#Reaganland

[deadpresidents]

Have you ever read Nixonland by Rick Perlstein?

YES, I have, and it's fantastic. Nixonland is just one part of Rick Perlstein's excellent history of the rise of the modern Conservative movement and the Republican Party as it was basically transformed in opposition to LBJ's Great Society. All of the books are incredible, deeply-researched, and -- best of all -- extremely readable. I wholeheartedly recommend each of these books by Rick Perlstein: •Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980 (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

Incidentally, Reaganland is worth buying just for the cover photograph featuring Jimmy Carter giving Ronald Reagan the most amazing side-eye ever while they were in the limousine on Reagan's Inauguration Day:

[runedscope]

Finished reaganland finally. Holy shit were they so openly homophobic and racist. So many familiar shithead saying familiar shit like "i cant be racist i have a black friend" beloved by reagan.

[queenlua]

whenever i read nineteenth century US history, i'm always struck by how fuckin' moribund oratory is, as an artform & as a means of communication, compared to its peak

but man i was not expecting to get that same feeling reading about nixon's goddamn 1968 presidential campaign. it wasn't even that long ago we expected a bitch to be able to Give A Good Goddamn Speech...!

[antiquery]

Reaganland adaptation ft Anthony Starr in the title role when

[mourning-again-in-america]

Gritting my teeth through Reaganland, hoping there's not too many more descriptions of white southerners as animalistic (Perlstein likes "feral"). Also getting Gell-Mann amnesia, first with the John Marshall thing, then in a "debunking" parenthetical, he seems to claim that it has been decided, or is otherwise obvious, that 501c3 status necessarily constitutes federal aid for the purposes of the civil rights acts, when that's currently being litigated -- Buettner-Hartsoe v. Baltimore Lutheran

[izzysarchivedblogs]

HE'S ALL THROWN ABOUT FOR LOOPS. Taken out by the meeting, by the next encounter of admitting to someone he personally known a long time that he had a drinking problem, by being on the phone and doing patient forms, doctor appointment in the morning. Even if there is that part of him that feels like he's done absolutely nothing, which isn't an uncommon feeling to him. There was plenty of days he felt that, and then the solution for him was to get up, grab his bow and go walking, see what trouble would find him.

There's plenty on his mind, plenty to bottle up and hold onto, that Tony's right he should spill out and talk about, to something to unravel it all. A DEBRIEF? THAT FELT LIKE IT'D BE HELPFUL. Clint sighs, grasping at the straws for the words, where to start and so he throws it back to Tony to start him off. Sometimes, he needed that guidance, feet put onto the right path to tread down. That's one of the things that he will admit was helpful in therapy, when he couldn't quite pick out what he was going to talk about; a few gently guided questions until he found the exact spot that he could start to unravel and take the lead.

Clint gives Tony as much, and continues down the street but goes much slower knowing that they were going to pick up food so getting back wasn't something to be hurried and rushed.

How did that feel? Did it hurt? Did you feel a connection? Do you see them? How they got to where they are?

IT'S ALL GOOD ENOUGH FOR HIM TO MULL OVER, PICK OUT WHAT HE CAN SPEAK ON. His brother is on his mind, with everything about this; they've never talked about this even if they both their own and each other's tendencies growing up; even as Barney would point out and warn Clint that Bucky Crisholm is just ANOTHER DRUNK. Pointed words like a weapon, but he brushed it off at the time because Barney just didn't get it.

❝ You know what my answer to the food debate is. ❞ PIZZA. It's not as though he'd think Jarvis would complain either, he's gotten the man to eat a pizza and Clint can always pull the pity-me-i-really-wanted-pizza card at any complaint; it was a tough night.

❝ ⸺⸻ And uh, yeah, the uh one woman that had all the brothers, doing all the things the boys do. Jus' uh...brothers, you know? ❞ IT GOT HIM THINKING. Left him thinking about his brother, than led him to thinking about childhood and then the men he tried to be like, be better than and told he can't surpass them. ❝ Plus the ju- guy who talked about if, how, getting sober ⸻ not everyone liked his personality after that. ❞

He's not exactly answering the questions, but it's giving him something to jump off with. ❝ It's a lot, yesterday and tonight, and this is just going to be the thing, huh? It ⸺ ❞ FACING THIS?

