"None So Bad" by "None So Blind" Author

Andrew Bard Schmookler, posting at Common Dreams, serves up "The Worst President in History? Why the Question Mark?" that builds off the fine work of Princeton historian Sean Wilentz recently published in Rolling Stone as “The Worst President in History?. Dr. Schmookler has recently rolled out his own effort "See Not Evil - The Blinding of America" that is very promising. Here is a short version of his reasons for his site:

Indeed, the purpose of NoneSoBlind is to provide a coherent picture of the perilous state of American civilization, a vision that shows how these two moral crises — the rise of fascistic forces in the political realm and the degradation of values in the cultural realm–are two sides of the same coin.

Polarized societies must still be understood as wholes, albeit as wholes that are failing to put the pieces together.

Accordingly, as the ideas developed here show, America’s increasing polarization represents a growing failure of both sides of America’s divide to meet the fundamental moral challenge of civilization: to harmonize the needs of human nature with the demands of good order. As a result of this failure, the two halves of America have each developed different –but deeply complementary– moral blind spots. (See Dimension 3 in Book-cubed.)

The moral blindness of the conservatives is that they’ve become unable to tell the difference between the good and the evil. They have been seduced by a leadership that dresses itself in the mere trappings of righteous order (like the flag and the faith).

Many American liberals, on the other hand, have become blind to how vital and how real that difference is. They have failed to recognize the evils that come from not distinguishing between right desire and wrong desire.

Lacking clear moral vision, the conservative half of America has thus unwittingly given their power to evil forces, while the liberal half –imagining it a virtue to tolerate the intolerable and to judge nothing but “judgmentalism”—has helped grease America’s slide into moral decadence. (See Dimension 1 in Book-cubed.)

The conservative half of America gives too much deference to the ruling element in the order/nature dichotomy, while the liberal half gives correspondingly too little.
NoneSoBlind thus show how these two complementary forms of moral blindness have led America downward into a crisis as serious, as any in the nation’s history, one in which the very soul of America is at stake.

The vision developed here not only provides an analysis of the fundamental problem but it offers a solution to it as well.

NoneSoBlind presents blueprint for a “prophetic social movement,” a way of speaking moral truth about these now-ascendant amoral forces that can awaken our conservative countrymen from the trance state into which they have been seduced.

At the same time, this “prophetic” approach will require America’s liberals to re-establish a much deeper connection with the moral and spiritual core of our human reality. For from liberalism’s present moral superficiality and flaccidity, it will not be possible to speak from that place of conviction from which comes that power of prophetic speech.

At its root, then, our present national crisis is a symptom of moral and spiritual deterioration of the American cultural system as a whole. To meet the challenge of this crisis successfully, both sides of our polarized society will have to become –morally and spiritually—more whole. (See Dimension 4 in Book-cubed.)

While I might take exception to the idea that liberals have blame in the long version of his manifesto, I'll share his idea nevertheless.

... unwilling to take seriously the distinction between right desire and wrong desire, liberalism has been complicit in the emergence of a trash culture that undermines standards and ideals and that cultivates what is base and degrading. This moral decadence, in turn, has created among many Americans a kind of moral anxiety that has historically provided fascistic forces an opening to exploit in their quest for power.

I'd like to point out that corporate America is behind much of the "trash culture". Going fully tin foil hat perhaps I do often wonder if "bread and games" might apply. Dumb the population down, distract them, and the deliver enough fear and blame game to stay in power.

I'll take time to study what Dr. Schmookler is suggesting yet wanted to pass his work on to my rare reader(s). Peace ... or War!