When did America jump the shark?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Obviously, we've been a nation in decline for quite some time, thanks to neoconservative economics and foriegn policy-but when did we reach the point of officially being past our prime? What one event marks the occasion?

-Red Scare of the 50s setting up national secrity state?
1963-death of JFK?
60s-Vietnam?
1974-Watergate?
1980-Election of Reagan?
1993-NAFTA/GATT?
2000-selection of Bush?
2004 - re"election" of Bush?

On Edit: some other possibilities:
1944- ruling DNC elite gives Henry Wallace the boot in favor of Truman as FDR's successor?
1968 - death of RFK and MLK?
1987-1989- elimination of Fairness Doctrine/Limbaugh goes on the air?
1994-GOP takes Congress?
1996 - Telecommunication Act paves way for rightwing media domination?
2001 - Help America Vote Act paves way for DIEBOLD and BBV?
2001- September 11th and its aftermath gives Bush supposed license to fuck things up at pace never before seen?

[K-W]

1. When was it not jumping the shark?

Its easier to pick out the good times than the bad.

[tk2kewl]

2. Prohibition

:beer:

[JanMichael]

3. Sometime in the mid-70's when the Corpo-Mindmeld really kicked in.

I can't give a watershed event or date but it was sometime in the mid to late 70's.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. I'd say more the 80's right about the time MegaTrends

came out...

[JanMichael]

9. Maybe it was the introduction of MTV?

Nah, I'll stick with mid to late 70's, with props to MegaTrends for being a big nail in the US coffin.

[Rockerdem]

29. It was when Carter began deregulating things.

The implementation of the "government bad, private sector good" philosophy wasnt neocon, it was conservative the old fashioned way. And it was on Carters watch. Airlines. Trucking. And the unions were decimated. That process of undercutting Democrat base groups is continuing. Trial lawyers. Civil servants. They are attacking our party relentlessly. And Carter cluelessly began the ball rolling.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

32. Deregulation was on Reagan's watch

At least the ones you cited although the usery laws began getting trimmed during Carter's tenure

[Lydia Leftcoast]

47. Airline deregulation occurred under Carter

I recall that because a Cornell professor I had once met (Fred Kahn) was put in charge of it.

[GR]

4. Vincent Bugliosi Said When Bush Was Appointed By Court And

no protest...

[brindis_desala]

8. I agree. The country was always striving between its poles

but the passivity in 2000 emboldened the neocons to "create reality"

[SmokingJacket]

42. I agree with this one.

There have always been some major problems here, and the corporate control of the media has been a creeping reality for decades, but I never felt we had completely stepped into an alternate reality until 2000.

[Reverend_Smitty]

6. 1968

we could have salvaged this country with a democratic victory, but you know what happened...

[JanMichael]

10. Hey! I was born in 68'.

Ouch.

[Reverend_Smitty]

12. so maybe it's all your fault!

:P Hey I was born in 1984, a pretty ominous year as well

[JohnOneillsMemory]

33. Nov 22nd, 1963. JFK was going to end the Cold War and reign in CIA.

But The Secret Team was not going to let civilians run the US government or drop the tension of Mutually Assured Destruction as the adrenalin fueling American industry. Fear and Authoritarian Fascism Must Rule.

CIA ramped up Vietnam until the bloody disaster shocked an entire generation into rejecting the CIA's culture so vehemently that conservatives thought the US would shatter and be conquered.

After the Kent State shootings of May, 1970, panicked conservatives set-up think tanks and poured millions into propaganda projects to re-militarize the culture and move it away from the peace and environmental movements that were the nemesis of the Military Industrial Complex.

Alan Alda was jailed along with Smedley Butler in a small cell.

HWBush as CIA>VP>Pres>(Clinton-R) and here we are. Right where the jackals of war who own this country want us to be.

The voting machine levers have been quietly disconnected.
The public airwaves have been sealed off from us.
The surveillance and data-mining technologies armed Big Brother.
The Democratic party is infiltrated, bought, and terrorized.
The internet keeps dissenters ID'd and monitored.

Welcome to the Police States of America. Here's your draft card.

[Demit]

37. I agree with you utterly. Good post.

I was only 10 when Kennedy was shot, but I remember lots of talk & press about the end of innocence. The nation was shocked, and truly did mourn.

And I don't think it was coincidence that GHW Bush was in Dallas that day. Or that some twenty years later his good friend and business associate's son Hinckley shot Reagan. That man has hovered in the background of a lot of seminal events. And it ain't over yet.

[Sanity Claws]

7. Reagan era

I think we started to become more marginal in the world's mind sometime during the Reagan administration. He was a washed up actor with no intellect. His election showed what sheep Americans had become.

[LSdemocrat]

11. Bush v. Gore. The Supreme Court decides the presidency.

Things went from so good to so bad so quickly, it's still hard to believe.

[LibertyorDeath]

13. When they pulled the Trigger on JFK & got away with it.

[SoCalDem]

14. 1980..Reagan...

