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The Eighties are over, right-wingers. [1]

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Date: 2023-01-13

In the 1990’s and 2000’s a talking point emerged: “The sixties are over.” This wasn’t just a reality check to music fans nostalgic for The Beatles. It was also a point that the 1960’s was a remarkably progressive decade that would not be easily restored. This was undoubtedly true. The idea that the anti-war movement, sexual liberationists and war against poverty were mistakes? Don’t push your luck. I don’t mention civil rights because it was conveniently ignored in this argument. Only because boos would rain down otherwise, though.

Decades later, a new nostalgia exists on the right: a longing for the 1980’s. That was the decade in which Republicans gutted the social safety net, made cutting taxes for the wealthy a thing again and won three convincing presidential victories in a row. You can see this with how right-wing pundits and politicians are always looking for the next Ronald Reagan to win over modern-day Reagan Democrats that they assume must still exist in numbers as big now as then. After Donald Trump failed to meet this standard, Ron DeSantis is anointed the next Reagan. Even though DeSantis hasn’t half The Gipper’s charisma.

There is other small print to read. Like Reagan’s inability to win the House to save his life. The (positive) consequences of that included spending increases and steps taken against apartheid that overrode Reagan’s veto. And tax hikes and immigration reform that he signed into law. Of course, the war on poverty was only in high gear during the two years that Lyndon Johnson had supermajorities in Congress. As the snarky old proverb says, History is what the present chooses to remember about the past.

The point is the conservative movement believes fully that it is possible to recreate a bygone era. Even though that era itself wasn’t quite what they had in mind. This explains the attempted coup against Kevin McCarthy. Some on the left say that the crazy back benchers were smartly enhancing their leverage. Possibly, but don’t assume that irrational people behave rationally. The true motivation is that their disappointing midterm elections have revealed that the American people don’t want a national abortion ban or Social Security cuts. MAGAs can’t and won’t accept this.

This is not the only country whose right wing is gripped by a similarly wishful/false longing for the past. The dozen years of Conservative Party-led governments in the UK are decidedly more moderate than the ones that were ran by Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Online British righties have voiced their displeasure and don’t blame the voters who polls say are flocking to English nationalist Reform UK. Forgotten in all of this is that before David Cameron steered the Conservatives to a more moderate path, true Thatcherites had failed to oust Tony Blair. If they couldn’t even beat a Blair discredited by the Iraq war, they obviously had to do something.

One argument they make is that Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are polling an average of more than twenty points behind Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. I guess they just don’t want to think about how Liz Truss’ aborted rightist premiership trailed Labour by an average of more than thirty points.

Similarly, the white nationalist Alternative for Germany’s frightening success in the 2017 election scared the then-dominant Christian Democrats into a somewhat more right-wing pose. The Social Democrats, possibly the world’s least successful major party, is in power. That speaks for itself.

And of course, when Brazil’s right-wing nationalist President, Jair Bolsonaro, was voted out of office, a coup attempt occurred. Part of the reason for that was also part of the reason 01/06/2021 occurred: many of Bolsonaro’s (and Trump’s) supporters believe that cheating is the only way someone like him could lose. They believe that conservatism cannot fail, only be failed.

So among the reasons the American right is so unhinged and disorganized includes a characteristic it shares with its foreign counterparts: an inability to cope with a world that is to the left of where it would like it to be. As the title of this story says, they have opted to live in a bygone decade.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/13/2147104/-The-Eighties-are-over-right-wingers

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