Stuck Between Hope and Doubt -OR- Finding A Restore Point

It should go without saying that, in Opposite World, the search for cogent analysis, or what passes for thought in and among the Villager realm requires an ability to look beneath and sdrawkcab klat.

It's not so much "Everything you know is wrong". Only that what you know is out of context, rehashed, untethered, incomplete, upside-down, inside-out and backwards, but always circular; ever bending, twisting, turning to right. To the excoriation of all else. They happily grind our bones to make their bread.

What is fundamentally different now than it was? This is a serious and important, crucial even, elementary question in restoring our individual and societal equilibrium.

So what is the restore point for sanity? When was it that we broke from "the rules" and began this walk on the wild side? When did crazy talk supplant reason?

Scholars may disagree, but we'd never know. We don't let scholars do more than hawk their latest biography of Millard Filmore in view of the public. When you ask this question of the A-List villagers who've become the default de facto spokespeople for EVERYTHING, they will respond in unison that it was January 20th, 2009. If you press them about anything that transpired prior to that, they get all nostalgic and Reagany, while ignoring, dissembling and tap dancing past the mass graveyards of their policy debacles. I won't link to examples, it only encourages them. They'll only cite their traffic hits and never mention the pages and pages of comments regularly disproving their assertions.

So what the fuck really happened? Where did it go off the rails?

What if Jimmy Carter wasn't the worst president ever? In thirty-one years we've come to appreciate and admire the work he's done since leaving office, yet we still hold that his administration failed its mission? Sans the workmanlike discrediting and obfuscation attached to his claimed feeble attempts to serve as ringmaster, what was his short-coming? Wanting an honest and workable plan for sustainable, renewable, alternative energy? Brokered peace in the Middle East? Trade policies that embraced human rights for workers? "ZERO-based budgeting" to deal with the D.C. bureaucracy? Tax policies that actually encouraged INVESTMENT in American manufacturing? A small, strong, capable, but reasonable, military? Yeah, I know! Cuckoo! A negative eleventy on the PIZAZZ scale. America was at an incongruity crossroads that our language would not encompass. We had some choices to make. Some realities to face. Some adjustments and accommodations to arrange.Something had to give.

The Conservative movement of the time was still stinging from Nixon's unravelment, double digit interest rates,(remember W.I.N.?) and spent its time howling about government growth and spending. James Earl Carter campaigned on re-organizing the government. His efforts were not well received. He faced objection and obstruction at every turn...

Sound familiar? It should. It IS the only play in the playbook for which there has been no defensive adjustment. Bread and butter, fool `em again and keep on running it! It's the evil we dare not speak...

Why?