roachboy

ronald reagan <=> chauncey gardener
the null set.
back in those days reactionary ideology was the new borax-o. you were encouraged by the white guy in the cowboy hat to watch the following segment. yet another simple-minded morality play staged yet again in the hollywood wild wild west. this is the world and everything in it. after the simple-minded morality play, the white guy in the cowboy hat come on again and let you know that there was nothing to worry about, you can just toss your pesky stained reality into the wash and out it will come all white white white. next week you watch the same show at the same time on the same channel and nothing will have changed. because there is no change. there is no history. there is only repetition.

reagan the empty, pivot for the new conservatism, the one that prefers retreat into myth to confrontation with complexity...training funding and arming fascist paramilitaries in central and south america was easy peasy because in western films such places do not exist, they are all "over the border" outside the frame...military expeditures as a way to prop up the economy was easy peasy because you call it fiscal responsibility every week you call it fiscal responsibility and hey the dude wearing the cowboy hat wouldnt lie to you, now would he? the wholesale distortion of reality that lay behind the claim that reagan "won the cold war" is no problem in detergentland because the coldwar slots directly into the hollywood construction of the massacres that constitute the history of the west as the showdown between white boys in white hats against white boys in black hats, us vs them, the hero vs the villian, good vs evil.

gil scott-heron had reagan nailed: "nostalgia, the good old days when the movies were in balck and white and so was everything else."

it's funny watching conservatives continue to wrap themselves in the flag with the huge zero on it, the legacy of ronald reagan, the null set incarnate. it kinda makes me think of the titanic, but maybe that's because i am in a good mood this morning.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite