The Mexicanization of American Politics › American Greatness
Our public life today is a seething cauldron of animosities.
We see it everywhere in American politics. One army general gave voice to the fear in a memorable simile, worrying that the country might collapse like “Mexico and the Central American countries” unless something was done to tamp down partisan passions and encourage unity. His comment went viral, and soon people across the country were talking about, and deploring, the possible “Mexicanization of American politics.”
The governing question, as one distinguished historian put it, is whether “American politics [has] become permanently ‘Mexicanized’?” Another commentator, considering “the Mexicanization of institutions,” defined it as a toxic situation in which “all party contests have the character of civil war.”
We all know what they mean. And it is scant consolation, I believe, to note that the general to whom I refer was writing in 1877 or that “the distinguished historian” was C. Vann Woodward, writing about the 1876 election and its aftermath in his book Reunion and Reaction (1951).
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https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/29/the-mexicanization-of-american-politics/
