Concerning my previous blog post: Why Most Politics Is Radical
I had been thinking for the last several months about Nixon's "Silent Majority" [1] [2].
The silent majority is usually described as the "mostly conservative" bulk of people who are not easily swayed by politics. Some discussions have suggested that this majority is simply gone, that it doesn't exist. However, I take it that - even while Nixon called them a "mostly conservative" group in his campaigning, I don't think this was accurate in the political sense of the word. "Mostly conservative", I believe, means "leave me alone, and don't try to change too much."
I know the silent majority is alive and well. We are not in an era of extremes - not as extreme as the late 60s represented. That was Nixon's time - and the call for "normal" was powerful and uniting then. I don't know if that call can be made again easily.
It's not easy for politics to call for common sense, and simplicity. Worse yet that the last time a politician succeeded in doing so, we got Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
[1] Wikipedia: Silent Majority
[2] Lassiter, M.D.: The Silent Majority