This is the best article I’ve seen on the imagined “glory days”. Every era has had its moments of triumphs but sandwiched in between are the myriad of things that show there is no such thing as American exceptionalism.
Excellent article this morning ☕ Rich, and your right on when you wrote "Where is this America" trump wants us to go back to? He's a Reality TV host,who bamboozled his way into the White House, where he proceeded to Tear this Country Apart. He's projecting a way of life to the only people who are Brainwashed enough into believe this Fiction.Good Job, and will reStack ASAP 💯👍🇺🇸💙🌊🌊🌊
I’m reminded of a similar piece Jon Stewart did some years back on The Daily Show. As part of it he showed clips of several politicians (I don’t recall exactly which ones) harking back to better times and saying when those times were.
Stewart then noted in his conclusion that the politician who was in his 80s saw that “golden time” as being 70+ years ago, the 50 year old saw it as being 40ish years ago, and so on. To each of them the time when things were best was when they themselves were children, cared for by their parents and not yet having any real responsibilities or knowledge of the world themselves.
The Myth of America -- in one of the greatest ever cases of irony -- was created by the radical lefties in Hollywood. I say this in jest because look how awful John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, and the film tycoons of the day were (not to mention Kelsey Grammer now). The preponderance of content coming from the US film and TV market rewrote our history and shape our dystopian future. Westerns promote the myth of the "rugged white individual" even though in the actual wild west, Mexicans did most of the cowboy work, employed by white European dandies. Almost every film and TV show from the Marvel Universe to every Liam Neeson movie after the tragic death of his wife, Charles Bronson, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, all the horror franchises, Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, and more are nothing more than "white male rage" and/or "white savior" stories. Look at how they sell the 1950's in Pleasantville, Happy Days, and Back to the Future -- middle class whites in crisp button down shirts and poodle skirts, blacks in service uniforms with lines no deeper than "yes m'am, thank you sir", and the well manicured lawns of middle class suburbia. TV from the 1950's through 1970's was mainly about the chiseled white alpha male and subservient wife. That's the world MAGA wants to return to. A world where even the lowest class white man was still a step above the highest rung black person. Where adult white women could unleash tirades on terrified black school children. Where a white assassin in police custody is afforded every comfort courtesy and a black suspect of a petty crime can be shot dead on site. See, in many ways, the "that was then" is the current now the MAGA base wants to cling to.
tRump, in his bottomless ignorance, does seem to really lock in to the 1890s and "high tariffs and no income taxes" as the sine qua non of Murkan "greatness"...in fact, so much so that it's a plank in his platform of what a tRump MKII will feature. And none of the tens of millions of MAGA supporters even have the barest of clues how that economic policy will impoverish the lot of them.
Oh, well, when that inevitably happens, there's always the Jews, immigrants, trans people, et al to blame when one is living out of one's car.
The best political attack on nostalgia for the 50s I’ve ever seen (and attack on Nostalgia in general) remains Paul Keating in 1992 (yes I see the irony of reaching back to the 90s for an attack on nostalgia, but still)
The best political attack on nostalgia for the 50s I’ve ever seen (and attack on Nostalgia in general) remains Paul Keating in 1992 (yes I see the irony of reaching back to the 90s for an attack on nostalgia, but still)
Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste, The Origins of Our Discontent” explains MAGA. MAGA yearns to return to the time when white men were in charge and everyone else ‘knew their place’. That is what “great” refers to.
This is the best article I’ve seen on the imagined “glory days”. Every era has had its moments of triumphs but sandwiched in between are the myriad of things that show there is no such thing as American exceptionalism.
Excellent article this morning ☕ Rich, and your right on when you wrote "Where is this America" trump wants us to go back to? He's a Reality TV host,who bamboozled his way into the White House, where he proceeded to Tear this Country Apart. He's projecting a way of life to the only people who are Brainwashed enough into believe this Fiction.Good Job, and will reStack ASAP 💯👍🇺🇸💙🌊🌊🌊
Rich, you were a smart guy when we were in Frank McCourt's class 40 years ago and you still are now.
I once had someone tell me, "America was great in the 1990s!" I pointed out to him that a DEMOCRAT named BILL CLINTON was president.
He was shocked. Shot down his theory....
I’m reminded of a similar piece Jon Stewart did some years back on The Daily Show. As part of it he showed clips of several politicians (I don’t recall exactly which ones) harking back to better times and saying when those times were.
Stewart then noted in his conclusion that the politician who was in his 80s saw that “golden time” as being 70+ years ago, the 50 year old saw it as being 40ish years ago, and so on. To each of them the time when things were best was when they themselves were children, cared for by their parents and not yet having any real responsibilities or knowledge of the world themselves.
The Myth of America -- in one of the greatest ever cases of irony -- was created by the radical lefties in Hollywood. I say this in jest because look how awful John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, and the film tycoons of the day were (not to mention Kelsey Grammer now). The preponderance of content coming from the US film and TV market rewrote our history and shape our dystopian future. Westerns promote the myth of the "rugged white individual" even though in the actual wild west, Mexicans did most of the cowboy work, employed by white European dandies. Almost every film and TV show from the Marvel Universe to every Liam Neeson movie after the tragic death of his wife, Charles Bronson, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, all the horror franchises, Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, and more are nothing more than "white male rage" and/or "white savior" stories. Look at how they sell the 1950's in Pleasantville, Happy Days, and Back to the Future -- middle class whites in crisp button down shirts and poodle skirts, blacks in service uniforms with lines no deeper than "yes m'am, thank you sir", and the well manicured lawns of middle class suburbia. TV from the 1950's through 1970's was mainly about the chiseled white alpha male and subservient wife. That's the world MAGA wants to return to. A world where even the lowest class white man was still a step above the highest rung black person. Where adult white women could unleash tirades on terrified black school children. Where a white assassin in police custody is afforded every comfort courtesy and a black suspect of a petty crime can be shot dead on site. See, in many ways, the "that was then" is the current now the MAGA base wants to cling to.
tRump, in his bottomless ignorance, does seem to really lock in to the 1890s and "high tariffs and no income taxes" as the sine qua non of Murkan "greatness"...in fact, so much so that it's a plank in his platform of what a tRump MKII will feature. And none of the tens of millions of MAGA supporters even have the barest of clues how that economic policy will impoverish the lot of them.
Oh, well, when that inevitably happens, there's always the Jews, immigrants, trans people, et al to blame when one is living out of one's car.
The best political attack on nostalgia for the 50s I’ve ever seen (and attack on Nostalgia in general) remains Paul Keating in 1992 (yes I see the irony of reaching back to the 90s for an attack on nostalgia, but still)
https://youtu.be/gc96KVsTKtY?si=U6911oYwh5mGiE4w
The best political attack on nostalgia for the 50s I’ve ever seen (and attack on Nostalgia in general) remains Paul Keating in 1992 (yes I see the irony of reaching back to the 90s for an attack on nostalgia, but still)
https://youtu.be/gc96KVsTKtY?si=U6911oYwh5mGiE4w
Brilliant essay!
Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste, The Origins of Our Discontent” explains MAGA. MAGA yearns to return to the time when white men were in charge and everyone else ‘knew their place’. That is what “great” refers to.