I still want to know why, as soon as America successfully won its defining, existential, multi-generation conflict - the Cold War - its immediate emotional response in the form of popular fiction wasn't any form of happiness or relief but rather a decade of horror, cynicism, and paranoia.
Almost like winning the Cold War wasn't the triumph of good, and everyone felt that.
Maybe the country lost its way. Cold war there was a common purpose, but once communism fell the US needed something to do.
I think maybe something like that.
US conservatives almost immediately pivoted to attacking domestic liberals as hard as they had been attacking Communists. When Clinton was elected, they further pivoted to attacking the US Government itself as being Communists.
@natecull I find it hard to figure out what conservatives are trying to conserve, even here.
I generally have no idea what people stand for any more other than lets just do X, and let the next generation pick up the pieces.
I think US Conservatism is almost entirely defined by "rolling back the regulations FDR placed on finance and business in 1933".
So literally what they want to conserve, is the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression.
They're well on target to achieve that, especially now that cryptocurrency is here.
@natecull So is that a good / bad thing, as it seems Regulations brought in nearly 100 years ago are from an era vastly different to 2021/2022
Well if you want to see 1929 again, just talk enough pension funds into investing in Bitcoin and holding and we'll get there!
@natecull so if Bitcoin crashes, so do alll the pension funds.
SO why do the Dems want to take things back to 1929?
The Dems don't. The *Republicans* do.
Ie the entire "Conservative Movement" is a stunned reaction to the election of FDR. That's why it exists, that's what it was founded to overturn.
@natecull OH FDR Franklin D roosevelt ( I was thinking that stood for some sort of Financial regulator. :D
Franklin D Roosevelt, yes.
After Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War and the end of slavery, FDR is considered by conservatives to be the worst disaster ever to hit the USA.
@natecull Ah, so how is Trump considered then?
Trump is a bizarre anomaly, because he's not exactly a poster child for religious conservatism, yet all the Evangelicals in the USA lined up behind him. Things got very weird after that.
But basically he's a rich guy that a lot of conservatives find inspiring for some reason.
@natecull He proves anyone can run for and win the presidency
Also yes, George HW Bush (1988-1992) was Republican, yet was bitterly attacked BY the Republican base for being "too liberal" and some kind of stealth Illuminati New Age CIA Communist, even as the USSR was breaking up under his watch.
(The conservative hard right always thought the CIA were both Communist and New Age, which is kind of hilarious, but that's a real belief to this day.)
@zleap
Economically, yes the Clintons were very close to Reagan-era policy. They continued deregulation and increased policing.
Geopolitically, the Clintons reduced military spending (before they started a war in Yugoslavia and dropped some missiles on Osama bin Laden, which didn't take) and the conservatives didn't like either of those three things for some reason.
Socially, the Clintons were more liberal than Reagan and the conservatives hated and feared them for that.