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I was thinking about earlier eras of retrenchment in American history. After the progressive era, there was a backlash. And after FDR, Truman, and WWII, America turned to Joe McCarthy and Ike. The turbulent 70's and Jimmy Carter resulted in a backslide with Ronnie Reagan and Big George. Every time the US has made social and economic progress, there have been powerful conservative forces to make us poorer and meaner.
But perhaps it was the Clinton progressiveness that was the worst of all. Clinton proved to be both popular and successful. The economy was never as strong - ever - as in the Clinton years. And the gap between rich and poor never narrowed so much. Culturally, we moved from being horrified at Murphy Brown's single parenthood to laughing Will & Grace. Well, not laughing that much, but you get the point.
and then there was the technology. I was talking to my good friend Mike M (I'll perceive your anonymity) who is a prof. at UCB. We were in grad school together when Mike bought his first computer - a Franklin IBM clone with one floppy drive, no hard drive, 256k RAM (that's 256 _K_), and a massive 4.77 mhz processor.
There are greeting cards with more computing power these days.
I had an Apple IIE clone (yes, Franklin cloned the Apple IIE as well - now they're making 'bunker buster' bombs) which I bought just for grad school. I don't even know how "powerful" that was.
Point is, he and I did our undergrad studies without a computer. The only computer available then was the mainframe, and that was strictly for nerds.
But over the Clinton Era, not only did we see social progress, but technology changed our lives in a very fundamental way. Watch a TV show from the 90's - you won't see a computer on anyone's desk. They are talked about like 'those infernal machines.' It was even wors in the 80's - computers were going to come alive and take over the world. It was us or them.
And in the 70's we had the "North Dallas 40" approach. "Not one of you [players] is as good as this machine." Computers were strangely powerful and incomprehensible - they were a threat.
By the time Georgie and the throwbacks arrived, we were due for a historic retrenchment. It hasn't been just economic growth and societal advances that 'need' to be withdrawn, but the very fabric of modern life. It's all been too much too soon. We don't want to order pizza on the internet.
But for all the grass roots rejection of modernity, the Luddites could n't have conceived of a George W. Bush. Here is the figurehead of destruction. Here is the extreme right fascistic leader who will burn the modern world and see us back into time, back into the days of Ike - and even earlier.
Here is the president who will repeal FDR. His reactionary forces are leading us back to the Industrial Revolution, where child labour drive the engine that makes rich men richer and poor men dead. Too much? Who was the Jack Abramoff client that's been burning all the rightists who played ball with them? Right - the Marshall Islands. And what did the Marshall Islands pay Abramoff to help them keep?
Sweat shops. Child labour. No worker rights. Early death and blacklung.
Welcome to 2006.
But perhaps it was the Clinton progressiveness that was the worst of all. Clinton proved to be both popular and successful. The economy was never as strong - ever - as in the Clinton years. And the gap between rich and poor never narrowed so much. Culturally, we moved from being horrified at Murphy Brown's single parenthood to laughing Will & Grace. Well, not laughing that much, but you get the point.
and then there was the technology. I was talking to my good friend Mike M (I'll perceive your anonymity) who is a prof. at UCB. We were in grad school together when Mike bought his first computer - a Franklin IBM clone with one floppy drive, no hard drive, 256k RAM (that's 256 _K_), and a massive 4.77 mhz processor.
There are greeting cards with more computing power these days.
I had an Apple IIE clone (yes, Franklin cloned the Apple IIE as well - now they're making 'bunker buster' bombs) which I bought just for grad school. I don't even know how "powerful" that was.
Point is, he and I did our undergrad studies without a computer. The only computer available then was the mainframe, and that was strictly for nerds.
But over the Clinton Era, not only did we see social progress, but technology changed our lives in a very fundamental way. Watch a TV show from the 90's - you won't see a computer on anyone's desk. They are talked about like 'those infernal machines.' It was even wors in the 80's - computers were going to come alive and take over the world. It was us or them.
And in the 70's we had the "North Dallas 40" approach. "Not one of you [players] is as good as this machine." Computers were strangely powerful and incomprehensible - they were a threat.
By the time Georgie and the throwbacks arrived, we were due for a historic retrenchment. It hasn't been just economic growth and societal advances that 'need' to be withdrawn, but the very fabric of modern life. It's all been too much too soon. We don't want to order pizza on the internet.
But for all the grass roots rejection of modernity, the Luddites could n't have conceived of a George W. Bush. Here is the figurehead of destruction. Here is the extreme right fascistic leader who will burn the modern world and see us back into time, back into the days of Ike - and even earlier.
Here is the president who will repeal FDR. His reactionary forces are leading us back to the Industrial Revolution, where child labour drive the engine that makes rich men richer and poor men dead. Too much? Who was the Jack Abramoff client that's been burning all the rightists who played ball with them? Right - the Marshall Islands. And what did the Marshall Islands pay Abramoff to help them keep?
Sweat shops. Child labour. No worker rights. Early death and blacklung.
Welcome to 2006.
posted by fiduciary at 3:10 PM
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