 | Edited on Wed Jan-16-08 08:28 PM by Kurt_and_Hunter Reading some of the Obama-Reagan threads, it seems that there is enthusiasm for using Reagan's method of appeal in a good cause. What is overlooked is that the misty, hackneyed Chris Matthews fantasy of Ronald Reagan's appeal has nothing to do with Reagan's actual appeal. The Reagan myth... hopeful, optimistic guy who made everyone feel good... was constructed in the mid 1980s, starting with some matyrdom mythology when he was shot, then becoming fixed fake-history between the validation of the 1984 landslide re-election and the onset of Iran-contra.
Reagan was a scary man before he became senile. He wasn't America's favorite uncle, he was a noted extremist, and often described with that word... the guy who wanted to blow up the world. Reagan was the guy who said in the 1960s (I think while running for governor of California), referring to student anti-war protesters, "If they want a bloodbath, I'll give it to them."
Reagan's real appeal, the appeal that ultimately crushed Carter in 1980, was classic nationalist militarism. The optimism was nostalgic in character, not the actual optimism one finds in ages of progress. It was the sentimental, delusional optimism of an old bore telling embellished war stories, or of someone who has crawled inside a bottle of booze... let's pretend it's the 1950s when we didn't have all these problems. And the problems? Women... blacks... hippies... Iran. (Boy is that eerily familiar.)
When Reagan was running it was a fad to wear T-shirts that said "FUCK IRAN," or with a picture of Mickey Mouse in an Uncle Sam uniform flipping he bird, and saying, "Hey Iran!" And it was widely accepted that all black people were on welfare, and were pretty much the problem. That was the environment. We were humiliated abroad, and in the midst of a profound backlash against the 1955-1975 hard charging civil rights era. People felt that abortion and pornography and mixed marriage were ruining America. The Reagan Democrats were all white people who decided to go over to the the racist side for a while. (Forced integration of schools was a major social flash-point, and not in the south as much as in cities like Boston.)
It was a classic breeding ground for the iron triangle of militarist nationalism, social conservatism and racism.
Militarist nationalism and traditionalist reactionary nostalgia and nostalgia for segregation... these things go hand in hand. They form the basis of the right-wing political style. They are a powerful mixture. That kind of nationalism is not, however, a transferable commodity. It can not be harnessed for good.
Reading of the admiration for Reagan's ability to move the country, I am left to think that some folks believe Reagan could have moved the country in either direction. That is not how it works. You can't give people a hard-on by cutting the military. You cannot comfort people who reject social progress by offering more of the same.
If anyone on our side really wanted to co-opt the emotional methods of nationalism they would quickly find that it doesn't work without the hate. The people most turned on by the Reagan era were not turned on by wholesome pride and optimism. They were turned on by a resurgence of racial pride, not national pride. It became cool to be white. And they were optimistic that the tumbling collective prestige of white people could be reversed.
Reagan's rationale for tax cuts was that we could make up the lost money by cracking down on the looting of the treasury by idle blacks. He spoke of "welfare queens" who had a fleet of cadillacs, and laughed their asses off at all the hard working white people whose money they misappropriated to blow on drugs and jewelry. It was a well developed fantasy of resentment of the poor, including the bizarre idea that the poor had more money than all us "good" people who do all the work. And AIDS? Something gay people cooked up to try to murder all us straight people.
If we are to harness the awesome power of Reagan's political style, which wretched minority will we blame for all of society's ills? Because that famous Reagan optimism doesn't work without a scape-goat. Welfare Queens, Iranians, homosexuals? What "evil empire" will give our lives meaning, as participants in a Manichean slug-fest for all the marbles?
So I am left thinking of the Star Trek episode where the historian tries to run a planet just like Nazi Germany, which was a pretty dynamic mode of social organization, but without all the bad stuff. In short order the society develops all the bad stuff of Nazi Germany because it's built into the system. |
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