Attack of the Reagan babies.

[MadHound]

Back during the eighties I became aware of a huge sea change in our society. The tolerance and open mindedness of the sixties was giving way to hate, intolerance and violence. Fascism was making a comeback, and greed was celebrated as good.

I saw this reflected in TV shows, both for kids and adults. It was the rise of Conan, and He Man, where might was right. It was the belittling of the sixties, and the start of people's hatred for all things PC. Hippy punching came into vogue, both in TV and movies. All in all, the vast social movement that gave us civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, ended the war and changed society for the better was now being reduced to a series of cruel jokes.

At the time I started noticing the effect this was having on the kids at the time, kids who were becoming more cruel, more cynical, more self centered and less concerned with social change, social justice. I started calling these kids(which ranged from two to sixteen at the time) the Reagan babies, and feared that what they were absorbing would come back to haunt us. An army of Alex Keaton's if you will, marching forward towards the future.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who observed this phenomenon. Over the weekend a listened to an interview with David Sirota, author of "Back to Our Future". An interview that immediately hit home with me, one of those moments when you say, "Hey, I thought of that as well." Here is a link to the interview.
<http://www.wpr.org/book/110522a.cfm>

His basic contention is that the reason why our society has moved continuously to the right is that the Reagan babies grew up, and since they had already been innoculated by popular culture against that dread disease of liberalism, it became easier and easier for both the RW and society in general to become ever more conservative.

An interesting, thought provoking piece. I will probably go out and buy the book, but even if you don't want to, the interview itself is an eye opener. It starts about forty minutes into the podcast. Enjoy.