After a 28-year binge of drunken optimism and blind nationalism – often punctuated by chants of "USA, USA!" and "We’re No. 1!" – Americans are waking up with a painful hangover, facing a grim "morning in America," not the happy vision that Ronald Reagan famously sold them on.
As the United States begins to assess how the nation got into its trillion-dollar bailout mess, a true understanding must go back three decades or so when Reagan deployed his well-honed communications skills and the Republican Right mastered the dark arts of propaganda to get the American people to shed the annoying strictures of rationality.
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As President, Reagan attacked the federal regulatory system and cut taxes so recklessly that his budget director, David Stockman, foresaw red ink "as far as the eye can see." Reagan also justified fattening the Pentagon’s budget by citing dire warnings that the Soviet Union was on the rise (despite CIA analysis at the time that it was in sharp decline).
To marginalize dissent, Reagan and his subordinates stoked anger toward anyone who challenged the era’s feel-good optimism. Skeptics were not just honorable critics, they were un-American defeatists or – in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s memorable attack line – they would "blame America first."
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Ain't it the truth. And don't forget "tax and spend Democrats"; that was the one I heard a lot at the time. Thing is, when you realize why the Dems had to raise taxes (to pay for all the spending the previous Rethugs did), you realize how well the Rethugs did propaganda and controlled the media environment.
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Significantly, too, Reagan credentialed a new generation of neocon intellectuals, who pioneered a concept called "perception management," the shaping of how Americans saw, understood – and were frightened by – threats from abroad.
Many honest reporters saw their careers damaged when they resisted the lies and distortions of the Reagan administration. Likewise, U.S. intelligence analysts were purged when they refused to bend to the propaganda demands from above. [See Robert Parry’s Lost History.]
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The Republican version of 'fiscal conservatism' is: Don't Tax The Rich, Spend All You Can, Pass The Payments To The Next Generation.
Ladies and Gentlemen (and the rest of you too), true fiscal conservatism is very simple: Don't Spend What You Don't Have.
And an addendum for the next time credit becomes free again: A little rule I have that's served me well over the years. Use the equity in your home to increase the value of your home and nothing else. Do not, I repeat, do not use equity in your home to buy cars, go on vacation, buy gifts, have cosmetic surgery, or anything else that loses its value immediately after you buy it.
A corollary to that is: Do not take more than a third to half the equity out of your home. Home vaules (contrary to what we've seen over the past few years) do not always go up.
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