Book Review: Reaganland Part I

Some editorial notes up front. My postings have become more sporadic lately. There are a few reasons, one being that the news is so fucking depressing that I can't even focus to write. This is a very target rich environment, I mean, the No Kings rally delivering record turnout (estimated to be between 7 and 8 million souls in the streets. That was followed by the demolition of the east wing of the White House, apparently without any of the usual processes that are supposed to be followed. Then the batshittery on his Asian trip where he said some of the most fucked up shit imaginable. All this over a backdrop of an escalation of blowing sportfishing boats out of the seas. And then there was the redecoration of the Lincoln bathroom in what could only be described as "Saddam Hussein Whorehouse esthetic". And then, on the morning of his return from his Asian tour, he hosted a Great Gatsby themed party at Mar a Lago, all the while, his administration is fucking people during the shutdown by cutting off SNAP benefits, and having the gall to blame the Demmocrats who hold none of the levers of power. I mean from today's shows, we have Sec Treas Scott Bessent saying this:

And that just scratches the surface of the fuckery. I mean, where do I even start with this shit?

Then work is just nutso. I am running a small team, leading an additional innovation project, and this Thursday I will get on a plane at 11:05 PM to fly to Melbourne Australia for a show to stand in for my boss.

To counter all that, I have been playing a ton of guitar. It is how I get through most days.

But, I do want to do a partial review of a book by historian Rick Perlstein, titled "Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976 - 1980"

Reaganland

The fourth book in the series by Perlstein, this extends his deep analysis of the rise of Conservatism in the Republican party starting with Goldwater in the late 1950's, and extends through Nixon.

You might not remember this, but at one time both parties had a progressive or liberal wing, as well as a conservative wing. This led to a lot of internal turmoil, and at times outright warfare.

Rick starts his series as this is waning, but this book, Reaganland is chock-a-block full of details. Prior to this era, you had even shitty presidents like Nixon signing the bill to create the EPA, and a lot of accountability was happening. But, the oil shock, and the rise of inflation was indicative of a lot of unrest under the covers of the US economy.

I am going to break this into a few sections:

• The rise of the Boardroom Jacobins
• The Gay Panic
• The rise of the New Right
• Dirty Tricks

Before I go too far, I found this review from Publisher's Weekly that encapsulates the book in the context of the 4 volume series:

Resurgent conservatism defeats enervated liberalism in this sweeping study of the Carter administration and the rise of Ronald Reagan. Political historian Perlstein (The Invisible Bridge) concludes the saga of right-wing insurgency he started in Before the Storm, his magisterial account of the 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign, with this chronicle of intensifying 1970s political clashes. It’s partly the story of a grassroots uprising of conservative Christians, free-market fundamentalists, and anti-communist zealots who fought the liberal establishment on taxes, gay rights, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment, and found a champion in Ronald Reagan. It’s also about liberalism’s crisis under Jimmy Carter, a populist-turned-bloodless technocrat—Perlstein dubs him the “Engineer in Chief”—who addressed inflation and energy shortages with policies of economic austerity, budget cuts, and deregulation that hurt working-class Democrats, many of whom were then drawn to Reagan’s social conservatism. Perlstein masterfully connects deep currents of social change and ideology to prosaic politics, which he conveys in elegant prose studded with vivid character sketches and colorful electoral set-pieces. (“The camera cut to Reagan, who was rocking back and forth in his place, beaming like a boxer whose opponent had just lowered his gloves,” he writes of Reagan’s celebrated “There you go again!” quip during the 1980 presidential debate.) The result is an insightful and entertaining analysis of a watershed era in American politics. Agent: Tina Bennett. (Aug.)

This is a solid encapsulation of the book.

The book is broken into 5 books, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, and 1980, each one documents threads from that year through the eyes of what was happening in society.

The Boardroom Jacobins

In the aftermath of the great depression, and the extreme efforts that the Roosevelt administration undertook to pull us back from the brink, there was an undercurrent of angst in the titans of business. They recognized that the excesses of the robber-baron era, and the guilded age of the 1920's led to some pretty brutal realities that hammered society.

This led them to accept some of the harshest pills, taxes and regulations that the emboldened Democrats in power and the widespread public support for the curatives (mostly in increasing regulations. It is hard to argue when things like the Cayahoga River caught fire in 1969 from all the polutants and toxins dumped in it by industry, and the abysmal state of the Love Canal fiasco that ultimately sparked the creation of the Superfund program. [1]

No, these business leaders suffered the indignities of having to acknowledge their complicity, and accept the regulations. A scrappy lawyer (and later perennial presidential candidate spoiler) Ralph Nader and his team were instrumental in holding these businesses to account, and through the 1960's and 1970's was incredible in corralling public support.

But, as the oil shock, and the pressures on the economy escalated, these business leaders began to realize that they actually had some power. The power of money.

Long before Citizen's United, the rise of PACs in the 1970's became the vehicle of these business leaders to push back, and push back very effectively. Their early efforts yielded great results, and that really was a turning point in US politics.

The Gay Panic (and the ERA)

In this timeframe the growing acceptance of homosexuals was a real on the ground fact. Places like New York, Miami, and San Francisco were trailblazing, but it was not just limited to those metros.

