> How all that happened and how steps can be taken to reverse it seem to me much more interesting topics than why Obama is such a creep.
Absolutely. Thanks for the breath of fresh air.
I was born in 1965, so a relative latecomer to any critical observation of the period you're talking about. But as I've become conscientised over the past several years, I've struggled to pinpoint and understand exactly what happened between, say, 1972 and 1982 - just to choose an indicative decade, but one that I remember vividly (if non-critically) and that I'm pretty sure covers the relevant sea-change.
This is an utterly undeveloped thought, but I can't help but wonder whether the oil shock of '73-74 didn't basically force a serious rethink by members of the exploiting class about the opportunities and necessities of the control of strategic energy resources for the entire project of capitalist accumulation during the period of its increasingly apparent decadence. As I've long tried to explain to friends, they don't necessarily want that oil so you can drive your SUV to the mall; they want it for those fighter jets and tanks. And that requirement is non-negotiable, because almost everything else about (their) retention of power - capital accumulation while it lasts; something even uglier once that's no longer tenable - hinges on it. Obviously the strategic play was already on radar, but I'm less sure they anticipated the short-fuse intensity and fast-rippling damage of that crisis. If that's right - i.e., if it genuinely spooked them to some meaningful degree, and challenged the planning horizons they had previously assumed - then the subsequent merciless disciplining of (Western) labour initiated by / under Carter a year or two later seems much more understandable. Reagan's public fisting of PATCO was essentially post-coital - i.e., narcissistic, psychopathic. IOW, not merely class oppression, but actual class rape - made necessary no doubt (in their view) by the greater good that flowed from their retention of unquestionable control. Just as the potentially wayward wifey needs to be reminded who wears the pants.
I realise there probably isn't a single original thought in the preceding paragraph.