The right is pining for a past that never was.
Published in Thing a Day
3 days ago (Medium.com)
The left — at least, the truly progressive left, as in those who better align with European progressives, since we don’t have much of an actual left wing in America — is, as their name implies, focused on progress. Progress, in my opinion at least, should be the natural order of things. We improve life for those who come after us to ensure that they have a better, easier life than we did.
Our job in this world is not to bow to our predecessors, but to please our descendants. We are leaving them this planet, and it is our job to ensure that it is better than we found it. For some reason, that statement can be portrayed as radical, out-of-touch leftism, which is just so weird to me. We do this with campsites, why not with the whole planet?
I will likely never identify with those on the political right because they seem to disdain all forms of progress, at least those that don’t line their pockets. Green technology, diversity, wokeism — these things that bring better lives for all of us are unacceptable to them. In their minds, we need to go back to a time when things were better than they are now — the good old days!
Spoiler alert: there never was a “good old days.” So much of what goes on in right-wing circles is based on a past that has been idealized to the point where it has no basis in reality or fact. They have this image of some sort of sitcom-based 1950s, where men were men, women were women, and kids were endearing and mostly out of the way.
This is clearly not how things were, at least not to anyone who has some grasp of history. What the right really wants is an era where women were silent, kids didn’t know anything about being gay, and minorities weren’t people.
There is a deep level of misogyny here that is heavily implied — most of us have a base-level understanding that the 1950s, the “Don Draper” era, was one where white men had all the power. The men were classy, had three-martini lunches, and most had a mistress because their wives couldn’t legally leave them.
The racism is also strong here — if you were black, good luck breaking into any industry or job without facing a dozen more barriers than a mediocre white dude. Separate but equal was the law of the land at this point in history, and that implication is heavy.
The classism also runs deep, since a lot of this imagery was based on upper-middle class white America. The tailored suits and dapper hats weren’t something that everyone had — if you were lower class, you likely didn’t have quite the same level of power and respect.
The modern American right has no issue calling back to the idealized, sanitized version of this time, though. Their lower-class followers all clamor to be modern-day Mad Men, with their fedoras, suits, and obedient wives in pretty dresses doing all the housework and cooking.
Never mind that they still wouldn’t be in those positions based on their current standing in the country. The poor and downtrodden were still poor and downtrodden in the 50s, just with more deaths from preventable diseases that we have vaccines for now.
The nostalgia that the right is selling, though, is one where the black and brown people here have stolen that life from all of the poor white folks. Pay no attention to the billionaires lining their pockets with our labor — it’s the immigrants that stole your American Dream!
By taking a nostalgia for a time that never was, the right can point at whatever group they want — queer folx, BIPOC, feminists, socialists — and claim that those people are the ones keeping us from having that again. They can point their fingers at anyone who is convenient, as long as it fits their narrative.
You would have your suit and hat if black people hadn’t demanded rights! You’d have your obedient wife making you dinner if it weren’t for those damn feminists! Those people pushing wokeism are turning our nice, endearing kids gay! The immigrants that keep coming into this country are taking good, honest jobs from you and your friends! They ruined your American Dream, not us!
In reality, the unfettered crony capitalism ushered in by Ronald Reagan and protected by the political right is what killed the American Dream. The American Oligarchs — our very own modern-day robber-barons — made billions on the backs of American workers without giving any of them a cent. We work, sweat, and bleed for a handful of ultra-wealthy people who couldn’t care less about us. The reward for our labor? A salary that doesn’t keep up with inflation and is a fraction of what it would’ve been had this system never been put in place.
Meanwhile, Republicans would have you believe that we’re all just temporarily disgraced millionaires. We need to cut taxes on the job creators, the business owners, the super-wealthy, because that might be you one day! Work hard and you’ll get what’s coming to you in the end!
What comes to most of us in the end is an ignoble death in poverty. Whether dying of a disease that could’ve been prevented except for America’s horrible medical insurance system, or as an older, destitute senior whose retirement was stolen from them, the vast majority of us will never see our promised life of luxury.
Our American Dream was taken from us, dragged out back, and bludgeoned to death by right-wing capitalists using nostalgia for a “better time” that never existed. Don’t blame them, though — blame the immigrants. Or the feminists, or black people, or the queer folx. Anyone but the billionaires picking your pockets right now.
As they say, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Be well out there.
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·Editor for Thing a Day
I write about everything from my experience with mental illness to politics to philosophy. Much of my so-called “wisdom” is from Tumblr dot com. He/him/his.Follow