When celebrity became more important than process, we lost our way...

The modern era of excess was ushered in with movie-star Reagan.. Until he came along, we had kind of gotten used to caring for the less fortunate and paying our own way... We had smacked down (or so we thought) the corruption that surfaced with Watergate, and seemed to be finding our footing. Reagan "stage-managed" the hostage episode (with the help of James Baker, hiding in the weeds), and the "faux" presidency era began..

The damage done to our infrastructure and economy in those 8 years was HUGE..and that time set the stage for the time we live in now..

I think it also sent a message to the world that we were phonies.. How could any other country think that we "needed" to invade Grenada and Panama ...

[starroute]

35. Definitely Reagan

"Jumping the shark" doesn't happen when something first starts to go downhill. It happens at the point at which those in charge realize it's going downhill and try to make misguided "improvements" to freshen it up.

One of the symptoms of jumping the shark in tv shows is bringing in celebrity stars who don't quite fit into the story, like when they hauled Whorf onto some latter-day Star Trek that seemed to be floundering. Reagan sure fits that bill.

Another symptom is engaging in stunts (like shark-jumping) becuase you've forgotten how to generate real drama or comedy. In other words, silly little wars like Panama and Grenada.

A third sign of jumping the shark is that it happens when the people who originally created the show and genuinely cared about it are all gone and have been replaced by substitutes whose only interest is to milk it for whatever it's worth. And that, though it's reaching a peak now, was starting to happen in the 80's as well.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. 1947...

with the creation of the "national security" state, leading to flagrant abuses by the FBI in the name of stamping out those evil commies, needless wars in Asia and South America, und so weiter up to the present day....

[not systems]

20. seconded... the death of the republic of law...

when the budget begin to have "black" items and
the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense.

[BuyingThyme]

39. I agree

[Aristus]

16. 1980.

The year the "Moral Majority" helped get Reagan elected; Now if WE proposed that you vote in a divorced Hollywood actor over a devout, humble born-again Christian, the religious-reich would have your guts for garters.

How did THEY get away with it?

Simple. Misdirection.

It happened while the U.S.A. was busy jumping the shark.

[billbuckhead]

21. It happened precisely when a Bush aide said, "We create our own reality"

Delusions of Empire
The epistemology of imperialism – the problem with you peaceniks is that you're too 'reality-based'!

by Justin RaimondoRon Suskind, former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, has a piece in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine that is the talk of the internet, and with good reason: it is a devastating portrait of this "faith-based" presidency, with its religio-cultural idiosyncrasies and foibles. But it is not only that. Suskind manages to capture, in a series of vivid anecdotes, the political psychopathology that motivates this administration and shapes its perception. Here is the money quote:


"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend – but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency."The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

---------------snip----------------------

<http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3822>

[Clark2008]

17. I'm going for continued media deregulation

2000 and 2004 would have been more protested and Bush would have lost by a landslide, respectively, had the media been fair and impartial in their coverage.
With deregulation, the conservative corporations bought up all the voices. Liberal or moderate voices are relegated to the Internet(s) and true reporting is sparse.

[BillZBubb]

18. Death of RFK!

The left of the Democratic party lost its last real voice. The post-Goldwater right wing movement then sprung into high gear without much resistance.

Without any opposition, the right has been setting the agenda since that time. People were allowed to forget the lessons of the Great Depression. They slowly were spun around into a fanatical pro-business, pro-military, but anti-government mode.

The passing of RFK was the beginning of the end for the New Deal and for American greatness.

[no_hypocrisy]

19. World War I and the Paris Peace Treaty Talks

President Woodrow Wilson lied in 1916 when he ran for re-election with "He Kept Us Out of War" and promptly began the draft the next year. So much for isolation and letting the world take care of its own problems. He betrayed the trust of those who voted for him and the rest of the citizens.

Then at the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson was too ill to fully participate. Thus France and Britain were able to ramrod draconian punishment upon Germany, setting up the introduction of Adolph Hitler who was determined to restore Germany's "honor", and later, the prospect for the second half of World War I, later named World War II. Finally, Wilson met with lots of countries that wanted independence from former empires. To one representative he did not grant an audience: a young Vietnamese lawyer named Ho Chi Minh, who wanted independence from France. That missed opportunity led to the U.S. becoming entangled with Minh half a century later.

My point: Even when this country (make that the ones who controlled this country) wanted to get involved with purported good intentions and goals, it has cost the lives of our youth. How has World War I and thereafter made this country any freer, or better than the rest of the countries on the face of this planet. And please, be mindful that World War II was part of World War I; it didn't have to have happened.

[Stephanie]

22. 2000

Reagan was the precursor, but Selection 2000 was the death of democracy.

Great question.

[lonestarnot]

23. I second 2000 for precisely the same reason...n/t

[shawcomm]

24. Depending on who you ask, but some now extinct tribes

would probably argue that there never was a shark to be jumped.

