What's happening today in the US is what happened to the Roman Republic. It grew so powerful that it no longer feared external enemies. So it turned inward to find its enemies and thereby destroyed itself.
This was so insightful, MIke. You put together the missing lived-pieces I'd seen, felt and wondered about Reagan (and the others). This paragraph caught me and explained why my dad who was Republican, but detested Reagan. My dad was drafted-infantry in Battle of the Bulge, losing his buddies to war, then headed into Germany...
"Reagan never left the United States during the Second World War. He served in Culver City, editing training films for the Army Air Corps. He had seen the liberation footage. He had not shot it. Somewhere between the screening room and the Oval Office, the film migrated from something he watched into something he lived."
This is one of your best articles, hitting a lot of "there - there's". Thank you so much!
If one looks back over the centuries of recorded history, one will find that ruling cliques and classes, priests/evangelists, lords and monarchs, have fostered ignorance and prejudice, and manipulated dogma for the purpose of consolidating and maintaining power and privilege.
The "conservative" movement in the US has always been associated with the "capitalist" element - looking to keep their money - and the "left" with the working class - looking to improve their lot - and so the dialectic will continue- and the pendulum swings back and forth as each side overdoes the situation.
It seems as it is either serfdom or revolution if there is no equitable economic balance.
The messaging from the "left" for the mid-terms seems to be saying - enough is enough - how much more do you want!
The message from the 'right" seems to be not that I will succeed but that you must also fail and be subservient. Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
"The "conservative" movement in the US has always been associated with the "capitalist" element"
Not true. Hoover was anti-capitalist. He wrote a book against capitalism. The embrace of market fundamentalism (what most leftists mean by "capitalism") — didn't really happen until after the Second World War.
Hoover is not only president with some inconsistencies. Teddy Roosevelt was another.. Sure he ran as trustbuster but he was racist and imperialist serving capitalists interests. if you look at the whole history the divide between slavery holders and abolitionists continues to this day in different costumes.
The original divide grew under the explosion of industrial capitalism. It became particularly profound In the shadow of the wealthy owners of oil, railroads, mass manufacturers of all kinds , and banks. The contradiction was clear and wide.
In the early 20th century it spawned communists, socialists, the greenback party and various reform factions within the two parties
Hoover of course listened to classical contemporary conservatives who urged him to balance the budget after the Wall Street collapse and the beginning of the economic downturn. He served the business interests and brought on the depression.
Sure FDR made a few enduring reforms in the face of crisis. However, he didn’t have a comprehensive plan. His was an opportunistic reply to the depression.His actions never matched his rhetoric or as likely couldn’t. He never met race head on and it was in 1937 he was persuaded by business interests to balance the budget sending the economy back into depression. Massive spending during the war brought the post war prosperity.
It was during the thirties that the conservative movement spawned America Firsts as well as a massive Nazi contingent.The animosity by this conservative reactionary force came from business interests and social conservatives. Father Couglin flourished representing the right wing religious contingent. As did Henry Ford who was virulently antisemitic.
Another nativist anti-immigrant movement brought forced repatriations of immigrants
This was nothing new and it was often the working class and religious bigotry that stimulated them. The no nothings flourished in 1830s a violent anti catholic movement.
Goldwater lost big in 64.. And his loss spawned the modern conservative movement. Rightwing business interests realized that they needed infrastructure to combat liberal and radical views that were centered in the Universities. Over the next decades they built a network of 500 think tanks intended to support the business interests that paid for them.
Johnson’s actions on civil rights and welfare centered race against as national subject. Nixon cultivated the racists and catered to big business. Leaning into the race issue he campaigned on law and order.Nixon cultivated a vehement and rigid anti drug ideology, But as Haldeman, his chief of staff explained from prison, the real issue was to undermine the liberals, hippies and the blacks.
Anti communism rose to the top of the conservative agenda after World War Two and spawned all kinds of red baiting including the McCarthy witch hunts
Before Reagan came on the scene, the scapegoating of liberals Blacks and Communists and republican support of big business had congealed.
