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i used reagan to indicate the period during which the cluster(s) of policies and ideological correlates for them (justifications etc) have been developed. the specific feature of the reagan period was the beginning of this lunatic idea that tax breaks for the wealthy would drive economic activity. that became an element of the "washington consensus"---which shaped all aspects of us policy one way or another until the bush people managed to mess things up so thoroughly that the frame itself came apart.
the central enabling condition seems to me, like i noted above and is noted in the study, was this conservative canard that racism was somehow a thing of the past and that remedies which had been put into place to address certain (often superficial to the extent often not about distribution of wealth or economic opportunities at anything like a structural level, but still better than nothing) aspects of the racist history of the united states were now somehow reversing and were discriminating against white petit-bourgeois types. this enabled motivated folk who push all these issues right off the political table.
it's also of a piece with the whole horatio alger ideology that the conservatives liked so much.
you'd think that the consequences of this period would be better documented as almost every aspect of it has been shown elsewhere to produce crisis-to-disaster as outcomes, from "structural adjustment" to privatization and its flip in the dismantling of social services. no interest in looking, apparently. this is what political hegemony looks like.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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