[NAO]

25. November 22, 1963 - something died in the American psyche (King-Kill/33)

Below is an excerpt from the late James Shelby Downard's seminal essay on the assassination of JFK, "Kill-King/33"

The Killing of the King

Never allow anyone the luxury of assuming that because the dead and deadening scenery of the American city-of-dreadful-night is so utterly devoid of mystery, so thoroughly flat-footed, sterile and infantile, so burdened with the illusory gloss of "baseball-hot dogs-apple-pie-and-Chevrolet" that it exists somehow outside the psycho-sexual domain.

The eternal pagan psychodrama is escalated under these "modern" conditions precisely because sorcery is not what 20th century man can accept as real. Thus the "Killing of the King" rite of November, 1963 is alternately diagnosed as a conflict between "anti-Castro reactionaries and the forces of liberalism", big business and the big bankers, this-or-that wing of the intelligence community and so on. Needless to say, each of these groups has a place in the symbolism having to do with the Kennedy assassination.

But the ultimate purpose of that assassination was not political or economic but sorcerous: for the control of the dreaming mind and the marshaling of its forces is the omnipotent force in this entire scenario of lies, cruelty and degradation. Something died in the American people on November 22, 1963-call it idealism, innocence or the quest for moral excellence. It is the transformation of human beings which is the authentic reason and motive for the Kennedy murder.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

46. Great excerpt. Yup. The death of hope for a better society and world. n/t

[Dukkha]

26. 2004 - re"election" was the last straw

when America loudly proclaimed to the world:
WE ARE DUMB! FOOL US TWICE! WE DON'T CARE!

[MaineYooper]

27. early cold war

When Truman et al didn't listen to the scientists who said to share the nuclear technology with everyone (Szilard, Bethe among others). These scientists rather accurately predicted the ensuing arms race, and advocated making the information public as a means of preventing it. Sadly, the powers that be mistakenly thought that they could keep the weapons to themselves, and therefore didn't listen.

[Bigmack]

28. August 6, 1945

The US used the first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima.

I've seen all the arguments, so save it!

Using WMD's on civilians... 100,000 dead in one shot...beyond the pale.

Morally downhill from there.

[JoshK]

30. August 1971. Nixon scrapped Bretton Woods & gold standard

The significance of this was that the US had reached the end of the long post-war economic boom, & its trade balance was no longer adequate to maintain gold interconvertability. This was an admission of faltering economic strength. It was the end of the era of the US being the unchallenged world economic leader.

[zmdem]

31. Atlantic Charter

Wherein Churchill agreed to dismantle the British empire in exchange for our entry into the war in Europe. We then replaced England as the major power in the world.

[ComerPerro]

34. 9/11/2001

[Occulus]

36. 1886.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/#significant

and specifically the decision itself, at http://tinyurl.com/5r9vd .

Enjoy :)

[dbt]

38. December 12, 2000, a date which will live in Infamy.

The day when bu$h was elected by a 5-4 vote. The moment when Sandra Day O'Connor became an accessory to rape.

:freak:
dbt

[ObaMania]

40. 2000

definitely. That's when we became irrelevent.

[Stella_Artois]

41. July 4th 1776

When the rebels overthrew the rightful head of state.

[LondonReign2]

43. Reagan, Specifically removal of the Fairness Doctrine

I am more and more convinced that this was the key to the rise of the rabid right-- media domination. And removal of the Fairness Doctrine was the first, crucial step to the long slide we are in now. Without the vast echo chamber that right wing money has built, would we be in the position we are now? I don't think so.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

44. bump

just resurrecting my topic...

[Richard Steele]

45. When we established the ILLEGAL "Federal Reserve System"

That gave a PRIVATE CORPORATION complete control of our economy; It's been a LOSING battle against total corporate fascim ever since.

Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long to get here.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

48. 1968--after the assassinations of RFK and MLK

Both advocated a peaceful approach to world affairs and economic justice within this country. Their assassinations wiped out the most pweroful and popular spokesmen for these ideas, and no national figure has arisen to take their places. Instead, we've seen a steady advance of militarism and dog-eat-dog economics, with potential opposition leaders either killed or marginalized.

[tom_paine]

49. An argument could be made for the 60s after the Busheviks murdered

JFK, RFK & MLK.

But I believe the moment of Jump the Shark came about 1983-4, when Raygun's Initial Descent into Alzheimers allowed the Busheviks to effectively coronate the First Emperor, Poppy Augustus, who ruled 1984-1992.

THAT, in retrospect, was when the true downward spiral of America began and when most of the Totalitarian Seeds were sown that lead to the death of Old America some 16 years later.

My Vote: 1983-84

(it was also the 4th year the Islanders won the Stanley Cup in a row...coincidence...I think not!)

:evilgrin:

[KissMeKate]

50. the 2000 election. eom

[auburngrad82]

51. 1994 the year Gingrich and God took control

That's when we began moving towards a church-state and when the US Constitution began its slow downhill slide into worthlessness.