Sorry, Republicans: Nikki Haley can’t make you young again
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Some politicians talk to voters as if we're all children, with little understanding of the world and prone to knee-jerk emotional reactions. While Republican candidates for president courted the religious right at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference this past weekend,former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley took it one step further, promising nothing less than a restoration of the world of your childhood:
The Swiss doctor who coined the term "nostalgia" in 1688 saw it as a disease. Today, it's a powerful psychological, cultural and political force, the last especially for conservatives distressed by social change. But what makes Haley's appeal so striking is its explicit evocation of the simplicity and ease of the world "when you were growing up," and her preposterous claim that the president can bring you back to that innocent time.
On social media, Haley was quickly attacked, especially by women, LGBTQ+ folks and people of color, who noted that the past was not so rosy for them. She didn't specify precisely when this golden age occurred beyond whenever you were growing up. If you're 80, that time was the 1940s and '50s; if, like Haley, you're 51, it was the '70s and '80s.
For that to be true, America would have to be on a long and steady decline, with each successive decade worse than the last. Although that's obviously false, it's something people everywhere seem to believe. A recent study across 60 nations found that people worldwide think morality has been declining for years, a belief the authors call "pervasive, perdurable [i.e. continuous], unfounded and easily produced."
Critically, most people, however old they happen to be, seem to think this decline occurred in their lifetime. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Republicans said life in America is worse today than it was 50 years ago for "people like you." The figure for Democrats was a still substantial 43 percent (up from 30 percent two years ago).
Just as we form our musical tastes in our teens and 20s, some people — particularly the socially conservative — will always be convinced that society's golden era was whenever they were young. Haley is just being more explicit about it, and in one sense she's right: Though plenty of people experience traumatic childhoods, generally speaking, the world was simpler and easier when you were a child.
Why? Because you were a child. You didn't have the responsibilities of adulthood, you didn't have to worry about your cholesterol or your arthritic knees, and you weren't weighed down by disappointments and regrets.
Being a child also means you don't have a real understanding of time's inexorable passage and the inevitability of social change. While there are plenty of older people who embrace social progress — greater equality for women and legal protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, for instance — that's not true of many Republican voters, especially the kind who go to the Faith & Freedom conference.
To those voters, America really is a fallen land. What might not be clear until the primaries are over is exactly what they want to do about it. Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are offering one answer: use the power of the state to destroy everyone you despise. Take tax breaks from companies that express support for LGBTQ+ people, outlaw abortion and gender-affirming care, banish ideas about race that make you uncomfortable from the classroom, ban books from schools and libraries, build walls on our borders.
If nothing else, it does add up to a vision for the future, albeit a dark and authoritarian one. Haley, by contrast, seems to be offering little more than a vibe. But the idea that we'll all be transported back to a simpler and easier time just by changing who sits in the White House is absurd.
Republicans should have learned that from the Trump presidency. In 2016, he promised to "Make America Great Again." Four years later, no matter how much you liked his policies or thrilled to his Twitter beefs, he had not turned back the clock. You don't like immigrants? They're still here. You don't like gay people? They're still here, too. You think kids today are lazy and their music is terrible? That's just what your parents thought, and your grandparents before them.
One can't help thinking of Archie Bunker and his wife, Edith, singing "Those Were the Days," the theme song to the sitcom "All In the Family." It premiered in 1971 — another time of angry politics and rapid social change — and the lyrics express Archie's dismay at the upheaval of the time as they pine for Herbert Hoover and talk about how "guys like us we had it made," and "you knew who you were then," because "girls were girls and men were men."
Richard M. Nixon was reelected the next year, but that didn't stop the changes that made Archie Bunker so angry. And neither Nikki Haley nor any other Republican can make you young again or make the world into something no more complicated than what you thought it was when you were a child. There's nothing more childish than believing they can.
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The truest and most fervent MAGA want to go back to when white people were in charge.
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Now that's putting it into perspective
So prove it.
All you ever do is spout unsupported generalities
Yep, that's Nikki Haley in a nutshell. One of those Indian white supremacists.
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I don't want to back to the 70's and early 80's when I grew up! Things were getting better for women then but there were still a lot of stereotypes floating around. And if you grew up in conservative PA like I did, you were supposed to get married and have babies. Why are studying physics and geometry? Is that gonna get a meal on the table??? Thankfully, my parents weren't like that, but I had relatives and acquaintances like that.
And the 70's and 80's brought about some changes for people of color but there was still much to do.
Why do people think things should stay the same in perpetuality.
Advances get made, knowledge advances...
Around here if a hurricane brought in flood waters to certain areas, then what changes is if someone want to rebuild there, there are new guidelines and houses have to be built up to try to get away from the high water mark.
Thinking things can or could go back to a certain time or era is nothing more than an odd sense of nostalgia.
Though I do think music was better back then....
The early 80's? Yes. Tho I do like some of the music from the 90's...and not top 40 pop shit, either. The kind that got played on alternative radio
I find it extremely amusing that they all want to go back BUT they do not want to give up their electronic toys that didn't exist back then.
As far as Nikki goes - she thinks it was so great - she would not be where she is now IF WE HAD NOT MOVED FORWARD. She would be just another dustmop.
You don't like immigrants? They're still here. You don't like gay people? They're still here, too.
An article that starts with this much bullshit is worthless