In 1980, a year before I was born, Ronald Reagan rode a wave of economic neoliberalism to a sweeping electoral victory. To his supporters he promised economic prosperity through deregulation, a return to American exceptionalism and traditional values, and to restore America’s moral majority. It was a time of great pride–if you were an Evangelical, stock broker, or someone sick of the 1970s–and a time of great social upheaval. It was during this time voices like Phyllis Schlafley and Billy Graham worked to make “liberal” a four letter word, which also inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid’s Tale in response to growing Evangelical militancy.
If you were a conservative back then it was a great time to be alive. Things were going to change. Abortion would be made illegal again, prayer would be put back in public schools, Church would once again be the focus of American life. Reagan offered these great promises to his people, who were ready to make it all happen.
It didn’t, of course. A woman’s right to privacy remained the law of the land, prayer was never accepted as a part of public school curriculum, and Church stayed just church. Between opposition, and the distractions of scandal and war, the people behind the Reagan Revolution have grown ever impatient to see their ideals enshrined in our public policy.
We can say much about the usefulness of such policies, and about the great deception of it all, but I think it’s safe to say we’re well past that by a margin of thirty-seven years. To the people who were young and eager back in 1980, who have instilled that eagerness in their progeny, the conservative agenda has outgrown its merits. It’s a thing unto itself, grown into a corpulent tumor so malign as to support the likes of Donald J. Trump, a New York City real estate magnate with a sordid reputation for behavior Billy Graham would’ve condemned.
This wave of conservative populism isn’t about doing good, or even OK. It’s about revenge for nearly forty years of resistance to their cause, forty years of “starve the beast” policy intended to drive deficits so high government will have no choice but to retreat. And they will have their revenge before the sun sets on this administration. You can see it in the way this Republican Congress is doing business. With their version of AHCA Senate Republicans are signaling loud and clear their intent to inflict suffering poorly disguised as reform.
It won’t last, this upswell in white Christian rage. It will cool in time as it always does. In the grand scheme of things this political brawl barely registers if at all, but we don’t live on grand schemes. Do we? We are transient creatures obsessed with our immediate future. Our children will inevitably be left to fix all this, and if their rates of college education are any sign we’re in good hands in that regard.
What about us here and now? What do we do? Where do we go from here? These policies will impact our lives, and not for the better. Perhaps that’s the greatest crime the aging ranks of our political leadership will perpetrate. They had it good just long enough to ruin it for the rest us.