How our democracy became so toxic?

There was a time when the patricians who ran the show could retreat to the safety of their neighborhood watering hole and contemplate the coarseness of the common man. 

{mosads}The Redwood in downtown Los Angeles was such a spot. Behind its Pirates of the Caribbean facade, for decades the Redwood was a veritable Garden of Eden for the elite decision makers of L.A. It was a place where the City Council president or the mayor or the district attorney or a county supervisor could sit down and have a beer (no more than two) with a reporter or an editor from the L.A. Times and shoot the breeze — strictly off-the-record of course. 

Among the props of indecency, decent people could discuss topics of interest, determine the difference between right and wrong and craft legislation and editorials that were both right-minded and for the common good. 

How do you think Richard Nixon was made Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president? Or the killer of the Black Dahlia escaped justice? 

There was an understanding. 

If TV dented this cozy arrangement and the internet took out its headlights, social media has totaled the whole deal. Like an abandoned car on Steven Avery’s scrap yard in rural Wisconsin, civil public discourse of the sort that once occurred in the confines of places like the Redwood, has been stripped of its parts. And, if you look too closely through its fogged up and cracked windows, you might encounter the body of a murder victim inside.

It’s an important point to consider as we approach Tuesday’s election, which may be historic only for the vulgar campaigns which got us to this point.

Do you think the patrons of the Redwood ever discussed the size of a man’s hands? Certainly not. Would an editor have approved a recent column by Ann Coulter, which comes with not one but six references to female genitalia and the use of terms more fit for the Penthouse Forum than an august national journal? Never.

In 30 years or so, just before artificial intelligence takes over, someone will make a documentary about the fall of 2016. Once the narrator implies we were, in fact, all on the Pineapple Express carrying gram baggies of Sour Diesel, the director will have to cut to the soundtrack. If it were up to me, I’d use Big Baby D.R.A.M.’s Broccoli, which features Lil Yachty. That might explain it all.

So what is history? And where will we be when that documentary is finally screened?

Consider the Chicago Cubs. Back in 1908, at the time of the team’s previous World Series win, there was no radio broadcast of their triumph. It happened and people read about it in the newspaper the next day. 

Since then, then the American Century played out. Our nation grew into a military and industrial powerhouse. We fought in major wars, invented the means to destroy the earth, conquered our solar system and developed the means to eradicate most of the world’s diseases.

But we also invented beer hats, pet rocks and candles that smell like White Castle burgers.

We’ve developed entertainment like that soars like the “Sound of Music” or “Fiddler on the Roof” and at the same time worry about Kim and Khloe’s wardrobe and whether or not actors in a porn film should wear condoms.

The Cubs win Wednesday might be the other bookend of the American Century or it could be a crossroads if you will. 

Rod Serling would call this “the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.”

Or it’s a junction. The only choice now is “History”  or “Make America Great Again.”

Girardot is an award-winning former editor and columnist with the Los Angeles News Group. He is co-author of true crime tales “A Taste For Murder” and the soon-to-be released “Betrayal in Blue: The Shocking Memoir of the Scandal that Rocked the NYPD.” Follow him on Twitter @FrankGirardot

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