A People's History of the United States

The result of the crisis of the early 1970s was that most Americans became dispirited. Zinn suggests that the “citizenry [had become] disillusioned with politics and with what pretended to be intelligent discussions of politics” and so it “turned its attention (or had its attention turned) to entertainment, to gossip, to ten thousand schemes for self-help” (564). Meanwhile, those whom the system left out, especially minorities and the disenfranchised, became increasingly violent as they saw their interests unacknowledged. But class consciousness had completely dissolved. America’s political establishment also changed. Since the Civil War, the two parties had maintained antagonistic goals. Zinn argues that with the election of Jimmy Carter, a religious Southern Democrat, the parties merged ideologically around moderate policies. Carter and his successors hewed to generally similar policies. They were bellicose abroad and callous at home, and they refused to contemplate real change. While Carter praised the Occupational Safety and Health Administration while George H. W. Bush touted his signing of the Clean Air Act which empowered the EPA to restrict pollution, the operations of both agencies were drastically cut back when business leaders protested (575). And many Democrats, formerly the party of Roosevelt and the New Deal, complained about welfare programs (579).