Reply #2: Not buying all of it.

[bemildred]

He is correct however about the pivotal effect of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and McKinley's first forays into foreign adventurism in the creation of the current political dispensation in the USA. That is when the current two-party duopoly originated and consolidated it's control of US political life.

And he is also correct that the Neocons and the Bushites are not some sort of abberation in American political life, however much we might wish it so. They are mostly unusual in their stunning incompetence, which has proved remarkable even by American standards.