New guys come in claiming hero, but really they just want to bust on poor folk. If he really wanted to do good, he'd be out in the neighborhood helping people with addiction, not just wailing on the dudes who sell that junk. This ain't Reaganland anymore, ya know? Your war on drugs ain't gonna work if you don't have compassion behind it.

IT HURTS. IT HURT GOING TO REHAB TOO. It's because that had been on his mind, what the now-goddamn mayor of New York said to him, as they talked about Ronin. ABOUT HIM. The funny thing was that he had been recovering from hangover with tacos, than robbing the Hood same night, going to a hospital to fund a rehab center all the while he drank daily, was an alcoholic, an addict himself. HYPOCRITE, and now he's seeing others and facing himself.

Clint did that, from spite and show off, not from finding compassion. Take Hood's money and do the opposite of what he was doing. ❝ It hurts, this, all of this, feels like, I feel like an asshole, a phony, kind of like a ... hypocrite. ❞ Facing his own previous judgements about thing, being humbled down. ❝ Now I'm starting to see... ❞

Tony listens to Clint as he stumbles over his words. He'd thought it might be easier to make this a casual just vent about how much the meetings can take out of you, or for Clint to ask some questions about the whole process, if they were walking. It wouldn't feel like he was being interrogated if they were just strolling home.

But to Tony's surprise, Clint's gone deep, and now he regrets walking, but it feels like a conversation that needs physical reassurance, and it's fucking impossible to do that in the street with all these people around, when Clint's using crutches.

He pulls his arm away so Clint can walk easier but he grazes his hand along his back. Clint prompts him to ask questions, and it's hard to think of them when he's not quite sure what's going on in Clint's head.

"Yeah? Some of the people's stories resonated for you?" he asked. "You can tell me which ones if you want. But I guess I just want to say that when you heard the stories and connected, how did that feel for you? Did it hurt? Did you feel a connection to the people? Do you see them? How they got to where they are?"

He pats Clint's back again and pulls his phone back out at the question of food. "There's a Scandinavian place. Jarvis might like that. Be like eating Thor's food. But honestly I'm craving pizza. I want grease so bad."

[whee38]

 ‘Elected by no one’: ‘Reaganland’ author on how the Heritage Foundation...

[kodiescove]

I need to catch up on my nonfiction reading but I don't wanna 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Reaganland will piss me because republicans

And I'm not interested in reading my book on bipolar (the Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide) after being told by my newest prescriber she doesn't think I have bipolar(something I've suspected for years)

I also don't want to START a new book because that just feels like too many books to have started.

[guywithbotheyes]

last night, in Reaganland

...one of the moderators, Dana Perino, wondered which of the seven people onstage “should be voted off the island” to winnow the field of Trump alternatives. That was hugely revealing: She was suggesting that one of them had to go, when the candidate who needs exiling is the one who didn’t bother to take the stage.

-Frank Bruni, NYT

[with-boots]

reagan was a popular encumbent!! trump is a guy that lost the last election and never had the popular vote. reagan was a trained actor with good speechwriters; people worked very hard to use the assassination attempt to drum up public goodwill. trump can barely stick to a script and when he does it is straight fascism. he and his team can spin a lot of conspiracy theories out of this and his base is going to become even more deranged, but he can't use this the way reagan could. people think very differently about politics now than they did in the 80s. reagan did not have the same opposition that trump does. there just aren't very many people that can be swayed by this I don't think!!!

it's hard to explain how conservative the 80s were culturally, especially since I wasn't there lol. reaganland by rick pearlstein is considered a very good text on the subject and might give you a picture of what it was like but idk how hopeful it would be to read right now.

biden's issue remains lack of support from his base, it's vital that you vote for him or whoever the democrats run. honestly this is kamala's issue too; centrists are more likely to 'just not like' a woman and leftists are more likely to nitpick her record and not think she's cool enough or whatever. which is not to say both of them don't have serious issues but that they can be pushed to the left with organized effort that right-wing actors are specifically exploiting by turning real and valid concerns into wedge issues and excuses into not voting. be wary of anyone telling you to vote for any reason and know that there are right-wing actors who can be very good at impersonating activists who are just divisive enough to push away leftists who might have similar beliefs but different approaches.

i really hope y’all realize how important it now will be to get out there and fucking vote to ensure trump does not get re-elected. that shooter just basically handed him the election. the only thing that will stop him now is if enough people stop pussyfooting about voting. do not let this be what puts him back in the white house bc if he gets back in there? you know what’s coming.

