Nikki Haley asks in A tweet:
"Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out."
I was born the same year she was. 1972. My childhood was the part of "We Didn't Start the Fire" that went : "Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz." A lot of people on Twitter explained their very NOT "Leave it to Beaver" childhoods. And I think maybe there are some Boomers (white and suburban, I guess?) who want to remember life that way, untrammeled and unmarred by the problems of the world:
But the problems of the world existed, and they back then were in the oceanic experience of being at Mommy's Titty' and if that's you, believing your childhood was great and then something terrible happened: Nikki Haley is not your Mommy. She isn't taking you back before you had bills and realized the world was a big mean place where terrible things happened. We don't go back. You don't get to frolic with Peter Pan and the wild boys in Neverland. You always have to be an adult once you've started.
Nostalgia is a son of a bitch--a liar. It tells you things were great when you're just trying to remember them that way. We have to move forward. Be the adults we want to see in the world. So much of current conservatism seems to want to treat the nuclear family as the default--the little dollhouse life. It isn't for everyone. It assumes the church is always good--it isn't for everyone.
And I'm sorry if it feels to anyone in the world like Joe Biden wrenched them from Mommy's Titty, but I swear, before all that's holy and not, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in a fair election and Donald Trump is not your Mommy, and I don't know what you were sucking on.
7 comments:
This is all Republicans have left... They can't tell the truth about what they really want to do when in power because it would be far too unpopular. They can't go out there and say, "Vote for us so we can cut your Social Security and Medicare, strip banking and environmental regs so that you go broke while choking on outside air, and cut taxes even more on those who have the most."
So they have to misdirect, with grudges, fear-baiting over anyone that's different than the stereotypical norm, and especially with the generation of "feelings," which function independently of facts. Nostalgia for past fond memories is perfect because it requires nothing concrete and doesn't promise any money to be spent. No wonder they're persecuting the fact-checkers...
'daddy, please love me!' --all republicans
What passes for Republican policy has been unpopular for decades so yeah, this is just a repeat of the BS strategy that, unfortunately, has worked for years. It's just a different, long-winded, version of "Make America Great Again" which in turn is just a rerun of the slogan used by Saint Ronny RayGun in 1980.
The obvious question about "Make America Great Again" has always been--"And when was that? When was the greatness?" And then you get a whole lot of rambling from the politicians spouting that sort of thing, but the fans in the stands? The ones with the less sophisticated bovine-waste-dispersal mechanisms? They have no trouble saying stuff like "Before the civil rights movement". The grim thing to understand about the anti-CRT and "Don't say gay" things is that conservatism has decided the problem isn't the inequality in society--it's the people who notice and complain about it. Or heaven forbid! Do something about it.
Does that mean that America is not great ?
Ten Bears, that's a good question, to turn it around on them, "If you don't like America, why don't you just go?"
Russia might take them.
I grew up in an Ohio smallish town where things seemed nice and uncomplicated. I thought rules were good and people who broke them were bad. I remember we had a lot of Mexicans come to town to tend the sugar beets towards the end of summer, and their encampments were very sad, wood built structures and almost constant smoking fires. When we drove by my mother told me to look away. In first grade my best friend was a Mexican boy who looked like Sal Mineo. He was wordly and rougher than I, and would knock me around a bit, but in the sweetest way. One day he gave me a gum machine lavender ring. My folks were likely terrified of the homo signs their first grader was showing and I had to take it back and give it to him. He thought I was stupid for obeying them and he was right. Of course I knew nothing of his status and never connected him with the sad camps and probably in early October or so he disappeared with no notice and I was devastated. The next year my mother stopped talking and went to the mental hospital for a month, still not talking when she came home, which she would continue to do on and off for most of her life. Morality was starting to change a lot.
I had my soft landing which was nice enough to be grateful for and to show me the contrast. I think that any kind of pain changes everything about how you think and what you care about.
Post a Comment