http://www.nationalreview.com/node/437818/print 1968 Was Worse; Calm Down, Drama Queens
The doom-mongers should take a chill pill and consider history.
By Kevin D. Williamson — July 14, 2016
A political observer insists that the country hasn’t been this divided since the 1850s.
Which political observer? Lots of them, as it turns out.
In 2011, California governor Jerry Brown insisted that the country was experiencing a regime crisis of the sort not seen since the run-up to the Civil War. In 2013, Professor Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida said the same thing. In 2014, it was Gawker; in 2010, it was Jimmy Carter. It’s a pretty common claim.
It isn’t true, of course. While race riots and snipers do bring to mind the worst of the 1960s, it isn’t 1968, much less 1860. We’ve had a few years of economic weakness, but there is broadly shared prosperity. We have corrupt and often ineffective public institutions, but government remains responsive enough to ensure general consent, and, beyond its provision of basic physical security, it is less and less relevant to our immediate happiness and well-being. Even as our political discourse becomes more theatrical and hysterical, we are, as a people, remarkably complacent. When Sean Hannity sat down to do a “town hall” show with Donald Trump, he attracted an unusually large audience — but 28 times as many people tuned in to watch reruns of The Big Bang Theory, the Coriolanus of broad, laugh-tracked sitcoms.
You’d think a country on the verge of political meltdown would pay a little more attention to the news. Despite what you may have heard from Donald Trump, National Review is the largest magazine of its kind, and our readership is about 4 percent of US Weekly’s. Golf Digest, Glamour, and Martha Stewart Living all have readerships that the New York Times management would sell Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.’s soul for, if anybody were buying.
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