The "Ten Years Behind" Theory
What happens to Republicans eventually happens to Democrats
I’m 45, which is the first time in a person’s life when there are past events that: 1) happened when you were an adult, and 2) happened a long time ago. Age gives you perspective that you didn’t have before. Being in your 40s has pros and cons, but the pros are definitely: 1) The power to instantly end any pop culture trend just by embracing it, and 2) Perspective.
One thing I’ve noticed in my 20-odd years of adulthood is this: Everything that happens to the Republican Party seems to happen to the Democratic Party about ten years later. I don’t chalk this up to some magical cosmic link: I chalk it up to the fact that the asteroid strike that caused the crazier species in the political ecosystem to dominate happened on the right about a decade before it happened on the left. The markers that define this pattern are vague and hard to measure — how do you determine when a movement became “influential” or when a policy has became “dumber than fuck”? — but I think if you step back far enough, a trend becomes clear. Here are events as I see them — maybe this story will seem familiar to you.
The “asteroid strike” I referenced was the end of the monoculture and the rise of partisan media. Fox News launched in 1996, and by the late ‘90s/early ‘2000s, Fox News was for old people what Elmo is for toddlers: A soothing thing that’s just sort of constantly on in the background. Around that same time, right-wing talk radio became a juggernaut, boosted by the expansion of Clear Channel Media (now iHeart), which owned 40 radio stations in 1996 and owned 1,240 in 2003. Those sources plus the internet made it possible for a right-leaning person to get their news exclusively from partisan sources. My Republican grandfather watched ABC News every night, but if he was one generation younger, his news intake would have involved endless shrieking about how sharia law is hiding behind every corner, The Gays are on a crusade to obliterate Christmas, and all bad things are enabled by the evil, America-hating Democrats.
