What Liberal Consensus?

So now that electoral shock and awe is over, I wanted to make a few points that were sloshing around in my head this weekend...

For those of you claiming you don't recognize this country anymore, ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? Here are a few things from our history that really ought to give the lie to any kind of real "liberal consensus"(or even basic sensibility in our general populace or government)

• We enshrined the illegality of drinking in the Constitution.
  
• We joined WWI based on phony news stories about Belgian babies being impaled on German bayonettes.
  
• Joe McCarthy commanded national attention and we had an actual Red Scare.
  
• We had a homosexual transvestite as head of the FBI, but he was held in esteem as a paragon of traditional America.
  
• Only 50 years ago, segregation was legal.
  
• Less than 100 years ago, women couldn't vote.
  
• People thought War Of The Worlds was actually happening.
  
• Rush Limbaugh has listeners, Ann Coulter has readers, Fox News has viewers.
  

In short, America has always been an inconsistent bizare country where people are credulous and where change in the name of social and economic justice only occurs when people act like they want it. But those causes are not the causes of our government, nor are they the causes of the majority of the populace. It just so happens that for a brief period, it seemed different. But really, the bad old days are here again because they've always been here. I'm not sure what to do about it, I'm just taking a little comfort in the fact that as a nation, we've been here before and yet good things have happened.