Not only was Reagan supported by what now are called movement conservatives, but he ran on and supported their agenda of unfettered capitalism, deregulation, smaller government, lower taxes, balancing the budget, opposing abortion, racism, anti welfare or any redistrubutional schemes as well as virulent anti communism or an adjacent ideologies.
Most was to the benefit of the wealthy and adjacent big business. Balancing the budget was a nod to the obsessions of the bond market. Deregulation was to help banks consolidate as well as other corporations. It lead directly to failure of the saving loans companies. I think 1000 of them failed. It also opened the door to private equity firms.
In service to defeating communism Reagan ended up tripling the public debt.But aligned with big business he spent that money on defense, intervened in El Salvador (which helped his illegal arms trading fiasco) and strangely invaded a small island in the Caribbean to stop the communists. The tax reduction was the largest % reduction in history. Its construction was decidedly regressive.
Of course his racism is well documented in your essay (and that was not a comprehensive review).
His false stories included an anaceptic and thoroughly distorted view of American History. He cribbed”the shinning city on the hill “from the puritans who hung 8 Quakers and killed as many witches. Even his amnesty for immigrants was a double edged sword as big business has long depended on cheap immigrant labor.
The anomaly might have been his antiabortion stance. Keeping mind that Roe was decided in 1973, by 1980 the new iteration of Christian nationalism had organized and grown by organizing opposition to abortion as a rallying cry. Yes, he was aligning himself with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Anita Briant, Phyllis Schaffley, and so on . All virulently ani gay, anti abortion, pro capitalism genuine conservatives. Absolutely none of these religious leaders prominent issues are mentioned in or aligned with the Gospels.
Same as it is today.
This is far too much history already. However it is history that makes clear that the long held opposition between workers and large property owners originates with protections of the owners of assets.While class is no longer as simple to see as it once was, the owners of large accumulations of capital is as easy as ever to see.. The original constitution disenfranchised most people. It favored large landowners. In fact the protection for property is about the only support for capitalism. But that is all it needed, if slave production was embedded.
If you trace the history of the American corporation from its roots in charters issued by the Queen intended to indemnify investors in merchant voyages, up to our Supreme Courts latest abomination Citizens United, you will find that the court has over the last two centuries or more has increased protections for corporations by extending constitutional rights intended for civilians to the fictitious corporation. Furthermore, there was a web of laws enacted in tandem with the court decisions also intended to protect corporations. This is one of the primary pillars of conservatism. Another is a deep alignment with the heretical form of American Christianity.
Your essay is engaging and does a good job of tracing a pseudo intellectual history of conservatism. However your valorization of the good will and geniality of Reagan rings false. If he wasn’t a dunce he played one. The Laffer curve was silly then. His racism was cruel. His alignment with Religious radicalism was also cruel. And no serious person doesn’t see that his deregulation and tax policy is what underpins the beginning of neoliberalism. He is the one who initiated the anti goverment movement and the anti union movement. And for all the damage he caused, he never really copped to anything. Anti-liberalism dressed in various costumes has been with us for much longer than you indicate.At the center of it is protection of business. And it always has been. Anti- communism led us into useless wars. And imperial intended to produce prospects for capitalism lead to numerous coups and invasions.Many of the effects that emanated from serving capitalists interest are still with us. Same it was with native land invasions, which were justified by Locke and the Church. All of the intellectual claims of conservative ideology has always been a fig leaf- and all liberals knew it. Their so called ideology changed as was needed always in order to protect capitalism’s accumulation of wealth and power.
This brings to mind the anecdote about the bartender who kicks out the first neo-Nazi who steps into his bar. When asked he wouldn't even let the man order, the bartender explains that if you tolerate one neo-Nazi, next time, he brings a friend. And then they bring more friends, and soon enough your bar is full of neo-Nazis and nobody else wants to be there.
Whatever the current iteration “ideology” that gives individuals permission to justify racism, bigotry, misogyny, selfishness in its multiple disguises it seems will forever rear and recycle its ugly head. Powerful indeed. The lineage you describe rings true.
Below is a link to the Slate Magazine article that gets into more granular detail about “Linda” than any other source I have encountered. Oh the irony of her whiteness!
