“An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson and it likely does reflect his opinions on these matters.
I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have thought of Archie Bunker or Donald Trump?
“Archie Bunker”, the stereotyped fictional character in the popular TV show (written by a liberal, Norman Lear). Archie essentially gave voice to much of USA's political opinions and for many others he represented what they considered to be Archie's illogical conclusions that supported the political policies more contrary to our nation's best interests.
In2016 there were sufficient numbers of USA's “Archie Bunkers" supporting Donald Trump, and insufficient numbers supporting any other presidential candidate. Trump was favored by 62,984,828, (46.08%), and Clinton by 65,853,514, (48.18%) of USA's136,669,276 counted votes.
The2017 USA's Electoral College votes split was 304 for Donald Trump, and 227 for Hillary Clinton.
In 2020 there weren't sufficient numbers of USA's “Archie Bunkers” to re-elect the then President Donald Trump. Trump was favored by 74,223,975, (46.85%), and Joseph Biden by 81,283,501, (51.30%) of USA's 158,429,631 counted votes. The2021 USA's Electoral College votes split was 306 for Joseph Biden, and 232 for Donald J. Trump.
“There lies the rub”; the left and right of our nation's spectrum of political opinions are almost equally divided. No major political faction represents a clear majority of our nation's voters. Whenever extremist can lay their hands upon the political levers, they've been willing that are government cease functioning. They threaten and too often do financially "shutdown" our federal government. It is then we should have learned poorer governing is preferable to no governing. Each of our federal government "shutdowns" has been net detrimental to our national debt, and our GDP. Many things became worse, and nothing was improved.
How long will it be before our U.S. congress learn to conduct themselves in an adult fashion? Respectfully, Supposn
Norman Lear's All In The Family was a licensed remake of the BBC's Till Death Us Do Part, featuring the London Cockney working-class bigot Alf Garnett, played by Warren Mitchell. For US TV the bigot had to be made sympathetic, intelligent and witty (not least because American jokes are wisecracks, and the wisecracker always has to be the 'winner', a consideration that does not apply elsewhere on Earth), and therefore was seen as a raisonneur, which in the original version he wasn't so much, he was a warning example, although the British audience evidently enjoyed his daft rants.
Jefferson, as a slaver and slave-raper, would presumably have admired Alf Garnett's and Archie Bunker's views, while pretending otherwise because he was a 'Christian gentleman'.
AITF was written in an era where the 'social justice' causes were rooted in pretty legit issues.
What we have now as far as "Hollywood's Message on What You Should Believe" is largely just far-left coalition building, harvesting decreasingly less and less relevant, increasingly more and more absurd fringe groups but in AITFs era, it was like... black people were less than a few years removed from legal segregation and a lot of the American social system was still way behind the times. It deserved to be mocked and the left had the high ground.
Lear wrote Bunker to be an absurd caricature of your typical 'blue collar white guy'- long the enemy of far left causes (and still is today, though for entirely different reasons) - but knew the show wouldn't fly if Bunker was a totally unsympathetic villain (it was a comedy after all), so the character had dimension. Archie was human. Archie was definitely a bigot, but he wasn't a monster, as most bigots aren't. If a black guy was drowning in a lake, Archie would throw him a life preserver.... as most all human beings would, but that's the difference between how popular media might portray someone like him then, compared to now.
AITF worked because Archie Bunker was basically a real guy that everyone knew in 1974. Archie didn't believe in the left-wing thesis on life, and he didn't believe that someone who thought a rapist should get therapy was 'more noble'' than someone who threw the same rapist out a window. I happen to totally agree.
The media's attempt to portray someone like that, today, would result in a caricature that bore no resemblance that anyone knew, since he would be depicted eating babies, after praying over a Swastika altar, thus totally unrelatable and cancelled after its first season on a streaming service.
AITF won the center, and well represented the poles. That's why it worked.
