02-04-2017, 03:45 PM
(02-04-2017, 03:40 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:(02-04-2017, 02:21 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Yes, it remains to be seen whether the Republicans can consolidate their victory and if the Dems can formulate an effective response.
I also think this whole "What decade is he trying to take us back to thing" reflects liberal prejudices about what alternatives to the status-quo mean more than they reflect any real desire on the part of conservatives to recreate any particular year.
You deftly deflected the question. But I should mention that the answer goes to the heart of the premise of The Fractured Republic, published recently by conservative Yuval Levin. He contends that it is nostalgia that explains the polarization inflicting our body politic. According to Levin, liberals long for the social welfare programs and expansion of civil rights that characterized much of the 50s and 60s while, on the other hand, conservatives want to hark back to the decentralization of the Reagan 80s. So there is a profound difference in what constitutes the "good ol' days," depending on your tribal affiliation--and by now most Boomers and Xers have one. (I'm old enough to remember both epochs.)
Levin maintains that both camps are looking backward to old approaches to governance and solutions to problems that may have worked well for the most part in the past, and in a bipartisan sense moreover. But those competing nostalgias, beginning with the 90s and into the 21st century (the Unraveling), explain our polarization today. I don't particularly agree with Levin's "solution" to our polarization, but he may be on to something. So the question of what time period Trump is referring to when he says "make America great again" would seem to matter, at least in the context of Levin's thesis. If Trump and his (older) supporters are looking to warmed-over Reaganism to solve our crisis, Levin seems to suggest we are headed for further tensions in the body politic. We see evidence of that already on our streets and campuses. In just one week's time, Trump and Milo Yiannopoulos ran pell-mell into the antithetical nostalgia of progressives, liberals, what have you, with the Women's March and the Berkeley riot, respectively. It certainly doesn't bode well for Trump's call for unity, not that he necessarily requires that to accomplish a paradigm shift in American politics.
I "deftly deflected" the question in the sense that I don't think anyone on that side has actually announced that they are trying to take America back to <Year X>, and that you are basically putting words in people's mouth.
And I think Levin's thesis is again flawed (weren't you warning me about him earlier?). Both sides like and dislike particular periods of particular eras, and while I agree that there is little consensus on the right way forward, this "competing nostalgias" bit seems a little forced to me.