This really began to solidify the Evangelical Christians into a block. Prior to this, they were mostly focused on building out their Christian Academies so that they could exclude "those people" (Blacks) from their children. But the advent of Anita Bryant and her nation-wide crusade against any acceptance of gays in society. This was even before the Evangelicals got on their high-horse about abortion (fun fact, until the late 1970's they believed that Abortion was just a concern of the Catholics).

What this brought out was a radicalization of the wider population. These were two issues that they could sink their teeth into at an emotional level (in the 1970's there were as many gay people as there are today, but they were closeted and thus invisible.)[2]

And then there was the rise of the C-word worthy Phyllis Schafly who singlehandedly put the kibosh on the inevitability of the ERA. Seriously, fuck that c-word. All these factors helped the rise of the conservative coalition.

The rise of the New Right

The seeds of the New Right were beginning to sprout all around. After Ford lost in '76, there was a lot of talk about the Republicans being an endangered species, needing life suport. But a confluence of factors came together. The boardoom Jacobins, the enervation of the Religious Right as a power center, and the economic situation.

Alas, there is a lot of bagging on President Carter in hindsight, but the reality is that he brought an engineer's sensibility to the problems at hand. Out of control inflation, an emboldened OPEC that was fucking with our energy supplies (cheap gasoline is a God given right of Americans), and economic headwinds in the cards of inflation, he was navigating the thicket about as well as anyone could. That is until the Iranian Students overran the US Embasy in Iran, and took the staff hostage.

But even before that, a new breed of conservative was rising, a "New Right" driven by societal malcontent, that became an overwhelming force.

If you have read the other books in Perlstein's arc, you will know many of the names. Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and the like. But this time was also when outside bomb-throwers like Orrin Hatch were elected.

And then there's the populist taxt revolt starting with California's Prop 13. I won't go into too much detail, but when this passed in 1978, I was old enough to know what it was, and even at the age of 13, I realized that it was bad for the state, and boy was that correct. The proposal was to cap increases in assessments for property tax purposes, and the anti-campaign was clear that this would criple state funding of schools. California went from top 3 in education to bottom third in rapid time.

But this was a populism that was catching.

And this was a major factor in the rise of Ronald Reagan's fortunes.

I will not go too much in detail, but I will let this short quote from the book about how to host a Reagan fundraiser dinner:

(his hosts having been informed the Reagans drank only decaf, and preferred their steaks well done)

Gee, who else eats their steak well done?

My last point here will be how the New Right dovetailed with the batshit insane "Trickle Down" economics therory.

The trio of twatwaffles who spawned this theory (the one we all remember is Arthur Laffer, father of the Laffer Curve) touched a nerve with these new right dickheads. And the person who platformed them? Who helped mainstream this fetid pile of dead horseflesh? Irving Kristol, the father of The Bulwark Founder Bill Kristol.

Yeah, it is a giant ouroboros of mutual circle masturbation.

Everywhere you look, it is the same fucking guys, over and over.

Dirty Tricks

I won't go too much in detail here, but I will note that the Reagan campaign of 1980 was full of fucking douchebags. Names we still know today, including ROger Stone, and Paul Manafort.

Reading about the two campaigns, Reagan and Carter, there is a lot of fuckery. Like Reagan likely being the cause of Gerald Ford's loss to Carter in 1976, Ted Kennedy was ultra douchebag in his attacks on Carter. I was too young at the time to really follow the news, but reading about it nearly 50 years later makes me want to travel to Ted's grave to piss on it, and maybe pinch off a deuce.

Then there's Reagan's habit of recycling stories and facts that were not just shaded, but completely wrong. He even had a person on his staff to try to halt this waterfall of bullshit.

Still, the population bought it, and to this day, the "Conservatives" point to their exalted St. Ronnie as this mythical feature, unable to see how flawed, and how shitty he was.

You will hear them repeatedly downplay the bad (well documented) and overhype the "good".

Final Thoughts

As I am up near 2,200 words, I will wrap this up. If you are anywhere left of center, and you want to wonder how we as a nation lost our fucking minds, the 4 books by Rick Perlstein are essential reading. Rick does extensive research, and while you can read them in any order, if you pick any of them up, you will come away with a solid understanding of how we got here.

It wasn't foreordained, it wasn't inevitable. It was a coordinated effort by a small cadre (to start) that shifted the national narrative, slowly at first, but with a focus that the left just can't get to.

As I wrote earlier in the week, the Heritage Foundation started with a core ideology for their Project 2025 (and all their proscriptions they hand to each Republican administration), and then hang the policies that put that forward. The left is happy to focus on the policies, and hide the ideology like it is a leprous relation.

It took the Right nearly 70 years to get to Trump, and every waymarker along the way was some fucking conservative douchenozzle who preyed on people sympathies. I fear that we will have a long struggle to get back to some semblance of balance.

Do go buy and read these books!

1 - I grew up in Silicon Valley, and one of the worst superfund sites was here. The early chip manufacturers just dumped a lot of super toxic shit on the ground. There was an interchange between 880 and 101 that in the cloverleaf it seemed that the midnight dumping was rampant (cough Varian cough) that took a long time to clean up due to the heavy traffic in the area.

2 - It is frustrating to watch this dynamic rerun with trans gender people in the crosshairs. And fuck you to all the Democratic conslutants who are advocating sending our trans brethren and sisters to the gulag to appease the "ick" factor that the ignorant masses feel.