My One And Only Love

If Your Memory Serves You Well...

House of Cards

Every so often I find myself thinking about life in the U.S. pre-Reagan. If you had asked me in the late 1970s if I would ever miss those days I would have said “No, never.” Of course, I was an adolescent and so was undoubtedly hormonally pre-disposed to finding the Ford-Carter period painfully dull.

Which I did.

But then came Reagan’s election in 1980, which struck me at the time as a total disaster—especially for someone living in Pittsburgh Pa., a town with an economy that depended on unionized labor and heavy industry. Reagan’s policies broke the back of organized labor and decimated the local economy. I do recognize that some sort of reform of the labor movement was needed, to “de-corporatize” (not to mention de-criminalize) it, but any reform should have come from within. But that is another story…

Where I’m going with this is: I do miss the 1970s. I miss the atmosphere as I remember it: feckless, to be sure, but not toxic. In the 1980s, I tried to adjust to the new Zeitgeist, but the decade of “greed is good” left me feeling restless and empty.

In 1992, I voted for Bill Clinton hoping against hope that a Democrat in the White House would make a difference. But as it became clear to me that what he meant by the phrase “New Democrat” was “Republican Lite,” I became deeply disenchanted with the hall of mirrors that is American politics. That’s when I began to read Tolstoy in earnest.

Looking East for inspiration (a la Tolstoy), I became interested in various aspects of the Near Eastern prophetic inheritance, especially as they had been developed in Islam. Since the mid-1990s, I have immersed myself in that sea without a shore. But I cannot forget the “old, weird America” of my childhood and youth—the America that the Reagan revolution interrupted.

I could live with a country that was feckless but relatively benign. Exceptionalist and mean-spirited—the dark side of America that Reagan brought into the light and that has been celebrated ever since—is becoming ever more difficult for me to endure.

Let's face it, this has been going on now for almost 40 freaking years with no end in sight.

I’m beginning to understand Sun Ra’s mantra: space is the place. It must be, because this planet is for the crocodiles.

Somewhere

Outlaw Pete

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Mugwumpery