• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    So many modern Boomer conservatives still cling to the mythology of the JFK era and the national labor movements that made America great in the wake of WW2. Reagan and Bush and Trump knew how to pander to these folks and to scapegoat minorities and immigrants as the cause of the country’s decline.

    Vance doesn’t have any of that. He’s entirely a product of the 21st century without any roots to speak of. He hates his mom for needing oxy to get through the day. He hates his home town for failing to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, like the armies of government contractors at Yale and Langley and Silicon Valley. And he hates poor white people for not embodying the mystical traits of superhuman races in his favorite pulp fantasy novels. All of that is naked on his face when he tries to talk to anyone over 30.

    He’s not like us. He spends too much time on the computer and now he’s a fucking weirdo.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      the national labor movements that made America great in the wake of WW2

      Ah yes, the wake of WWII. When America was on top and producing everything, because all of our competitors had the ever-loving shit bombed out of them. Also they needed to buy stuff too.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The industry Americans retained could have been under the same monopoly conditions of the 19th century. American working class labor could have been little more than serfs under these same historic conditions.

        Instead, we got modern consumerism - private homes, cars, clothes, vacations, fancy liquors, home appliances, toys…

        That isn’t what the working class of Latin America or Sub-Sahara Africa got, despite also being removed from the war.

        Argentina was the 9th largest economy during the height of WW2. But Peronism looted the country rather than investing in it. South African apartheid and Brazil’s military coup set their economies back decades. These countries weren’t bombed by Germany or Japan, but they never took off like postwar USA.

        Strong domestic unions held back the capitalist rot in the States at least until the Volcker shocks under Nixon, Ford, and Carter.