How much has changed, really?
I just got done reading the book The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914; by Barbara W. Tuchman (which I highly recommend as a very entertaining and informative book, available in Kindle edition) and in it I found the same battle lines between Liberals and Conservatives, with the same lies, deception and shabby tactics being used by the conservatives that they still use today. I could make a few substitutions of names of politicians, or substitute "U.S. Senate" for "British Parliament" and the accounts could pass for stories from yesterday's newspapers. Nothing, and I mean nothing has fundamentally changed since 1890 (or before).
See if this argument sounds familiar: The conservatives screamed bloody murder at the campaign to replace the 12-hour work day with the 10-hour work day. Any fool would realize, they claimed, that a 10-hour work day would bankrupt businesses and drive them into laying off more people, and that there would be fewer jobs and more people without work. How can they keep a factory going around the clock with 10-hour shifts? Obviously, it takes two shifts of 12 hours each to accomplish that. With a 10-hour shift there would be plant shutdowns, and idle equipment. Manufacturing schedules could not be met without 24-hour operation, and shortage of goods would cripple the nation. Disaster! Famine! The collapse of civilization as we know it if the 10-hour day becomes law!
And this is merely one example from the book. Every page tells more stories of conservative hysteria against the backdrop of growing world tensions. (The book is not partisan, and relates the stories in a non-judgmental way, but in historical retrospect it's quite clear that the conservatives were on the wrong side in every battle.)
Over and over the conservatives have been proven wrong and yet they go right on repeating their hysterical fear mongering ad nauseum. So no, this modern Republican noise machine is nothing new. It's as old as representative government.
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being sold the idea that we're all equal in the US and that hard work will get you everything.
Bullshit. My hands are gnarled from work, and all I have is despair just imagining how I will survive retirement.
Meanwhile, My 2 billion dollar Boy King governor has decided - after many donations from the Kochs and other people with a real stake in Tennessee 
- that the people of Tennessee do not need:
Rapid transit
Health care
Broadband internet
Unions or decent wages.
HE deserves 2 billion dollars. his BUDDIES deserve all of the state's revenue he can throw at them ( and Boy King Haslam made it illegal for him to tell us exactly HOW MUCH of our tax MONEY HE HANDS OVER TO his buddies' CORPORATIONS. )
There are no leaders anymore, or maybe there never were any. Haslam and all Republicans are just little boys, playing with humans like toys, seeing who can get the most zeros on their balance sheets before they croak off.
I wish there was a painful, agonizing, excruciating disease that would only attack the greedy, and we could be rid of assholes like Haslam once and for all.
I can still dream of the glorious day I learn that Scalia, Cheney, Cruz, Rumsfield, Kochsickers, et al are DEAD!!!!!! I will do a happy dance every time a greedy republican dies. It's about the only joy they've left us, eh?
From Nov. 12, 2012:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021803220
With all the conservative whining and wailing going on about Obama’s re-election, saying that he won because of “people who just want stuff” and other assorted poutrage, it’s worth noting that this is a trope they’ve been playing for a very, very long time.
Below is a conservative political cartoon from 1860, engraved by Currier and Ives and published in Harper's Magazine.
Back then, when “The Party of Lincoln” was actually running Lincoln for president, it was considered the liberal/left party.
See if you recognize the playbook:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003674590/
"The Republican Party Going to the Right House"
Lincoln rides in on a (fence) rail, carried by Horace Greely (anti-slavery editor of the New York Tribune), leading his followers into a lunatic asylum.
GREELY: "Hold on to me Abe, and we'll go in here by the unanimous consent of the people."
LINCOLN: "Now my friends I'm almost in, and the millennium is going to begin, so ask what you will and it shall be granted."
Younger Woman: "Oh! what a beautiful man he is, I feel a passionate attraction' every time I see his lovely face."
Bearded Man: "I represent the free love element, and expect to have free license to carry out its principles."
Man with trim beard and hat: "I want religion abolished and the book of Mormon made the standard of morality."
Caricatured black man: "De white man hab no rights dat cullud pussons am bound to spect' I want dat understood."
Older woman: "I want womans rights enforced, and man reduced in subjection to her authority."
Scruffy man with bottle: "I want everybody to have a share of everybody elses property."
Barefoot man: "I want a hotel established by government, where people that aint inclined to work, can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco."
Seedy top-hat man: " I want guaranteed to every Citizen the right to examine every other citizen's pockets without interruption by Policemen."
Man at the end: "I want all the stations houses burned up, and the M.P.s killed, so that the bohoys can run with the machine and have a muss when they please."
Let’s go down the list, shall we?:
Supported by "liberal media": Check
Liberals will embark on profligate giveaways to THOSE PEOPLE? Check.
Flighty, emotional, entranced by charisma/celebrity? Check.
People conservatives consider sexual deviants? Check.
People conservatives consider religious deviants? Check (and how ironic, this particular turn).
Grasping minorities after special rights? Check.
"Feminazis"? Check.
There's a vast army of layabouts, terrorists, and outright thieves who want to take your hard-earned stuff? Check, check, check, and check.
A hundred and fifty years later, and they're playing the same effing tune.
