Once More Unto the Memory Hole, Dear Friends, Once More

Five times in my life I have been either an eye-witness or close by when something of great value was bulldozed flat by someone whose rationale was basically, "Well, I've got da bulldozers, and I wanna do it, and there's no one to stop me, so..."

On January 19, 2002, the Chicago Bears lost a playoff game to the Philadelphia Eagles.  This was the last game the Bears would ever play in the "old" Soldier Field.  Within what seemed like minutes after of the final gun a fleet of bulldozers that had been waiting under the stands rolled into the field and began gutting the place, leaving only the outer shell standing.  This was done because Da Mare, Richie Daley, wanted a new stadium and the old one was in his way.  We could see just a little of the destruction from the windows of an apartment where an acquaintance of mine lived.

On the night of March 30, 2003, in violation of FCC regulations, Da Mare ordered city crews to render the Meigs Field airport unusable by bulldozing the landing strip in the middle of the night.  Because Da Mare hadn't bothered to file the required demolition notice sixteen planes were left stranded at the airport and one inbound flight had to be diverted by ATC because of equipment that the crews had parked to further blocked the runway. This was done because the airport was directly adjacent to the Chicago downtown and Da Mare wanted the land for a park or whatever.  By morning practically everyone in Chicago had called everyone else to say, "Holy shit, he really did it." 

The other three occasions are...

When the Republican Party's disgraceful record during the Clinton Administration was bulldozed down the Memory Hole during the Bush Administration.  

When the Republican Party's monstrous record during the Bush Administration was bulldozed down the Memory Hole during the Obama Administration.  

And when the deliberate sabotage and unhinged racism of the Republican Party during the Obama Administration was bulldozed down the Memory Hole during the Trump Administration.  

These last three were done because neither the Republican Party nor their enablers in the mainstream wanted to be held responsible for the heinous shit they had just spent years saying and doing, and between then they commanded a fleet of media bulldozers big enough to get away with it. On each occasion, I could watch the demolition as-it-happened, live on teevee, every day,

For more on the effectiveness of these last three bulldozings we join The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes already in progress...

Sykes:  ...as somebody who, y'know, thought the Republicans were going off on... off the rails five years ago, um, that seems... that seems quaint right now.  It's... it's amazing to me, I have to say, and you can accuse me of being naïve, the speed with which the Republican has been corrupted and the intellectual infrastructure of the Right has been absolutely destroyed.  The speed and the thoroughness is really amazing. That this could happen in just one presidential term!

And there it is, all tied up in a neat bundle.  Because it is now official American political history that everything wrong with the Right happened in "just one presidential term" -- four short years -- how much of a hero/genius/warrior/poet must Charlie Sykes be that he started noticing that something seemed amiss five years ago?

No Half Measures