While I find your post very helpful in explaining what happened, I'd like to have your insight regarding why the right coalesced around hating the left. I find one answer in Corey Robin's book The Reactionary Mind https://coreyrobin.com/books/the-reactionary-mind/ I look forward to your thoughts
✏️👌, I’d only add that there were people, admittedly a minority, in the 90s who noticed what was happening. They were of course ignored by the media. But they saw, because their political views were based firmly on an analysis of class, that fascism and capitalism tend to go hand in hand, and that the reactionaries were not mouthing empty slogans about “the Left” as if it were a null value.
That term to them was not, nor has it ever been, interchangeable with just another bugaboo. It has definite political content, though it may be concealed by vague rhetoric. It meant, as it always has meant, redistributing society’s wealth and political power more broadly among the people instead of within a “very tiny, obscenely rich owning class that has it all” (Parenti). It could be called communism, socialism, or democracy, the Left, or anything else. As Parenti said, speaking of Gingrich and the Kristol set, “It’s the same old reactionary class agenda.”
Needless to say, these people who were noticing the fascist trend tended themselves to be on the left. I mentioned Parenti. Here’s a talk in two parts which he gave in 1995, which I used to say was prophetic, but now is just conventional wisdom:
The deeper problem may not be who controls the machine, but what the machine is designed to reward. When outrage, attention, and polarization become profitable, changing the operators without changing the incentives rarely changes the outcome.
Funny that you’ve posted this as I’ve been following a very similar line myself. I am expecting Rick Perlstein’s “Before the Storm” about Barry Goldwater tomorrow.
While I find this article informative in its own way, providing background that one needs to know about, I can't help but ask the question of whether this is a case of "it takes one to know one."
Could parallel arguments be made for narratives in the Democrat party?
Is the thesis really, "The turth is nothing. Power is everything."?
Excellent. One of your best.
What's happening today in the US is what happened to the Roman Republic. It grew so powerful that it no longer feared external enemies. So it turned inward to find its enemies and thereby destroyed itself.
The GOP is quite literally insane.
This was so insightful, MIke. You put together the missing lived-pieces I'd seen, felt and wondered about Reagan (and the others). This paragraph caught me and explained why my dad who was Republican, but detested Reagan. My dad was drafted-infantry in Battle of the Bulge, losing his buddies to war, then headed into Germany...
"Reagan never left the United States during the Second World War. He served in Culver City, editing training films for the Army Air Corps. He had seen the liberation footage. He had not shot it. Somewhere between the screening room and the Oval Office, the film migrated from something he watched into something he lived."
This is one of your best articles, hitting a lot of "there - there's". Thank you so much!
If one looks back over the centuries of recorded history, one will find that ruling cliques and classes, priests/evangelists, lords and monarchs, have fostered ignorance and prejudice, and manipulated dogma for the purpose of consolidating and maintaining power and privilege.
The "conservative" movement in the US has always been associated with the "capitalist" element - looking to keep their money - and the "left" with the working class - looking to improve their lot - and so the dialectic will continue- and the pendulum swings back and forth as each side overdoes the situation.
It seems as it is either serfdom or revolution if there is no equitable economic balance.
The messaging from the "left" for the mid-terms seems to be saying - enough is enough - how much more do you want!
The message from the 'right" seems to be not that I will succeed but that you must also fail and be subservient. Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
"The "conservative" movement in the US has always been associated with the "capitalist" element"
Not true. Hoover was anti-capitalist. He wrote a book against capitalism. The embrace of market fundamentalism (what most leftists mean by "capitalism") — didn't really happen until after the Second World War.
No,he is correct.
Hoover is not only president with some inconsistencies. Teddy Roosevelt was another.. Sure he ran as trustbuster but he was racist and imperialist serving capitalists interests. if you look at the whole history the divide between slavery holders and abolitionists continues to this day in different costumes.
The original divide grew under the explosion of industrial capitalism. It became particularly profound In the shadow of the wealthy owners of oil, railroads, mass manufacturers of all kinds , and banks. The contradiction was clear and wide.
In the early 20th century it spawned communists, socialists, the greenback party and various reform factions within the two parties
Hoover of course listened to classical contemporary conservatives who urged him to balance the budget after the Wall Street collapse and the beginning of the economic downturn. He served the business interests and brought on the depression.
