November 6, 2008, 9:03 pm
On
Wednesday, Nov. 5, 1980, my 10th-grade American history teacher started
class by unfurling The New York Times. She pointed to its triple banner
headline: “Reagan Easily Beats Carter; Republicans Gain in Congress;
D’Amato and Dodd are Victors.”
“Save this paper,” she told us. “This is the start of a whole new era.”
And it was. An era of unbridled deregulation, wealth-enhancing perks
for the already well-off, and miserly indifference to the poor and
middle class; of the recasting of greed as goodness, the equation of
bellicose provincialism with patriotism, the reframing of bigotry as
small-town decency.
In short, it was the start of our current era. The Reagan Revolution
was the formative political experience of my generation’s lifetime,
like the Great Depression, the Second World War or Vietnam for those
before us. And in its intellectual and moral paucity, in its eventual
hegemony, these years shut down, for some of us, the ability to fully
imagine another way.
I will admit that back in January, when Barack Obama, in his
post-Iowa victory speech, spoke about the “cynics,” the “they” who said
“this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together
around a common purpose,” he was talking about me.
I will admit that the call of “change” did not speak to me as an achievable goal.
Until it actually came. <snip>