[matthewclan]

“After Election Day [1976], neoconservatism scored its major victory behind the scenes.

“The formerly Marxist immigrant Jews [who were] at the forefront of the movement had trained rigorously for political warfare in the hothouse ideological environment of the Depression, most famously in furious debates in the alcoves of the cafeteria of the City University of New York. They came of age in the passionate belief that Communism was the inevitable wave of the future. They still suspected this—only now they dedicated their lives to vanquishing it, for the survival of the West in the ongoing war for the world. Détente, they believed, was a fatal delusion. The ever-expanding cadres of quisling liberals within both parties, who refused to grasp that Communism was determined to conquer the world, were the Kremlin’s objective allies.

“They also still believed, as the had in their Marxist youth, that the most effective way to change history was to organize in subterranean cells, vanguardists guiding the hand of history by deploying the power of ideas. Thus did they burrow within the establishment to tutor Republican and Democratic politicians in these dire imperatives before it was too late.

“Washington conventional wisdom had not been kind to them: it held that the world was ‘multipolar,’ and ‘interdependent,’ rivalry between the Communist and capitalist worlds no longer the central concern, that after the debacle in Vietnam the United States could no longer act as the world’s policeman.”

–Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976–1980 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 42-43.

[deadpresidents]

RONALD REAGAN •Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan and Edited by Douglas Brinkley (BOOK | KINDLE) •When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan by Peggy Noonan (BOOK | AUDIO) •Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power by Lou Cannon (BOOK | KINDLE) •President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon (BOOK | KINDLE) •Reagan: An American Journey by Bob Spitz (BOOK | KINDLE) •Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber (BOOK | KINDLE) •Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •The President Will See You Now: My Stories and Lessons from Ronald Reagan's Final Years by Peggy Grande (BOOK | KINDLE)

GEORGE H.W. BUSH •Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •41: A Portrait of My Father by George W. Bush (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings by George H.W. Bush (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush by Mark K. Updegrove (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) •The Man I Knew: The Amazing Story of George H.W. Bush's Post-Presidency by Jean Becker (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

[runedscope]

For the ask meme? 1, 3, 10? 👀

1. Currently procrastinating on reading reaganland by rick perlstein because holy shit its so long read the first 3 but damn its so fucking long

3. Been mostly listening to albums recently so a couple albums "i love you so fucking much" by the glass animals the "snakegang" collab ep with earthgang "clancy" by 21 pilots and the new childish gambino album. Couple songs i fixated on before would be "bleed out" by the mountain goats "seven sticks of dynamite" by awolnation and "yeern" by schoopboy q idk "summer friends" by chance just popped on so that one

10. Tortoises and turtles because i own a tortoise and find them extremely fascinating

[queenlua]

that poll on "which political figure do you kill" got me thinking

like, i understand why there were as many votes for Reagan as there were, but one of my big takeaways from reading Reaganland was (1) a lot of the things people hate and associate with Reagan are things that actually started under the Carter administration, and (2) while Reagan was obviously a big dog in the whole New Right, i don't think he was unique; there's a whole host of ideologically-similar-dudes that were floating around that i think would've just done Exactly The Same Shit

if you want to change the shape of politics in the 80s i think, unfortunately, you must kill Carter. (i say this with some sorrow, he seems like a perfectly nice guy, but he was supposed to be the Dems' next big hope and his fumbles kinda cost them in national politics for the next 12 years. sorry dude! for the greater good, etc)

anyway, this does suggest a much funnier poll you could do, where it's comprised entirely of inoffensive, minorly famous dudes who arguably are the precursor for famous bad dudes, and then you gotta vote based on both (1) how bad you think the Ultimate Bad is and also (2) your own unique butterfly-effect calculus on how likely this actually succeeds in Banishing The Evil For Good

[antiquery]

the combination of Malevolent giving everyone inexplicable Southern accents and my current nonfiction listening being Reaganland is giving me diseases*

*an idea for a short story about the rise of the Moral Majority as the reawakening of an old and terrible god

[mourning-again-in-america]

finished Reaganland