Sure FDR made a few enduring reforms in the face of crisis. However, he didn’t have a comprehensive plan. His was an opportunistic reply to the depression.His actions never matched his rhetoric or as likely couldn’t. He never met race head on and it was in 1937 he was persuaded by business interests to balance the budget sending the economy back into depression. Massive spending during the war brought the post war prosperity.
It was during the thirties that the conservative movement spawned America Firsts as well as a massive Nazi contingent.The animosity by this conservative reactionary force came from business interests and social conservatives. Father Couglin flourished representing the right wing religious contingent. As did Henry Ford who was virulently antisemitic.
Another nativist anti-immigrant movement brought forced repatriations of immigrants
This was nothing new and it was often the working class and religious bigotry that stimulated them. The no nothings flourished in 1830s a violent anti catholic movement.
Goldwater lost big in 64.. And his loss spawned the modern conservative movement. Rightwing business interests realized that they needed infrastructure to combat liberal and radical views that were centered in the Universities. Over the next decades they built a network of 500 think tanks intended to support the business interests that paid for them.
Johnson’s actions on civil rights and welfare centered race against as national subject. Nixon cultivated the racists and catered to big business. Leaning into the race issue he campaigned on law and order.Nixon cultivated a vehement and rigid anti drug ideology, But as Haldeman, his chief of staff explained from prison, the real issue was to undermine the liberals, hippies and the blacks.
Anti communism rose to the top of the conservative agenda after World War Two and spawned all kinds of red baiting including the McCarthy witch hunts
Before Reagan came on the scene, the scapegoating of liberals Blacks and Communists and republican support of big business had congealed.
Not only was Reagan supported by what now are called movement conservatives, but he ran on and supported their agenda of unfettered capitalism, deregulation, smaller government, lower taxes, balancing the budget, opposing abortion, racism, anti welfare or any redistrubutional schemes as well as virulent anti communism or an adjacent ideologies.
Most was to the benefit of the wealthy and adjacent big business. Balancing the budget was a nod to the obsessions of the bond market. Deregulation was to help banks consolidate as well as other corporations. It lead directly to failure of the saving loans companies. I think 1000 of them failed. It also opened the door to private equity firms.
In service to defeating communism Reagan ended up tripling the public debt.But aligned with big business he spent that money on defense, intervened in El Salvador (which helped his illegal arms trading fiasco) and strangely invaded a small island in the Caribbean to stop the communists. The tax reduction was the largest % reduction in history. Its construction was decidedly regressive.
Of course his racism is well documented in your essay (and that was not a comprehensive review).
His false stories included an anaceptic and thoroughly distorted view of American History. He cribbed”the shinning city on the hill “from the puritans who hung 8 Quakers and killed as many witches. Even his amnesty for immigrants was a double edged sword as big business has long depended on cheap immigrant labor.
The anomaly might have been his antiabortion stance. Keeping mind that Roe was decided in 1973, by 1980 the new iteration of Christian nationalism had organized and grown by organizing opposition to abortion as a rallying cry. Yes, he was aligning himself with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Anita Briant, Phyllis Schaffley, and so on . All virulently ani gay, anti abortion, pro capitalism genuine conservatives. Absolutely none of these religious leaders prominent issues are mentioned in or aligned with the Gospels.
Same as it is today.
This is far too much history already. However it is history that makes clear that the long held opposition between workers and large property owners originates with protections of the owners of assets.While class is no longer as simple to see as it once was, the owners of large accumulations of capital is as easy as ever to see.. The original constitution disenfranchised most people. It favored large landowners. In fact the protection for property is about the only support for capitalism. But that is all it needed, if slave production was embedded.
If you trace the history of the American corporation from its roots in charters issued by the Queen intended to indemnify investors in merchant voyages, up to our Supreme Courts latest abomination Citizens United, you will find that the court has over the last two centuries or more has increased protections for corporations by extending constitutional rights intended for civilians to the fictitious corporation. Furthermore, there was a web of laws enacted in tandem with the court decisions also intended to protect corporations. This is one of the primary pillars of conservatism. Another is a deep alignment with the heretical form of American Christianity.
