|
The Baby Boomers may have been progressives, but several of them died during the 60s and 70s and many of their more progressive heroes died as well. By the 80s they had children and needed to be economically conservative to survive the results of their progressiveness mixed with what corperations could get away with. (One thing some conservatives today point to as a problem was the results of Women's Lib. Not that women are in the workforce, but the two problems that resulted from it, or in reaction to it.
One: Who is taking care of the children if both parents work?
Two: If both parents work, then various corperations and government institutions decided that two income families would be the baseline. If one parent didn't work, you would likely be lower class or lower-middle class just from what was left of your income after expenses. This starts to make what was the "American Dream" from their parent's era, closer to improbable.)
Also there was always the "Silent Majority" that was supposedly conservative in the 60s and 70s. They might have become reactionary by the 80s after being silent for too long.
Also the world changed, as did America's place in the world between the progressive 60s and the 80s. By the end of the 70s the US was depressed as a nation. The lose in Vietnam, the end of the moon landing, the oil embargos, Iranian and Libyian terrorism (hostiges both in Iran and airliners), and a general decline of feeling that we were special anymore dragged the progressive down (the drugs might not have helped either...some bad trips by the end of the 70s took some of their most influencial). Reagan came at a time when the US was emotionally depressed. His Hollywood style of white hats and black hats for the US and USSR was pretty much what we needed to come out of out emotional depression. There was still a worry about WWIII happening, but not as much as it had been during Carter's year (the late 70s gave us the Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century TV series were WWIII was in 1987. The series ended only a few months after Reagan took office). As the Cold War ramped up to its ending, the American patriot returned in place of the "old hippie" progressives. Many of then had been "old hippie" progressives, but this was a different time. With the Soviets turning towards a peacful solution, capitalism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and eventually the fall of the Soviet Union, the white hat/black hat ways of Reagan seemed to be the way to go. Save there was no longer someone to put the black hat on.
So in the 90s, some of the progressives came out again, but the 80s had changed a lot of them. And even though the US had won the Cold War, it was now lost without someone to put the black hat on. Come 9/11 and the last decade, we found Terrorist to put the black hat on...but it isn't the same if you can't pin the hat to a country or group of peoples without also having to put a white hat on others in that same country or group of peoples. This was the time we got Dark Dramas, were they was no black hat or white hats...everyone was an asshole in some way, or everyone was evil in their own way. There were no good guys anymore on television (this was about the time I stopped watching US television).
And now were are here....today. The American progressives sort of got lost somewhere in the 80s and 90s. We are still looking for someone we can solidly place the black hat on, while failing to cleanup our white hat that's been in the mud for the last decade...perhaps two.
|