It's NOT Unusual at All, Folks

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Continuing on this theme of, "It has always been this way," when it comes to politics, I think we need a short lesson in history. Because as I pointed out in my previous post on the topic, much of what we think is the chaos of today as unusual is simply not the way it wasn't before. It's our perception that things are different now than they have been in the past. In 1796, for example, it was suggested Jefferson was a coward and would beget a Civil War if he was elected. Hamilton supporters were called cutthroats who walked in rags and slept amid filth and vermin. Jackson's mother was accused of being a prostitute and they called Jackson a child born from paid sex. John Adams was called old, bald, blind, querulous and toothless. Jackson was also accused of being a cannibal and eating indians for breakfast. Jefferson was even accused of colluding with the French, although Adams won the election. They said once, if you elected Barry Goldwater the Soviets would drop nuclear bombs on your kids. My point is "mean tweets" in all forms have always been ever present in politics. It's nothing new and the decorum we think existed in the past is largely imaginary. From deplorables to MAGA extremists to rapist, misognyist dictator, name calling, and innuendo and downright nasty mudslinging is as old as it gets when it comes to politics. Trump is not an anomaly. He's the norm. Politics is politics and it is rarely pretty. It never has been. And sometimes when you do look at history and things that were said or what people were accused of... Today's politics seems rather benign compared. The perspective is important because it helps us to understand we're not voting on the politics of a person in so much as we are voting on the policies, which are far more important considerations than all the nasty back and forths, and what we are seeing as abnormal or dangerous on certain sides is simply history repeating itself in politics as it has always done. Nothing is out of the ordinary here, folks. Nothing.