The Cold War was really the great struggle of the 20th Century and it shaped American political life from top to bottom.
Jeff SharletThere are real radical Muslim groups out there that really are pretty villainous. You don't have to make them up.
Jeff SharletLiberals were just as engaged and using the rhetoric of a sort of a battle with the Soviets and with Communism in general, with an evil empire.
Jeff SharletYou can recruit the populace conservatism for the interests of corporate conservatism that the two things can be married into one unholy union.
Jeff SharletThe politics of that year [2004] are old now, but the problem remains the same, the real culture clash of American life. It's between the essence of fundamentalism - paternalism, authority, and charity - and the messy imperatives of democracy, "the din of the vox populi" once derided by Abram Vereide. It's the difference between false unity, preached from above, and real solidarity, pledged between brothers and sisters - the kinds who are always bickering.
Jeff Sharlet