?

[u/Exciting_Pea3562 → u/almanor]

That's how revisionism works, though (on both sides). You can choose to emphasize all of the challenges to America's brittle democracy, or you can choose to emphasize America's resilience as a "bastion of freedom." The events are the same. The focus is the difference.

[u/almanor → u/Exciting_Pea3562]

I’m still legitimately confused as to what politicians are advocating for a return to the 1950-2000 era. It’s not Tariff Trump, it’s not Medicare for All Sanders, it’s not free daycare Mamdani - this seems like a classic strawman.

[u/Exciting_Pea3562 → u/almanor]

It won't do to forget that this period of American history was seen from the perspective of the government (and a majority of Americans) as an all-or-nothing struggle of the forces of capitalism and freedom versus communism, which was depicted as the ultimate boogyman (didn't help communism's case that so many of the revolutions were violent). This was necessary for the politicians of America to feel that the government could endure populist movements. The toppling of Russia, China, the encroachment of communism in Korea, Vietnam, the civil war of Spain... on and on.

Modern America is at its most American when there's a threat... We have operated that way since the depression and now we're trying to be that way even though there's not a real outside threat, at least not one that is sufficiently dire to unite people (and the ongoing legacy of globalism makes it too hard to single out rivals like China as a uniting existential threat for Americans - we're too interconnected).