>This is related to the point I was making about Reagan recently -
>that he projected optimism and possiblity. But everyone said this
>wasn't true, he was really a prick. He led the right's appropriation
>of traditionally left discourse about revolution, and rendered labor
>and the left looking like tired defenders of the status quo. People
>still don't seem to appreciate how successful this was.
I don't agree. From what I remember, Reagan projected/expressed an avuncular air meant to reassure: "There, there," he seemed to be saying, "you can all just go to sleep now. We'll take care of everything. There are simple answers and we have them. Just relax and go to slelep." And, people did.
One thing the right understands is people's profound need for emotional grounding and connections...in an alienated and completely dispossessing, soul-murdering culture. So the right identifies itself with images that concretly express that need and its satisfaction through the family, the church, the "community" -- completely ignoring the extent to which these formations are systematically being destroyed by capitalism. According to the right, we're not defending a nation; we're defending "our home land," the poor are not those who lack food and housing, they are "home"-less. The left, large parts of which think of the family as an atavistic form and who, through their wholesale adherence to identity politics, cannot rise above the level of the individual have nothing with which to counter right-wing propaganda.
Joanna