That Was Then. This Is Now.
18/4/13 06:00![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpolitics
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality. – Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody
The term: The New Normal has come to our language in the past couple of years. The phrase defines a change, usually a downgrade, which is expected to be lasting. As a result, The New Normal is an adjustment that is likely to be widely accepted as a standard.
The New Normal is not a bad thing for people that can roll with the punches. It is a healthy coping mechanism that usually follows a period of resignation when something has come to be acknowledged in our society. The problem occurs when The New Normal is written into the equation and is used to manipulate that society into accepting a substandard way of life. This seems to be happening on an incremental basis in America. A couple examples:
Bill Clinton Affair with Monica Lewinsky. This scandal was the basis for an impeachment of a President of the United States. The whole country was whipped into a lather that a President would actually engage in this kind of immoral behavior while in office. Anthony Weiner was disgraced and left his Congressional position after controversial pictures he sent appeared on Twitter. He is now running for Mayor of New York. Mark Sanford disappeared from his office to have an affair with a woman in Argentina. She is now his girlfriend and is running for Congress in the same state that he was disgraced as a governor. The New Normal? You tell me.
Columbine Massacre in Columbine High School, Columbine Colorado. The NRA and gun advocates were all over this incident to blunt the possible gun control fallout from this tragedy. Since then, mass shootings have become a regular feature in the news. The New Normal? You tell me.
The Financial Meltdown of 2008. Although the financial industry can be held culpable for much of this, Republicans and financial institutions have been lobbying heavily to overturn and sabotage any efforts to enforce the Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed in 2010. This is to allow business as usual as it was before the meltdown so that those financial practices, including bailouts, will remain The New Normal. Does this make sense? You tell me.
The Bush Tax Cuts and other administration actions were done on the back of our national debt and was excluded from the budget process until they were budgeted by the Obama administration. Since then, it has been the practice of the Republicans to starve the federal government of any additional revenue and have been trying to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class, the needy and senior citizens while trying to bloat their pet projects like the military infrastructure. The New Normal? You tell me.
Sometimes life will throw us a curveball and change our reality. Nothing illustrates that more than natural disasters. When that happens, we have always been able to adjust to The New Normal until we could recover. That’s how progress, resilience and innovation work. However, when that reality is artificially created to the whims of a few, the result is a society that dies a little at a time until that society’s normal vitality becomes a mere shell of its former self.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 16:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 17:49 (UTC)Your New Normal looks an awful lot like the old normal.
The problem is that your old normalcy that was thought to be resolved is coming back. There may have been a furor over Jefferson’s affair, but with Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford, they don’t even consider their indiscretions to be a speed bump in their political careers.
Yes. There have been copycat crimes committed before. Some were pretty specific. But the Columbine massacre has spawned a whole class of mass slayings. This brings to mind the airline highjackings of the 70’s. Instead of making folk heroes of the guilty, all that was done were illustrations of how the highjackers came to bad ends.
We have had peaks and valleys regarding our economy since the Great Depression. Glass-Steagall was put into place to try to avoid a recurrence. That had since been repealed because it was thought unnecessary, but at the time it was widely accepted as a necessary mitigation. Pressure has been put on financial reforms since 2010 to sabotage these current reforms.
For all the struggles that I have seen to move America in a positive direction, there seems to be an awful lot of effort put into the missions of the few. From your response, it seems like there is awful lot of resignation and hopelessness that we can ever continue to move forward.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 17:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 19:21 (UTC)When people decry the lack of civility in modern politics I point them to the 1800 presidential election.
When people get worked up about things like Columbine or Newtown I remind them that the deadliest such incident in US history is still the Bath School Massacare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster) of 1927.
Times change, people don't.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 19:49 (UTC)And Mr. Kehoe shot how many people in the school? Oh. None? I doubt the ongoing shootings are at all reminiscent of the Bath School massacre.
And equating a video dramatization of some bygone era can hardly be compared to a modern "new" anything.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 20:37 (UTC)Likewise I'm surprised that someone who puts as much stock in the emotion and intent of an act as you do would not see the obvious parallels between Bath and our more recent outbreaks of school and workplace violence.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 20:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 22:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/13 00:59 (UTC)The only thing that's more pervasive is our awareness of them.
Despite the internet memes, conspiracy theories and cat videos that bombard us with so-called information, we are not in some enormous age of enlightenment. As your examples of relatively ancient American history illustrates, the basis of almost all of social and political news is still the main stream media, as it always has been. The rest is pretty much just spin.
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/13 05:55 (UTC)DQ!
(no subject)
Date: 20/4/13 14:28 (UTC)Scandals, economic kerfuffles, and spree killings are no more common today than they were 80 years ago, the only thing thats changed is 24 hour news stations needing to fill what used to be dead air.
(no subject)
Date: 20/4/13 23:28 (UTC)Yeah. With memes, conspiracy theories, interviews, commentary and spin. The substance, however, remains in the realm of the main stream media like it always has.
(no subject)
Date: 21/4/13 15:52 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/4/13 21:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/4/13 22:13 (UTC)Likewise.
Sex scandals are as American as apple pie, economic meltdowns happen once per generation as if by clock work, and the rate of spree killings has remained steady at approimatelyx 2 per year since the turn of the 20th century.
The only thing that has gotten more prevalent is people's awareness of, and obssesion with them.
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/13 08:26 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/13 14:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/4/13 23:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/13 08:32 (UTC)