The Atlantic magazine blames those of us who watch Fox News, listen to Rush Limbaugh, or support Donald Trump ...

August 11, 2017
When did America lose its mind?
By Jack Hellner

The Atlantic magazine has a cover that purports to explain inside "How America went Haywire." The very, very, very long cover story, titled "How America went crazy," highlights a variety of false beliefs that bedevil the sort of people who don't read The Atlantic. For example:

A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it's a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists. A third believe that our earliest ancestors were humans just like us; that the government has, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, hidden evidence of natural cancer cures; that extraterrestrials have visited or are visiting Earth. Almost a quarter believe that vaccines cause autism, and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2016.



Kurt Andersen blames Rush Limbaugh for introducing an "alternative reality," as if the media Rush critiqued were objective reality and El Rushbo a fantasist. As Clay Waters of Newsbusters summarized, "Andersen only portrays a single side of ideological slant, as if the major networks were fair and balanced before nasty Fox News came along."

I have several ideas as to when America lost its mind that would never occur to writer Kurt Andersen or the editors of The Atlantic. Here are some of them.

America lost its mind:

When it started to believe Al Gore on climate change despite all the lies and false predictions.

When it believed repeated lies that if you liked your insurance and your doctor, you could keep them, and your premium would go down.

When the Great Society programs pretended they would reduce poverty instead of making people more dependent on government.

When it believed that food stamps and unemployment are the best stimulus programs, and allowing people and businesses to keep more of their own money is not.

When it re-elected a president who left people to die in Libya while making up a lie to protect his political power. (The media never cared what Obama did that night. We still don't know.)

When it was acceptable for an organization, founded by a racist woman fond of eugenics, to kill and dismember humans for profit. (The Atlantic is a prolific and creative supporter of Planned Parenthood.)

I can think of many more reasons America lost its mind that would never occur to the folks at The Atlantic.

http://www.americanthinker.com...a_lose_its_mind.html

I think the first step over the crazy barrier was in August of 1964.

the gov fabricated an incident in a far-away place that most people had to refer to n atlas to find. They had a perfectly good war that was losing favor and needed a little remember the maine therapy.

as the leaks started that it was a fraud the distrust rooted and grew and has never stopped and fear can turn to crazy easily.

Speaking of how thin the veneer of trust is: A young acquaintance of mine asked me why I still wore a 'round' watch when everybody knows that digi-cool is more accurate and can do stuff. I explained that my analog watch runs on springs and ordinary but tiny machinerey and the digi-cool runs from satillites and for every info bit she receives the sat takes a bit back and in fact the little screen is a camera and records everything she does and uploads it to the solar system, everything!
She explained that i was nutz and i shrugged.

her mom called me that evening and told me that her girl won't wear her watch and that i'm not funny; like i've never heard that before.

I'd say it started with Wilson, got worse with FDR and went off the freakin rails when the hippies infiltrated federal government.

More socialist liberal tripe...

Even bright and educated people in my neck of the woods have imbibed the Goebbels kook-aid, and believe the liberal nonsense, in spite of open contradictory evidence.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
I'd say it started with Wilson, got worse with FDR and went off the freakin rails when the hippies infiltrated federal government.

I think you are all right.

Woodrow Wilson became President on March 4, 1913. The "progressives" were firmly in control in 1913 and we have moved in their direction at varying speeds ever since. 1913 was also the year the 16th and 17th Amendments to the US Constitution were ratified and the Federal Reserve (centralized banking) was created.

The early 20th century was also when government began to take over the job of schooling our children.
"We, then, who are engaged in the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause"
- Horace Mann, "Father of American public education".

In other words, we have been "going haywire" for a long time. It's interesting that the Atlantic and the rest of the libtards now thing we are going haywire when there is finally some push back to what has been happening for a century.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
I'd say it started with Wilson, got worse with FDR and went off the freakin rails when the hippies infiltrated federal government.

and the education system.

I can't figure out where the parents were for the decades that the public schools have been churning out socialists trained with a completely edited version of history. The same teachers that put on "forest gump" for a week in class and call that "history". I'd blame teachers, but really it is the idiots who knew their kids were being taught this crap, and did nothing about it...that were the problem.

I was going to say 22 November 1963 or 20 January 1993 but then again, i forgot about 20 January 1933.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:

Beat me to it.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
I'd say it started with Wilson, got worse with FDR and went off the freakin rails when the hippies infiltrated federal government.

You missed LBJ. Put the Vietnam war on steroids, and promoted a massive increase in the welfare state in the name of ending poverty.
When everything turned bad, he simply left it to others to deal with.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
I was going to say 22 November 1963 or 20 January 1993 but then again, i forgot about 20 January 1933.

20 January 1933

...and Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany 10 days later.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
I'd say it started with Wilson, got worse with FDR and went off the freakin rails when the hippies infiltrated federal government.

You missed LBJ. Put the Vietnam war on steroids, and promoted a massive increase in the welfare state in the name of ending poverty.
When everything turned bad, he simply left it to others to deal with.

Wishful Thinker didn't

I don't think it was as far back as Wilson. Don't forget that Wilson was followed by Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. My study convinces me that Coolidge was the last President to preside over a federal government that would be recognizable by the founders. Hoover, too, I suppose.

I'm not sure there is one identifiable moment, one event that one can point to. These things seem to ebb and flow, like tides, irregularly, without pattern. To me, the tipping point seems to be in the early '60's. The people who are younger than me tend to be different in manners, outlook, etc. than those older.

To the likes of The Atlantic, this is normal and conservatives/Republicans/Donald Trump are the outliers.

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
I'd say it started with Wilson, got worse with FDR and went off the freakin rails when the hippies infiltrated federal government.

and the education system....

I think you make a good point.

The education system (at least in CA) is politically very liberal, promotes left wing thought as being progressive, teaches traditional thought as being oppressive and unenlightened. It may have been Goebbels who noted the German parents didn't need to fully believe the propaganda, because "we already have the children".

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:

Good point, and he is a huge contributor, but I would go back even a little further.

I like to take it all in close, like handling a pistol near your belly. The 'area of control'.

There's so much chit out there to be ignored, rampant.

Not that I don't care about others, just saying, much needs to be disregarded.

quote:

It may have been Goebbels who noted the German parents didn't need to fully believe the propaganda, because "we already have the children".

Horace Mann said much the same, and said it before Goebbels:
"We, then, who are engaged in the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause"
- Horace Mann, "Father of American public education".

Considering we had a considerable stretch of relatively conservative government under Reagan (although he was not successful at reversing the effects of Progressives), I would put it at November 2000 when Al Gore and the Dems went crazy trying to overturn the results of a very narrow election, and GW Bush forever tarnished as a result.

I guess that would put Gore in the forefront of two disastrous turns; add Jamie Gore-Lick for two more (9/11 and the Fannie/Freddie bank disasters).