Your essay is engaging and does a good job of tracing a pseudo intellectual history of conservatism. However your valorization of the good will and geniality of Reagan rings false. If he wasn’t a dunce he played one. The Laffer curve was silly then. His racism was cruel. His alignment with Religious radicalism was also cruel. And no serious person doesn’t see that his deregulation and tax policy is what underpins the beginning of neoliberalism. He is the one who initiated the anti goverment movement and the anti union movement. And for all the damage he caused, he never really copped to anything. Anti-liberalism dressed in various costumes has been with us for much longer than you indicate.At the center of it is protection of business. And it always has been. Anti- communism led us into useless wars. And imperial intended to produce prospects for capitalism lead to numerous coups and invasions.Many of the effects that emanated from serving capitalists interest are still with us. Same it was with native land invasions, which were justified by Locke and the Church. All of the intellectual claims of conservative ideology has always been a fig leaf- and all liberals knew it. Their so called ideology changed as was needed always in order to protect capitalism’s accumulation of wealth and power.
This brings to mind the anecdote about the bartender who kicks out the first neo-Nazi who steps into his bar. When asked he wouldn't even let the man order, the bartender explains that if you tolerate one neo-Nazi, next time, he brings a friend. And then they bring more friends, and soon enough your bar is full of neo-Nazis and nobody else wants to be there.
Whatever the current iteration “ideology” that gives individuals permission to justify racism, bigotry, misogyny, selfishness in its multiple disguises it seems will forever rear and recycle its ugly head. Powerful indeed. The lineage you describe rings true.
Superb piece. Strong parallels to Christianity.
Very well written, thank you. No one EVER mentions that Reagan granted amnesty to millions of undocumented migrants.
Below is a link to the Slate Magazine article that gets into more granular detail about “Linda” than any other source I have encountered. Oh the irony of her whiteness!
https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html
While I find your post very helpful in explaining what happened, I'd like to have your insight regarding why the right coalesced around hating the left. I find one answer in Corey Robin's book The Reactionary Mind https://coreyrobin.com/books/the-reactionary-mind/ I look forward to your thoughts
✏️👌, I’d only add that there were people, admittedly a minority, in the 90s who noticed what was happening. They were of course ignored by the media. But they saw, because their political views were based firmly on an analysis of class, that fascism and capitalism tend to go hand in hand, and that the reactionaries were not mouthing empty slogans about “the Left” as if it were a null value.
That term to them was not, nor has it ever been, interchangeable with just another bugaboo. It has definite political content, though it may be concealed by vague rhetoric. It meant, as it always has meant, redistributing society’s wealth and political power more broadly among the people instead of within a “very tiny, obscenely rich owning class that has it all” (Parenti). It could be called communism, socialism, or democracy, the Left, or anything else. As Parenti said, speaking of Gingrich and the Kristol set, “It’s the same old reactionary class agenda.”
Needless to say, these people who were noticing the fascist trend tended themselves to be on the left. I mentioned Parenti. Here’s a talk in two parts which he gave in 1995, which I used to say was prophetic, but now is just conventional wisdom:
Part I:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GuBegt8VmLuShlnB1hcaXacUHAvewKt4/view?usp=drivesdk
Part II:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VaDegpNaMKOQwX0UZBSJxC6Dtn72WJTN/view?usp=drivesdk
The deeper problem may not be who controls the machine, but what the machine is designed to reward. When outrage, attention, and polarization become profitable, changing the operators without changing the incentives rarely changes the outcome.
How can they be stopped?
Funny that you’ve posted this as I’ve been following a very similar line myself. I am expecting Rick Perlstein’s “Before the Storm” about Barry Goldwater tomorrow.
This is such fine reporting. Thank you.
I wouldn't say it's fair to call this piece reporting. I am not a journalist. I'd call it well-cited and well-argued polemic.
Indeed.
While I find this article informative in its own way, providing background that one needs to know about, I can't help but ask the question of whether this is a case of "it takes one to know one."
Could parallel arguments be made for narratives in the Democrat party?
Is the thesis really, "The turth is nothing. Power is everything."?
The conservative position is seem to be even more cynical upon hearing Rupert Murdoch say that Fox News is not about Red or Blue, it is about Green.